The Federal Boulevard Partnership completed a survey of existing Boulevard conditions in May of 2010 using neighborhood volunteers. With some exceptions, conditions were poor to fair from W. 6th Ave to W. 20th Ave, fair to good from W. 20th Ave to W. 38th Ave, and mostly good from W. 38th Ave to I-70.

The most dramatic unsafe area for pedestrians—walking, wheel chair or bike—is the Federal and Colfax cloverleaf. A person literally takes their life into their hands when traversing the cloverleaf. A wheel chair trip along Federal is literally not possible, due to a 4 – 6 inch lip on both the west and east sides of Federal where the narrow sidewalk meets the Federal bridge. Pedestrians must force their way across traffic either increasing or decreasing speed (30 to 40 miles per hour) attempting to get onto Colfax or coming off Colfax. In several locations light poles are situated in the center of an already narrow sidewalk, giving a person a difficult choice—walking abreast with fast traffic or walking on gnarly weeds and grass?

The condition and very existence of the cloverleaf has never been a good situation for pedestrians but the issue will affect a much larger portion of the population when the new light rail station opens at Federal and Howard Place (one block south of the cloverleaf), in early 2013.

Safer pedestrian conditions exist in many Boulevard sections, mostly north of W. 20th Avenue, where detached sidewalks separate people from traffic and many street trees exist to further buffer the experience. Even so, detached sidewalks in several blocks change to attached placing the pedestrian close to traffic or slab heaving and bad concrete scaling (concrete surface deterioration) exist to adversely effect pedestrian safety.

Twelve conditions on both sides of the 49 blocks on the Boulevard from US 6 to I-70 were rated in the survey.  Conditions were rated Poor (1), Fair (2), or Good (3). If the survey was rating the occurrence of something (graffiti and vandalism for example), the criteria of  None (0), Some (2) Extensive (1) was used.

Twelve conditions on both sides of the 49 blocks on the Boulevard from US 6 to I-70 were rated in the survey. Example conditions include sidewalks, landscaping, median, cleanliness and crosswalks. A full written report will be released before the end of June detailing ratings for all sections. Highlights include:

Sidewalk conditions were mostly poor from W 6th Ave to W 20th Ave and fair from W 20th Ave to I-70. Conditions for landscaping was quite mixed and ranged from poor to fair from W 6th Ave to I-70. Landscape includes ground cover and trees in the area between the sidewalk and street curb. The condition of ground cover and planting in raised street medians was mostly fair from W 20th Ave to W 29th Ave and good from W 32nd Ave to I-70. Overall cleanliness was rated mostly fair. Marked crosswalks were rated poor to fair from W 6th Ave to W 20th Ave, mostly fair from W 20th Ave to W 32nd Ave, and good from W 32n Ave to I-70. The overall feeling of pedestrian safety on a block termed feeling safe, was rated mixed poor to fair from W 6th Ave to W 32nd Ave  and fair to good from W 32nd Ave to I-70.