Stephen Rijo seeks to ease congestion and improve Denver’s environment by helping people ditch their cars in favor of other forms of transportation. Photo: Wayne Armstrong
When Stephen Rijo came from his hometown in New Jersey to start his undergraduate education at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, his biggest adjustment had nothing to do with dorm food or the thin mountain air. It was more like, “Where are all the trains?”
“I couldn’t believe there weren’t trains [from Colorado Springs] to Denver and Boulder. I just assumed there would be,” says Rijo (MA ’15). “It hadn’t crossed my mind that there wouldn’t be trains between the biggest cities in the state.”
That started a fascination with Colorado transportation infrastructure that led Rijo first to DU, where he earned a master’s degree in geographical spatial analysis, and then to a job with the city of Denver, where he works as transportation demand management program administrator. He seeks to ease congestion and improve Denver’s environment by helping people ditch their cars in favor of other forms of transportation, including bikes, light rail, buses and carpooling.
“In the eight or nine years I’ve lived here, transportation has gone from ‘you can drive anywhere without traffic’ to there are corridors in Denver that are really congested now,” he says. “It’s fun to be working on the problems that are really visible and apparent to people.”
As a master’s student at DU, Rijo worked as an intern for RTD and for the city, researching the effects of bike lanes on nearby retail (turns out they boost sales tax revenue) and on the distance transit users travel between their homes and a light rail station (often three miles or less). The contacts he made then eventually led to a job he plans to keep for a long time.
“My message to students is that internships can be really helpful,” he says. “A year after I graduated from DU, the woman who oversaw me when I was at the city gave me a call and said, ‘Hey, I have a position that I think you’d be great for.’”