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The Future of FasTracks | part three of three – 1 2 3

Continuing growth demands fresh answers
Highway spending, mass transit needs at odds in Colorado
By Geof Wollerman
gwollerm@mscd.edu

Photo by William Blackburn • wblackb2@mscd.edu Shrouded in haze and pollution, 6th Avenue fills up with traffic as the sun rises Feb. 27. Though FasTracks will solve some of Denver’s immediate transportation problems, planners and citizens are already looking toward the next project and how Colorado will embrace mass transit in the future.

No matter what the finished FasTracks project looks like or how many commuters it eventually serves, citizens and planners are already recognizing that it will not adequately satisfy Denver’s future transit needs.

Since voters approved FasTracks in 2004 there has been strong growth in Colorado – particularly to the north of Denver – and more communities are becoming part of the Denver metropolitan area, said Tom Clark, a UCD planning professor. Both planners and citizens should begin looking at the area between Pueblo and Cheyenne as a unified region, he said.

“If we were to take a broader view of the issue of transportation along the Front Range, it’s quite possible that we’d be blending the monies that voters approved for FasTracks with additional resources that would allow an even more expansive agenda to be pursued,” Clark said.

In 20 years the area between Denver and Longmont will be one big subdivision, said Richard VonSpreckelson, a Thornton resident who took part in RTD’s north metro corridor community discussions.

“There’s got to be a way to get those people to Denver,” VonSpreckelson said. “Light rail or commuter rail, we’ve got to do something about this.”

One example of a more expansive transportation agenda is the recent T-REX project, which combined FasTracks money with funding from the Colorado Department of Transportation to provide light-rail service along a renewed highway project, said Kristi Estes, RTD’s spokeswoman for the north metro corridor.

Regarding how support of FasTracks has been mixing with Colorado’s traditional support for highway spending, Estes said she thinks a lot has changed since RTD began working with CDOT on the T-REX project.

“I think that project kind of set a model,” Estes said. “Colorado, because of the opening of the southwest corridor and the southeast corridor, has been much more accepting of transit and of rail than it has in the past.”

She also pointed out that a lack of CDOT funding is one reason why new projects within FasTracks are facing budget problems.

Transportation funding in Colorado has historically favored highway solutions, what Colorado Sen. Bob Hagedorn, D-District 29, calls “asphalt and concrete” projects.

“We’ve seen some conflicts between the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Regional Transportation District,” said Hagedorn, who serves on the senate’s transportation committee. He brought up the example of a recent executive director of CDOT, Ken Norton, who was focused on expanding the toll-road system in Colorado rather than embracing mass transit.

“He couldn’t get through his brain that local governments and citizenry in the Denver metro area were not interested in tolling,” Hagedorn said, adding that the tolling issue is indicative of CDOT’s disconnect with the people’s will.

“Hopefully with the new governor we will see a better relationship with the state’s transportation department and local government in the metro area,” Hagedorn said.

Both Spreckelson and Clark said they think RTD has been doing a good a job with the FasTracks program, considering the challenges planners face. And both also expressed their hopes that future needs will be addressed soon.

“At a certain point you have to act on the information that’s available while leaving a little bit of leeway to address the future,” Clark said. He brought up the example of the budget troubles the west corridor project is facing and that there may not be sufficient funding to build it out as it was first envisioned. But Clark said this shouldn’t stop RTD from planning ahead.

It may mean putting in fewer stops or altering a route, but the idea would be to create a plan over the long term that would allow for additional stops in the future.

“It’s difficult to anticipate what the man in the street and the woman in the street and the child in the street are going to say about the plans we produce without first airing the plan and seeing who responds,” he said. “Through interaction with the public we extract our marching orders.”

Planning must be embedded within the political process, Clark said.

Improving the plight of people is the ultimate aim of planning, but, Clark pointed out, there is always resistance when it comes to the community, and one of planners’ biggest challenges in building FasTracks over the coming years will be in cultivating a favorable constituency of citizens.

Planners need to engage the public and be conversant with the nature of political interests that constitute society, Clark said.

“You’ve got to have air, you’ve got to have water and food and shelter and safety. Those are rudimental requirements,” he said. “Once you have those you can stand on the shoulders of those achievements and then peer to the more distant horizon and ask, ‘What else do we need?’”