Public Transportation in Denver?
 

Hello,

My wife and I will be traveling to Colorado in October. We will be staying in Denver for about five days of our trip and our hotel will be downtown. In order to save on parking fees and to avoid the hassle of having a rental car in Denver, we were thinking about not getting the car until we leave Denver for more rural areas. How is the public transportation in Denver? Please respond with options and approximate costs, if possible. Would it be reasonable to rely on public transportation the whole time we are in Denver? Some of the places that we are considering visiting in Denver are:

Lower Downtown area (LoDo)
Mount Evans
Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Coors Field
Denver Mint
Denver Zoo
Botanic Gardens
Denver Art Museum
Brown Palace

Thank you in advance for your responses!

If you are staying downtown the following are all walkable and you can use the free 16th Street Mall shuttle to get around.

Lower Downtown area (LoDo)
Coors Field
Denver Mint
Denver Art Museum
Brown Palace

Look at www.rtd-denver.com/index.shtml for bus information for the following. The zoo and museum are located next to each other so it would also be easy to take a cab.

Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Denver Zoo
Botanic Gardens

You will need a car for Mount Evans.

I have a friend who has children and grands in Denver and one trip she did all her going around town with the children with taxis, and said it was really quite easy, and relatively cheap, and of course, the little girls loved it.
But Denver does have a fairly compact downtown, and is good on public transportation.

The RTD website listed in wtm's response has listings of the various fares for light rail and buses.

Denver uses a combination of buses and light rail. As wtm003 says, you will need a car to get to Mt. Evans. There are several rental car offices downtown so don't feel you need to rent one at the airport and in fact you'll get better rates by renting downtown.

I just noticed that your trip is in October. The Mt. Evans highway will be closed for the season.

You can get all day passes for the RTD buses and light rail. A couple of years ago it was $5. You can get to nearly everywhere in Denver via light rail or buses and some walking.

Mt. Evans is an odd choice. Any particular reason for Mt. Evans? So we can offer another suggestion since it will not be accessible at that time of year.