BIKES

Still, Seymour remains all in on the idea of bike lanes. He said more people riding bikes would be great, but the addition of lanes needs to be a slow progression for road users to adjust. ose lanes need concrete, protective barriers for safety, he said.

But not at the expense of car lanes.

“I don’t see enough people using their bikes to commute and to take up road lane miles right now. I think it just adds to more congestion, which people are already frustrated about. We hear about it all the time,” Seymour said.

Seymour isn’t the only one concerned about decreasing lanes. e Weld County Commission, in a letter responding to CDOT’s new rule, said that decreasing lanes may be counterproductive.

no to a union in October. Efforts to organize service workers from Apple to Starbucks last year were met with mixed results. Several Starbucks stores in Colorado have voted to unionize, but contracts are still under negotiation. Amazon employs more than 20,000 full- and part-time workers in Colorado. Many work in the warehouses and as fulfillment center workers. A number are also employed at the 22 Whole Foods Market grocery stores around the state.

The company opened its first warehouse in Colorado in 2016. The Aurora facility, known as DEN5, is where the latest OSHA citations were issued. Workers at the facility sort already sealed packages and then route them by ZIP code to local post offices for faster delivery to Colorado customers. Its first fulfillment center opened in 2018, also in Aurora, followed by another in Thornton where employees are assisted by robots. A Colorado Springs warehouse opened in 2021. The company is also constructing a new fulfillment center in Loveland.

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Some of the aspirations are unlikely, it says.

“CDOT’s CBA claims of signi cant cost savings are unfounded because their estimated reductions in VMT are unlikely to be realized. e CBA is driven by aspirational assumptions about transport mode shifts that are unrealistic. History convincingly demonstrates that programs to reduce VMT have failed,” the letter reads.

Seymour pointed to the context of Colorado: it’s a western state that’s still highly dependent on cars.

“If we eliminate people’s ability to travel by car, it is going to have a detrimental e ect on our economy,” he said.

e progression of adding bike lanes needs to be slow, he explained, and constructing bike lanes prior to a demand for them may be adding the cart before the horse.