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Denver

Posted: April 21st, 2015, 10:12 pm
by FISHMANPET
As my 3 Twitter followers know, I'm in Denver this week.

Airport: overwhelmingly large
Airport transit: armpit of the armpit of the airport (though that's changing)
Transit: I got a tear off piece of paper as a transfer on the bus, but also the bus had automated destination announcements.

The mall: The mall! I feel like I've landed in another world! Free shuttles that come ever 2 minutes. Active street life. No cars.

Stoplights: I can't figure these out. I've seen intersections with 3 of the 4 crossings getting a walk signal at once. But basically easy to walk through.

Re: Denver

Posted: April 22nd, 2015, 8:09 am
by xandrex
Not to hijack your thread at all, but I actually am making a trip to Denver later this summer. Kind of wondering what you're seeing that's worth investigating (as well as what anyone else wants to chime in), as I haven't been there since I was about 4 or 5.

Re: Denver

Posted: April 22nd, 2015, 8:34 am
by EOst
I spent a day there last month on the way back from a conference in Boulder. Tons of new development and the downtown was really surprisingly nice, but even with the amount of transit investment they've made, get five minutes out of downtown and it's carland again. That said, it also had a lot of great streetcar neighborhoods that could easily be in south Minneapolis. Cycling infrastructure seemed pretty rudimentary. Very interesting place.

Re: Denver

Posted: April 27th, 2015, 12:26 pm
by xandrex
Okay, not Denver, but since Boulder is just 30 miles away, I figured this would fit here.

Holy hell, I thought our anti-development crowd was bad. But Boulder has some pretty wacky ideas.

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder ... rowth-give

Re: Denver

Posted: April 27th, 2015, 7:39 pm
by Wedgeguy
There goes our excuse that we have the craziest NIMBY's in the country! Where will these folks be when they have to raise taxes because they have a static tax base and the cost of services continues to rise.

Re: Denver

Posted: April 30th, 2015, 5:48 am
by nlt
As my 3 Twitter followers know, I'm in Denver this week.

Stoplights: I can't figure these out. I've seen intersections with 3 of the 4 crossings getting a walk signal at once. But basically easy to walk through.
Denver used to have diagonal crosswalks with a signal phase for pedestrian crossing in all directions at once. The diagonal crossing was scrapped about five years ago, but I think they still maintain the pedestrian phase, or something close to it.

I moved out of that pleasant, bland city five years ago and I think Minneapolis has it beat on almost all fronts. Denver always struck me as sort of a bro-tropolis.

I love DIA though. You can get direct, non-Delta flights everywhere for a good price. And the 16th st. Mall is far more attractive than Nicollet.

Re: Denver

Posted: April 30th, 2015, 3:01 pm
by mattaudio
They'd probably say MSP is great as you can get direct non-United flights.

Re: Denver

Posted: April 30th, 2015, 3:42 pm
by MNdible
Denver benefits from being a hub for Southwest as well. Competition!

(I know that Southwest will tell you they don't hub, but don't believe it.)

Re: Denver

Posted: May 1st, 2015, 8:06 am
by xandrex
One thing I definitely noticed when searching for flights is how cheap it is to fly to Denver. We found tickets well under $200 round trip from a bunch of carriers. Typically when I fly, it's all just Delta, Delta, Delta for $$$.

Re: Denver

Posted: May 1st, 2015, 9:17 am
by FISHMANPET
Even Delta was only $200, maybe it's because Denver is a "focus city" for Southwest that it keeps fares low?

Re: Denver

Posted: May 1st, 2015, 11:00 am
by MSPtoMKE
It might be that Delta, United, Southwest, Frontier, and Spirit are all competing for MSP-DEN passengers. That is a lot of competition for a city pair to have. Not all destinations out of Denver will see nearly that much competition.

Re: Denver

Posted: May 1st, 2015, 11:08 am
by FISHMANPET
For the hell of it I tried to find some cheap Spirit fairs to Denver and I could get there for $70 round trip in a couple weeks. Plus the cost of baggage, which would be tricky because my laptop doesn't fit in my "personal item" very well along with all my fancy camera gear but I'd rather my wife and I pack a single suitcase and check it than pay more per bag for carry ons and have each of us pack our own carry on.

Flying is hard.

Re: Denver

Posted: May 1st, 2015, 9:03 pm
by web
Spirit is the bad greyhound of the lot.

Pay for carryon, Pay for checked, Pay to choose seat, Pay for aisle seat, Pay for window seat and last but not least the seats do not recline and the legroom is the tightest in the industry.

So the $9 fares after carryon and not sitting in a random middle seat they choose t place you in then runs more like $69.
So the $59 fares end up around $129.........about what the others charge and Southwest even has 2 free checked bags.

Spirit in my opinion is a thumbs down

Re: Denver

Posted: May 1st, 2015, 9:24 pm
by FISHMANPET
I'll gladly fly Spirit to Chicago with a single checked bag between the wife and I if it's cheaper, much longer than that and I'll gladly pay extra to fly Delta (Spirit seems to always be out of upgrades to the Big Front Seat or the upgrade is too expensive).

Anyway, yeah, Denver. Maybe this weekend I'll pull the pictures off my camera. Until then here's one from my phone. The rail platforms have markers on the ground indicating where the doors will be. Some of them have a bike marker as well, presumably that's where you can board to get to the bike storage area.
Image

Re: Denver

Posted: May 2nd, 2015, 9:39 pm
by nlt
Well, since they have the SD 160s with high floors, they have to line up the doors to the accessible platform, so you always know exactly where the door will be. Kind of a tacky font choice (not to mention that it's spray painted!), but we're talking about an agency that doubled down on the SD 160 when they expanded the LR system, right? Aesthetics have never been RTD's strong suit.

Also, next time anyone is in Denver: there is a woman who sells great cookies in the commercial space on the north side of the sunken plaza of the Republic tower on weekdays.

Denver building boom

Posted: October 4th, 2015, 5:45 pm
by John
Really fun map of projects going up in the urban core of Denver. Similar development boom to what's going on in Minneapolis except with more small scale infill, some of which is very good:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mi ... xO8zRFSDQU

Re: Denver building boom

Posted: October 4th, 2015, 7:09 pm
by mattaudio
I was at a Twins game earlier this year with one of those small scale developers from Denver (bachelor party for another UrbanMSPer) and it was insightful to see some of his projects. We need more of that infill here. What is Denver doing differently?

Re: Denver building boom

Posted: October 7th, 2015, 12:19 pm
by Nathan
Yeah, I just took some time to look into this... a lot more quality and interesting architecture going on... looks like they're really doing it right, I have to wonder why... I think we're letting our developers get away with murder, just because we have a lot of empty space doesn't mean we have to do things the cheapest easiest way, what happened to quality and lasting architecture that pays respect to the city?

Re: Denver building boom

Posted: October 7th, 2015, 12:22 pm
by FISHMANPET
I was in Denver earlier this year and have some Facebook friends from Denver so occasionally things pop into my feed slash I actually saw some stuff.

And anyway, in the Denver equivalent of City Pages, people are saying literally the exact thing about Denver. Other places have more interesting architecture, why are we letting ourselves be run over by developers, etc etc. Grass is always greener etc etc.

Re: Denver building boom

Posted: October 7th, 2015, 12:54 pm
by Nathan
I was in Denver earlier this year and have some Facebook friends from Denver so occasionally things pop into my feed slash I actually saw some stuff.

And anyway, in the Denver equivalent of City Pages, people are saying literally the exact thing about Denver. Other places have more interesting architecture, why are we letting ourselves be run over by developers, etc etc. Grass is always greener etc etc.
I mean... I just looked at every project on that list, and you might say I have a decent idea of what's going on in Minneapolis... They have numerous beautiful office buildings. We have Xcel.