We are all waiting for the start of Broncos season, one way or another.
Especially those of us not hanging on for every dispatch out of Dove Valley leading up to the preseason, the offseason means it’s a grueling season for shopping.
Those magical three hours each week when Peyton and the gang play have long served as prime time for less-fanatical citizens of Bronco Nation to enjoy a slightly more serene shopping experience while most of the metro is either glued to the TV or shouting “IN-COM-PLETE” at Mile High.
The fact we’re still many weeks away from the NFL schedule’s start isn’t lost on those of us who suffer the drudgery of hitting the increasingly packed supermarkets with no big game to draw away crowds.
This year has been particularly troubling, between the relative dearth of farmers markets and the closing of various Safeways and Albertsons across A-Town and neighboring cities. Sure, those cozy Walmart Neighborhood Markets have popped up in some spaces, but even finding parking near them has been as perilous as showing up to Sports Authority Field in Raiders garb.
You don’t need to read the breakdowns of the metro area’s worsening road conditions and ballooning commute times to know that Aurora has welcomed many new residents in the past year or so — that same level of congestion and frustration can be found in any given bread aisle or in the makeshift lines at the deli counter of your friendly neighborhood corporate grocer.
Those magical three hours each week when Peyton and the gang play have long served as prime time for less-fanatical citizens of Bronco Nation to enjoy a slightly more serene shopping experience while most of the metro is either glued to the TV or shouting “IN-COM-PLETE” at Mile High
Simply finding fresh produce in stock has become more difficult, either because big-box retailers have cut back on their displays or because farmers now enjoy enough demand for locally sourced grub, the literal fruits of their labors are going straight to restaurants instead of the weekly farmers market.
You could stake out the local Sprouts and track when the freshest stuff gets put out on display, but anyone with that kind of time on their hands isn’t sweating this conundrum.
There is hope on the horizon, with the planned opening of the Stanley Marketplace. But in the meantime, Aurorans have a few choices: Give up on trying to shop altogether and just eat out all the time, or strap on pads and a helmet and brave the crowds until it’s time for the NFL season to kick off.
Front Range Gets Taste of Hell on Wheels
Going anywhere to do anything around Aurora generally is taking much longer for anyone without their own private helicopter.
The biggest driving force in that frustrating fact is the sheer number of motorists across the Denver-Aurora metro area these days. U.S. Census commuter trends data pins the total of workers ages 16 and older who drive to work at just over 1.36 million — with 1.02 million of them making the commute solo in their own vehicle.
That same study found more than 121,000 carpoolers and about 60,160 workers using public transit to get to the office.
Going anywhere to do anything around Aurora generally is taking much longer for anyone without their own private helicopter.
Add them all together, and you get an average of 27 minutes and 6 seconds for the average person to get to work, regardless of whether they’re driving, taking the bus or light rail — long enough to rank among the top 25 longest commuter of the 195 metro areas studied (New York-Newark and the Washington, D.C., area ranked highest, at 35.5 minutes and 34 minutes, respectively).
Not helping matters in incentivizing your average worker to consider mass transit versus their own ride: Transit riders spent an average of 47.1 minutes getting to work, versus a flat 26 minutes for those behind the wheel.
Perpetual Growing Pains
So long as there’s been an Aurora, it’s been a magnet for growth. In the 1940s, the expansion of the Fitzsimons Army Hospital spurred tremendous population gains. By the 1970s, the area surpassed even car-loving Los Angeles, California, in terms of vehicles per capita. An explosion of home building in the 1980s added even more four-wheelers to the roads, which created curious traffic problems, including clusters of cars attempting illegal turns during rush hour — just without the threat of red-light cameras watching from above.