At around 2 a.m. Dec. 28, 2022, Peter Frantz awoke to the recognizable sound of a “sudden bursting” from outside his Colorado Springs home. He jumped out of bed, dressed and rushed toward North Nevada Avenue, the four-lane road that bisects the Old North End neighborhood where he has lived for 20 years.
A southbound Mercedes-Benz carrying two people had crossed the raised median, struck a tree and spun into the oncoming lanes. The vehicle was estimated to be moving at about 80 mph in a 30-mph zone before the crash, Colorado Springs police reports show.
By the time Frantz arrived to check on the victims, a nurse who lived nearby had already called 911 and begun CPR on the passenger, a 17-year-old girl whose unresponsive body other neighbors had helped to turn over. Police accompanied the driver, a 16-year-old boy, to the hospital. The girl died at the scene.
The response has become what Frantz, 59, describes as a community “ritual.” After hearing a crash, residents gather to tend to the victims. They take pictures and document the incident. And they talk as a community about ways to effect change. Yet time after time, despite their calls for stronger safety measures, they say no such improvements have materialized.
“It’s traumatic,” said Mike Anderson, a 38-year resident of the neighborhood, which is composed of a mix of single-family Victorians, duplexes and rental units, and is listed as a historic district in the National Register of Historic Places.
Designed as a smooth, straight road, with two lanes in each direction, the approximately mile-long stretch of North Nevada Avenue that runs through the neighborhood allows drivers lots of room to pass. But with not enough regularly operating traffic signals to interrupt the flow, the road is “primed for speeding,” setting the stage for new tragedies, Anderson said.
What’s the best way to slow speeding drivers?
“People respond more to the design of the street in front of them in deciding how fast to go, unless the enforcement is high,” Wes Marshall, professor of civil engineering at University of Colorado Denver, told The Sun. Marshall, who did not examine the specific streets in this story, said that fixing the fundamental problem, which lies in road design, is often hard and expensive. Marshall is the author of the 2024 book “Killed by a Traffic Engineer,” which seeks to educate engineers and empower citizens.
As long-serving members of the Old North End Street Safety Committee, a group of about a dozen residents operating under the umbrella of the nonprofit Old North End Neighborhood association, Frantz and Anderson have recorded at least 10 fatalities on their streets since 2002. At least five have occurred within the last five years, according to the group’s research, which draws partly from city of Colorado Springs data that appeared in a 2023 summary of recommendations to address speeding on North Nevada Avenue. The summary, prepared by the engineering firm Olsson, identified “reducing the number of lanes” on a portion of the street “to one lane in each direction” as part of a “long-term action plan.”
The recommendation reprised one from a 2013 study of pedestrian and bicyclist safety on multiple streets surrounding the nearby Colorado College campus, prepared by the transportation and environmental services consulting firm Felsburg Holt & Ullevig. In 2018, one of the study’s proposals came to pass: a reduction to one lane in each direction of a segment of Cascade Avenue, which parallels North Nevada Avenue.
It’s the solution the Old North End committee wants for North Nevada Avenue, too. But the city government hasn’t acted yet, citing the need for additional analysis in light of potential redevelopment opportunities in what it characterizes as a connective thoroughfare from downtown Colorado Springs through northern portions of the city.
The neighborhood committee views the problem as a pressing safety concern, and they are taking a new tack to effect change on the residential portion of the street. In October, they began posting yellow-and-red signs declaring “Someone Died Here, Slow Down” in spots around the neighborhood as close as possible to the locations where documented fatalities occurred. The group wasn’t sure if it would have any effect on driver behavior.
“But you reach a point where you have to try everything,” Anderson said, as he sat next to Frantz at a table papered with documents accumulated across 13 years of effort.
A sign photographed Nov. 16 on North Nevada Avenue directs drivers to slow down. (Gregory Laski, Special to The Colorado Sun)The six North Nevada Avenue residents interviewed by The Sun recalled how cars have crashed into their front yards or smashed into vehicles parked both on the street and in driveways. They wondered about the fate of the victims who were taken to hospitals. They pointed to missing chunks of concrete in curbs and trees shorn of bark. They described the disruptions of motorcycles “drag racing” down the road.
More than one mentioned the sound that drew Frantz out of his home and into the street after the December 2022 crash.
“The noise is unmistakable,” said Ralph Everett, who has lived on North Nevada Avenue for four decades. It’s the sound of a bang and metal crunching, said 74-year-old Everett. But for Jaime Socotch, 32, who moved to North Nevada a little over two years ago not knowing about the traffic problems, the noise has assumed a different ring.
“When you hear it, it sounds like death,” said Socotch, who created the “slow down” signs in collaboration with the neighborhood committee.
“Like watching a janitor clean up after a food fight”
Speeding remains a leading cause of traffic crashes in Colorado. The most populous cities — Denver, Colorado Springs and Aurora — account for most speeding-related fatalities in the state, according to Colorado Department of Transportation data from 2020 to 2024.
Where passengers inside vehicles are staying relatively safe, pedestrian and bicyclist deaths have increased 34% statewide since 2016, CDOT traffic safety manager Sam Cole said. A recent Washington Post analysis identified East Colfax Avenue in Denver as one of the deadliest roads in the country based on the number of pedestrian deaths between 2021 and 2023.
Advocates for bike and pedestrian safety worry that those numbers may feel foreordained in an environment that favors cars and treats public transportation, sidewalks and bike lanes as an afterthought.
“We just think it’s the cost of doing business,” said Rob Toftness, cofounder of the Denver Bicycle Lobby, a grassroots organization that promotes safe and equitable bicycle infrastructure.
Toftness recalled witnessing the wreckage from a crash that occurred at the intersection of Market and 2oth streets, near his Denver home, late at night on Oct. 12, 2022. By the next morning, a city vacuum truck had cleaned up all the debris. “It was like watching a janitor clean up after a food fight,” Toftness said, describing the scene of how the truck cleared the road of shards of glass and broken brakelights.
Ghost bike memorials
Ghost bikes stand as one concrete symbol of resistance to that process of silencing and forgetting. The white-painted bikes, often put together by a victim’s family and placed on the roadside, memorialize cyclists who died on the road and remind people that something occurred there.
Denver Bicycle Lobby helped install a ghost bike for Salih Koç, a 21-year-old student who was struck and killed in Denver in July. Bike Colorado Springs arranged a ghost bike for Michael Pompa, the 55-year-old bicyclist who was killed in Colorado Springs in December 2024.
Christmas decorations cover a ghost bike tribute for cyclist Michael Pompa at 4450 Edison Ave. in Colorado Springs, photographed Nov. 16, almost a year after he was killed. (Gregory Laski, Special to The Colorado Sun)On the steps of City Hall on Nov. 16, Zuri Horowitz, a Colorado Springs-based road safety activist, led the group of about 20 who gathered to memorialize people like Pompa at the World Remembrance for Road Crash Victims ceremony. The participants took turns reading at the microphone while others stood silent and held posters containing the images and stories behind the names, some of whom were designated as “unknown.”
“We need to advocate for Vision Zero,” Horowitz said in her opening remarks, referring to the strategy that seeks to eliminate traffic fatalities through systems-level changes to road design and traffic policies. The city of Boulder, which has its own Vision Zero plan, has nearly eliminated pedestrian deaths.
Horowitz, who leads People Centered Colorado Springs and is also seeking the Democratic nomination to represent Colorado’s 5th Congressional District, which includes Colorado Springs, sees value in campaigns that seek to modify driver behavior, but locates the heart of the problem in a car-first culture and wide, straight roads that encourage speed.
“There’s only so much guilt tripping you can do,” she said.
Zuri Horowitz stands on the steps of Colorado Springs City Hall on Nov. 16 during a public remembrance of victims of car crashes. (Greg Laski, Special to The Colorado Sun)“STFD”
Sometimes, signs do work to slow drivers’ speed, especially if they’ve got a provocative message. Just ask Dylan Frusciano, of Louisville, an old mining town of about 21,000 people east of Boulder.
In the fall of 2017, Frusciano observed firsthand how fast cars moved along Pine Street, near Louisville Elementary School, by watching the flashing numbers on a dynamic speed feedback sign as he waited for the bus. Frusciano, now 53, channeled his “anger” into action by creating signs telling drivers to “STFD,” or “Slow the F*** Down.”
The signs, posted both on the street and online, caught the attention of the police department and city council, and ultimately led to infrastructure changes like medians, speed bumps and bike lanes.
“It had a good impact in that regard,” Frusciano told The Sun about the “STFD” campaign, adding that motorcycles and e-bikes have presented new safety challenges.
In Colorado Springs, a city whose population is more than 20 times that of Louisville, Frantz and Anderson, of the Old North End committee, said they’ve pulled all the levers of citizen power across their decade-plus campaign, from engaging Colorado Springs police and the Citizens Transportation Advisory Board to City Council and Mayor John Suthers, who was elected in 2015 and served two terms until the 2023 election of the current mayor, Yemi Mobolade.
City Council member Nancy Henjum, whose district includes the Old North End, told The Sun she supports reducing North Nevada Avenue to one lane in each direction and has helped set up meetings between the neighborhood committee and Mobolade that the committee has characterized as productive.
How can Colorado Springs residents weigh in on street safety?
A spokesperson for Mayor Yemi Mobolade told The Sun the mayor welcomes community engagement and encourages continued public involvement through the GoCOS platform and City Council.
A spokesperson for Mobolade said that “as a father of three young children who lives in the neighborhood,” the mayor “deeply understands the safety concerns along North Nevada Avenue,” but “must make decisions in the interest of the entire city and relies on data to help guide those choices.”
Colorado Springs police did not respond to questions about law enforcement measures on the street.
When asked about the impact of the 2018 reconfiguration of nearby Cascade Avenue to two lanes from four, with added bike lanes to extend the bike network, City traffic engineer Todd Frisbie reported a 40-50% reduction in crashes as well as a reduction in overall speeds. No notable traffic congestion has resulted, despite what some residents anticipated. One group of neighbors even attempted to halt the project by filing a lawsuit.
Restriping is one of the least expensive traffic calming measures, with the 2018 Olsson study of North Nevada Avenue indicating a probable cost of $50,000 for stripe removal on the road. The study also proposed other measures like roundabouts, which stretch the projected costs into the millions of dollars.
Does reducing the number of lanes on a road increase traffic congestion?
Not necessarily, according to University of Colorado Denver civil engineering professor Wes Marshall. The key to how many cars can pass through an urban corridor has less to do with the number of lanes on the road and more to do with how the turn lanes at intersections are configured.
Frisbie said North Nevada Avenue, which is busier than Cascade, “would be a candidate” for a similar reduction based on traffic volume. But Public Works director Richard Mulledy added that volume alone does not determine lane reconfiguration decisions. Traffic engineering falls under the public works division in the city.
Before taking on his current post, Frisbie was project manager of the 2013 study proposing lane reductions on streets surrounding Colorado College, including a portion of North Nevada Avenue.
Frisbie and Mulledy emphasized the implementation of a “rest on red” signal at a North Nevada Avenue intersection that stays red when a speeding driver approaches, as well as dynamic speed limit signs, which have showed a modest but discernible reduction in speeds and a significant reduction in high speeds in the corridor, according to Frisbie.
But North Nevada Avenue resident Chad Reynolds hasn’t noticed the impact.
Reynolds, who has lived on the street for 13 years, isn’t part of the neighborhood committee, and he doesn’t have a “Someone Died Here” sign in his yard. Still, the 47-year-old believes the solution is clear: re-stripe the street to one lane in each direction. The stakes, he said, are personal.
“I have kids,” Reynolds said as he wondered aloud if it might take the death of another child to implement that change.
“I don’t know what I would do if that happened to my family.”
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