Denver's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) has officially rolled out its latest effort in promoting road safety with a new campaign dubbed "For the Love of Safety," which launched with eye-catching billboards along two high-traffic areas, Federal Boulevard and Alameda Avenue, according to the City and County of Denver. The campaign is both a plea and a strategy to get motorists to ease off the accelerator and is backed by Mayor Mike Johnston and DOTI Executive Director Amy Ford as part of a broader safety initiative announced last year.
Last year's traffic statistics revealed a grim reality, with four people losing their lives on Federal Boulevard and another three on Alameda Avenue, which belong to Denver's high injury network, where most fatal and serious injury crashes have been happening, however, thanks to the campaign efforts no fatal crashes have been reported on these corridors this year to date while the city's overall traffic fatality count stood at 79 in 2024. The safety campaign is not just a visual cue, but it involves a tech twist, as DOTI will employ a geofencing marketing tool to send online ads and messages to drivers near the billboards, encouraging them to join the safety movement by taking the "For the Love of Safety Pledge" with a $15 gift card incentive for the first 100 pledgers, and the promise of more opportunities throughout the spring and summer as the DOTI team hits various outreach events.
To bolster the campaign's message, DOTI hasn't stopped with billboards, they've taken a multi-faceted approach by installing electronic signs that feed back drivers' speeds, adjusting signal timings to deter speedsters especially at night, and increasing the number of intersections with leading pedestrian intervals (LPIs) for pedestrian safety changes already made along Alameda Avenue and parts of Federal Boulevard, with more to follow this month, according to DOTI's plan.
DOTI will closely monitor the outcomes of these safety measures, all part of the SPEED pilot program, through vehicle speed assessments spanning between six months to a year after the full rollout, and it's not just about slowing down vehicles, it's about lighting up the roads as well, for which they're working with Xcel to make sure no street light is left damaged or dark. The billboards that are reinforcing this life-saving message will be strategically placed and observed across various locations on Federal Boulevard and Alameda Avenue, throughout March and April, mapping spots from south of Alameda to north of I-70, and along Alameda Avenue from east of Wadsworth to west of I-25.
