03-05-25 DIA Chief Construction & Infrastructure Officer Jim Starling Pena traffic

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My next guest is exactly the right guy to talk
about gremlins in the tunnels underneath Denver International Airport because
he is the chief Infrastructure and Construction officer at DIA.
That's Jim Starling, but that's not what we're going to
talk with him about. Good morning, Jim, Thanks for joining me,
appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Good morning Ross, thanks for having me this morning.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Glad too. I saw a piece at the Denver Business
Journal headline DIA moving forward with Panya Boulevard transformation, And
as somebody who's lived around here for a little over
twenty years, I've watched, as you have, as Paya Boulevard
has slowly but surely become inadequate for the transportation needs
of the corridor that it serves, not just because the

(00:42):
airport's busy, but because there's so much new housing and
business out there in that area. So tell us just
a little bit about how you see the scale of
the problem and then what you're looking at doing and
what that time frame looks like.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, I think you know, it's painta boulevard. Obviously, that's
the driveway to the airport, and you know, very important
for our passengers to be able to you have a
consistent travel time to get out here. Since the airport opened,
you know, there haven't really been any major improvements to
the road. And so nineteen ninety eight there were sixty
seven thousand vehicles a day on Payania. That's doubled in

(01:22):
twenty twenty one, and that will triple in the next
twenty five years. And so just as you point out
certain times a day traffic can back up. You know,
the eight miles from my seventy to gun Club should
take you about eight minutes, but you know it's really congested.
We're seeing up to twenty four minutes of travel time

(01:42):
just to get in that area. And so that's one
of the first questions people always ask me about, is
paina when I'm out talking to people. And so we
are going into an environmental clearance to review the corridor,
what the current situation is, what the alternatives are to
improve travel time there, and so we're looking start that

(02:02):
contract that process. It's a federal part of the National
Environmental Policy Act process, and so to get the environmental clearance,
we'll work with the Federal Highway Administration and c DOT.
That process takes about two years to get through that
and so we'll look to being able to get through
the environmental clearance in twenty twenty seven.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
I do wonder if the priorities of the new presidential
administration might cause or allow the timeframe for that to
come down a little bit, but I guess we won't
know until we know. So I see in the Denver
Business Journal, I'll just read this. Among the improvement options
are to add bus only lanes, managed lanes like high

(02:47):
occupancy vehicle lanes, toll roads, or other routes like frontage roads.
And so I guess my question for you would be,
what about just adding a normal lane in each and
without any of this other stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah, I mean that's a great question. I think. You know,
we completed a mobility study on Payinya last year, and
part of that was a master plan update, and so
that really was understanding how people get to and from
the airport. The other part of that was our Transportation
Demand Model management, which is really kind of aimed at

(03:26):
some strategies to try and reducingklocuitency vehicles. But that master
plan really gave us some ideas on you know, how
people are currently getting to the airport, and then through
public outreach some ideas on improvements that could be made,
and so that's where those options came from. They'll be
the starting point for the environmental clearance, but through public,

(03:47):
you know, input, be very robust public input. You know,
those options can change what our preferred alternative is. And
so we kind of need to work through the process.
Don't want to predetermine what will come out of that,
but let me to get through the process.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
All right, This will be a slightly indelicate question, but
I can imagine that a desire to reduce single occupancy
vehicles on that road could come from, on the one hand,
a desire to have less traffic and have the road
move more slowly. On the other hand, it could come
from folks of a particular political persuasion who seem to

(04:25):
just hate that people driving cars by themselves and come
more from an ideological thing than a pragmatic thing. So
so where on that spectrum is it in your planning?

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah? I think you know when you look, and I said,
nineteen ninety eighty was sixty seven thousand vehicles and it
doubled by twenty twenty one. Are passengers using the airport
has more than double in that time, And so I think,
you know, regardless of what we do eventually with Pinya,
it's very important to try and you know, minimize the

(04:59):
number of vehicles out there, because they said earlier there
is a lot of development going on around Painya, and
so I think at the airport, we've taken in all
of the above type of approach and so really trying
to push you know, the A line has excellent service,
but that can't meet all of our passenger needs. You know,
we're the large hub airport, you know, the only large

(05:21):
hub airport within five hundred miles, and so we draw passengers,
you know, from from North Dakota, you know, to Utah, Nebraska,
down in New Mexico, and so the air line isn't
the only answer, and so I think we really are
looking at all options to try and just make it
so that people can get to the airport, whether that

(05:41):
is you know, using paineabule of art or some other service.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah. Well it'll be interesting because you know, especially you
think about business travel, folks were traveling on business, they're
likely to be traveling by them so somewhat likely to
be traveling by themselves to the airport and very likely
to not want to be inconvenienced by having to take
an extra half an hour to get to the airport,
by having to get on you know, a multi passenger

(06:07):
thing or park somewhere real far away and take a
fifteen to twenty minute but I mean further than the
Mount Elbert parking or Pike's Peak. I think it's gonna
be interesting trying to keep your customers happy as you
as you work this process.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
And that's a great point. You know, there's a lot
of users of the airport, obviously business travelers, families, but
I think one important point is you know, we have
over forty one thousand badged employees here and so I
have to be a real opportunity, you know to maybe
get them off of Pina, maybe you get them into
a van pull, have them take the A line or

(06:41):
some of the bus service that RTD offers. And so
I think there's you have our passengers, which obviously are
you know, very important, but also our employees, and I
think that's a big opportunity for us to work on.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
A great point, excellent point. We'll leave it there. Jim
Starling is Chief Infrastructure and Construction Officer at Denver International Airport.
Thanks for your time, Jim, We'll keep in touch with
you on this as the whole paina thing develops over time.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Hip. Thanks for having me all right, Glad to do it.