Federal aviation officials won’t fund any portion of the project to expand the overloaded Peña Boulevard that leads to Denver International Airport.
Colorado Department of Transportation officials also are steering clear.
And DIA chief executive Phil Washington, who has guided the airport’s growth to be one of the busiest in the world, faces rising pressure as harried drivers rushing to catch flights frequently back up on the highway, which runs 11 miles from Interstate 70 to the DIA passenger terminal.
A $2.1 billion overhaul inside DIA is boosting its capacity to handle record numbers of passengers, projected to reach 82 million this year, up from 69 million in 2019, and 120 million by 2045.
But the average drive time to navigate Peña Boulevard, once eight minutes, has tripled to 24 minutes and often exceeds half an hour.
“Peña Boulevard is a vital cog in what we are doing here,” Washington said, weighing options in a recent interview. “As we look at our increasing numbers of travelers, it is becoming very, very clear we’re not going to be able to accommodate them until we do something to Peña.”
It’s a looming project expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. DIA’s initial plans call for widening to add lanes but do not include increasing the public transit capacity of the Regional Transportation District‘s parallel A-Line.
DIA’s planners described an expansion that would ensure multiple options for people to move to and from DIA. “We need transit. We need buses. We need cars. We need bikes,” Washington said.
As he spoke, a smartphone ping alerted him to a fatal accident along Tower Road that was blocking ramp access to Peña Boulevard, stalling traffic. DIA data shows 1,250 crashes between 2016 to 2023 along Peña Boulevard, and 45% of them were rear-end collisions that typically increase when congestion is too heavy. The crashes trigger cascading disruptions in the airport.
“If people were planning to get out to the airport about two hours prior to their flights, and Peña is jammed for 30 minutes, they may be walking in with one hour until their flight time. We see it often. TSA sees it, too – a big bump they were not expecting,” Washington said. “We have a sense of urgency around doing something to better the experience on Peña Boulevard.”
The airport opened in 1995 on 52 square miles of land northeast of Denver, one of the nation’s largest airports with 33 miles of runways and taxiways, built to handle 50 million travelers a year. But reaching it meant driving 25 miles from downtown Denver — more than triple the distance from downtown to the old Stapleton Airport. Peña Boulevard was built to carry up to 75,000 vehicles a day, the only road to and from DIA.
As the airport got busier, Denver and Aurora officials prioritized the development of housing and a commercial “aerotropolis” along Peña Boulevard. The average daily traffic increased by 80% to 136,000 vehicles per day in 2023, airport data shows. DIA planners project daily traffic on Peña Boulevard will exceed 186,000 vehicles before 2050.
FAA invested 30 years ago
No federal funding would mean Denver must seek outside grants or tap city coffers.
When DIA was built, the Federal Aviation Administration provided $500 million ($1.1 billion in 2023), including grants in 1989 and 1996 for buying land along Peña Boulevard. Denver officials, in return for accepting federal assistance, agreed to federal rules restricting the use of airport revenues for non-aeronautical purposes.
FAA spokeswoman Brittany Trotter last week cited those restrictions.
“The FAA will not fund any portion of the Peña Boulevard expansion project,” Trotter said. “The road is not a dedicated airport access.”
FAA officials weren’t made available to discuss the issue.
Similarly, CDOT director Shoshana Lew said “this is the city’s project,” indicating state funds would not be available. CDOT is “entirely supportive of the light rail trains to the airport,” Lew said, and “we would like to see more ways for people to get to airlines.”
An FAA analysis in 2018 found that 27% of the traffic on Peña Boulevard was related to the suburban development with 73% tied to the airport. The city expected that breakdown to serve as a basis for it to use at least a portion of the more than $150 million a year DIA collects from airlines. A 2021 FAA memo suggested some aviation revenues collected at airports could be used for improving rail access.
Funding isn’t the only complication. A National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review of the proposed widening is set to begin in the coming months along with project design.
The NEPA review is legally required to assess project impacts — such as disruption of water flows and wildlife, accelerated erosion, and air pollution — and determine “mitigation” to reduce the impacts under proposed alternatives. Whether federal officials will require a full NEPA environmental impact study, an abbreviated review, or possibly exempt DIA from review, hasn’t been determined, DIA transportation planner Lisa Nguyen said.
A $5 million grant from the Denver Regional Council of Governments planning agency helped fund Denver’s Peña Boulevard Transportation and Mobility Master Plan, completed in April, which lays out the following options:
- Do nothing
- Install additional bus-only lanes
- Install toll lanes, managed to favor drivers in high-occupancy vehicles
- Build additional “collector-distributor” roads to handle non-airport traffic along Peña Boulevard
- Build new frontage roads along Peña Boulevard
Denver City Council members approved that plan without requiring a public transit option to increase the capacity of the RTD’s A-Line, which runs on a single track between 61st Avenue and DIA. About 9% of DIA travelers use public transit, city data shows.
“The NEPA process needs to play out to see what the potential viable solutions will be,” Councilmember Stacie Gilmore said. “This process will be taken one step at a time, and after we understand possible outcomes the funding conversation will follow.”
The grassroots advocacy group Greater Denver Transit wants Denver officials to include better rail public transit as a core part of planning.
“Denver International Airport is preparing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on widening Peña Boulevard without seriously considering other options,” GDT spokesman Joe Meyer said. “Enhancing transit does not add traffic and does not create a cycle of continuous roadway construction to accommodate ever-increasing traffic demand. Without a vision and a study that meaningfully includes alternatives to driving, Denver is not preparing the airport or Peña Boulevard for future demand.”
Worse traffic for now
Construction contractors would begin to widen Peña Boulevard in 2027 under the master plan. For now, DIA officials are scrambling to reduce solo driving as much as possible.
Starting in January, DIA officials say they’ll push for local travelers to increase their use of public transit to DIA by 10%. They plan to change how the more than 30,000 DIA employees reach work, launching programs that offer “guaranteed rides home” for those who take public transit to work, better storage for bicycles, and carpool alternatives to driving.
No date has been set for completing the overhaul.
But the widening could be done in five years, Washington said. “We cannot promise sooner. Our sense of urgency is very, very acute. Our passenger volume is not abating at all.”
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