Free eTuk rides will be offered from the 29th Ave. Town Center to Stanley Marketplace on Sundays from 10am to 2pm from October to December.

Starting this month, two alternative mode transportation pilot projects are getting underway in Stapleton. They are sponsored by Northeast Transportation Connections (NETC), the transportation management nonprofit that serves Stapleton and other northeast Denver neighborhoods.

Sundays, October to December, 10am–2pm

Free eTuk Ride from 29th Ave. Town Center to Stanley

The eTuk is an electric version of the three-wheeled rickshaws found in developing countries from Southeast Asia to Latin America. NETC, with support from the Stapleton Foundation, has contracted with eTuk Denver to bring two of the vehicles to Stapleton for a three-month test of a circulator between the 29th Ave. Town Center and Stanley Marketplace. The circulator will run from 10am to 2pm on Sundays beginning in October. Rides will be free and wait times at each end and at the two intermediate stops are anticipated to be in the five-minute range. The pilot will run through the end of the year.

The vehicles are street-legal but restricted to roadways posted for top speeds of 35 miles per hour or less. They are heated and can seat six. Eric Herbst, of NETC, cautions that the vehicles won’t run in snowy conditions. Herbst says the service will test the value of eTuks in providing the so-called “first mile/last mile” transportation seen as a necessary complement to mass transit systems such as RTD’s FasTracks rail service. If the pilot is successful, NETC will be looking at expanding the circulator to include the Central Park Station and North Stapleton.

Best bike routes to Stanley Marketplace 

BikeHere.com — Routes from North Stapleton, City Park, Lowry and Anschutz Campus

Arleigh Greenwald has taken it upon herself to encourage bike usage by providing potential riders with turn-by-turn descriptions of safe rides to popular destinations. Greenwald, a Stapleton resident, has created BikeHere.com, where riders can access route descriptions including  maps and videos of the routes. Initial routes will use Stanley Marketplace as the destination, with pre-tested routes originating from the Anschutz Medical Campus, Lowry Town Center, City Park and North Stapleton. (These routes to Stanley are shown under the “casual” rides link.)

Greenwald cites research that 60 percent of the general population refrains from biking due to safety and wayfinding concerns. Having moved here from the East Coast four years ago, she found Colorado to be well supplied with recreation and sport-oriented biking facilities but not so well set up for the use of bicycles as a basic transportation tool. In describing her BikeHere program, she said, “Think of Yelp for food reviews applied to bike routes.” Indeed, the website allows for crowdsourcing to keep route information current and at the level of detail needed to provide cautious users the reassurance needed to head out on two wheels. Her goal is to “empower people to use that bike sitting in the garage.”