Commuting From Denver To Boulder

Commuting from Denver to Boulder is pretty harsh.

Traffic In Denver

Hwy 36 that stretches diagonally from Denver to Boulder is the most popular route and it shows -for the ~29 miles plan on an hour minimum. The McCaslin, Interlocken, and Northwest exists pose the largest slowdowns. The final hill into Boulder is very frustrating.  It's often one of those cases of no-reason traffic, and it starts in Broomfield, and goes right to the bottom of the hill.
On snow days forget about it. Over two hours+ is not unheard of.
That said compared to traffic in places like DC, LA and NYC  an "average" commute in any of those cities can easily be 2x the Denver/Boulder commute at it's worst.

Highway 93 is a tempting alternative but is mostly 2 lane and also congested very congested. If you live in north Denver and are commuting to somewhere in north Boulder you might consider going north on I25 and take 52 west.

As far as flexibility in timing, you might actually be better off working a later day if you can swing it. Unless you leave by 3:30 or so, the afternoon commute is bad and not easy to get ahead of. However, if you leave after 6:20 PM or so, it actually gets much better. The traffic going in after 9 am is pretty decent as well.

Riding the bus (RTD) will take about 1.5 hours depending on where you live. http://36commutingsolutions.org/ Has some info on car pooling to look into.


Or move to where you work and live in Boulder County. Within the county transportation is pretty good.