Havana Street is an important north-south multimodal transportation corridor in the City of Aurora that passes through numerous commercial areas and residential neighborhoods. The Havana Street Corridor serves vital mobility and connectivity needs for residents as well as businesses, employees, commercial customers and commuters within the corridor area as well as the eastern part of the Denver metropolitan area.

The entire corridor is congested with approximately 48,000 vehicles per day currently on the busiest section. It will become more congested in the future with the daily vehicle volumes growing to 76,000 by 2040 per the Denver Regional Council of Governments’ travel demand forecast.

The Havana Street corridor is served by RTD Bus Route 105 which provides important regional transit services. The route has 5,200 daily boardings and 1,900 average load per RTD’s Network Analysis of Potential Improvements to Bus Speed, Delay, & Access report completed in March 2016. It connects the Southeast Corridor Light Rail Transit services, including R, F, and H Lines, at the Southmoor Station and the East Commuter Rail, A Line, at the Central Park Station.

The Havana Corridor is one of the seven transit priority corridors identified by RTD for the following improvements:

• Improving bus travel speed and reducing bus travel time – the speed analysis for Route 105 shows that both northbound and southbound trips experience very slow operating speeds during peak hours.
• Improving bus punctuality – Punctuality has been another recurring problem. Buses typically depart up to two minutes late in the PM peaks and can depart as much as six minutes late.
• Reducing bus transfer distance – There are many transfer activities between Bus Route 105 and the many east-west bus routes. Some of the transfers require a lengthy walking distance.

This project will provide the following improvements:

• Bus bypass lanes
• Relocation of bus stops
• Installation of bus bulbs
• Installation of bus-only queue jump signals (a first in Aurora)
• Bus stop accessibility upgrades
• Implementation of Transit Signal Priority (TSP)

Beginning in November 2020, the Muller team began the environmental clearance effort for the City of Aurora to obtain signature of CDOT Form 128 for a programmatic CatEx of roadway improvements along Havana Street. The project required the Muller team to use their extensive experience in navigating the local agency CDOT process. Muller used existing documentation and project design information to identify specific resources that would require documentation to clear the project under Form 128. Doing so avoids future schedule delays because resources were identified prior to design moving forward.

The design process included review by CDOT (most of the project corridor is on CDOT State Highway 30), the Regional Transportation District (RTD) (bus stops and bus routes), and the City of Aurora (all other aspects). Muller staff successfully navigated and negotiated various agency requirements and delivered a project that met each stakeholder’s expectations. Muller technical staff, including TSP experts and signal timing efforts, led the bench testing effort that will result in successful implementation of TSP for the first time in Aurora.