I recently read that only 46% of residential units in Boulder are owner-occupied while 54% are owned by investors and occupied by renters. While all residents desire safe livable neighborhoods, the owners of rental units and commercial properties, many of whom live outside of the city, are primarily concerned with maximizing their profits.

Profits can be enhanced by enacting city regulations that increase the number of units that can be constructed by densifying existing neighborhoods; increasing the number of unrelated individuals allowed to live in each unit; and reducing the number of required parking spaces. While these changes will negatively impact existing residents, the Boulder City Council has enacted, or is working on, ordinances to accomplish each of these objectives.

During many hours of the day, Boulder’s traffic is nerve-wracking and dangerous. And you take your life in your hands riding a bicycle during rush hour. Nonetheless, wealthy real estate investors, the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, Board of Realtors and other pro-development lobbyists have talked some members of the public and city councilmembers into believing that further increasing density and making it more difficult to drive and park will prompt people to use mass transit and improve traffic.

In the early 1980s, the city wanted to widen Table Mesa Drive into a six-lane highway. To do so, the city would need to tear down a row of single-family homes along nine blocks from South Broadway to South 46th Street. At one time, traffic engineer Bob Whitson was in charge of Boulder’s Go Boulder program, whose goal was to induce people to shift from single-occupant vehicles to alternative transportation. But when the city was looking at widening Table Mesa Drive, Whitson’s job was apparently to convince the community of the need to demolish eighteen homes.

I’ll never forget the clear well-documented presentation Whitson made to the community of the need to accommodate more vehicles because mass transit will not significantly reduce the number of automobile trips in Boulder. He had a chart with two columns. The column for automobiles indicated an average time of ten minutes for a trip within Boulder. The column for busses displayed an extra five minutes to walk to a bus stop; five minutes to wait for a bus; an additional five minutes for the bus to pick up and drop off passengers; and five minutes to walk from the final bus stop to the destination. So if you were lucky and did not need a transfer, the trip by bus would take an extra twenty minutes, thirty minutes in total. Tripling the time needed to drive.

I prefer riding my bicycle to driving and am indebted to Boulder employees who do a good job keeping bike paths free of ice and snow. But most people do not commute by bicycle. Driving to Trader Joe’s on 28th Street, I’ll encounter a half dozen bikes and the bike racks are empty, but the roads and parking lots are full of cars.

The Boulder City Council should acknowledge the fact that our roadways are at capacity, that there are an unacceptable number of accidents and near misses, and that increasing density and population will only worsen the situation.

If the city council wants to decrease the 60,000 employees who commute into Boulder, it should encourage employers to locate in the outlying communities where their employees live. That will reduce traffic, decrease the demand for housing, make homes more affordable and benefit people who live in the city, instead of increasing density to enhance profits for developers and real estate speculators.

Ben Binder lives in South Boulder.