summary by poe-
Here is a summary of the key points from the article:
- Colorado has taken a bold new approach to transportation policy, focused on reducing highway expansion and investing more in transit instead. This shift was driven by the state's goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% in 30 years.
- In 2021, Colorado passed a rule requiring the state transportation agency and regional planning bodies to demonstrate how new projects, including highway expansions, will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If they cannot, they risk losing funding.
- Within a year of this rule, Colorado canceled two major highway expansion projects, including widening Interstate 25 through Denver, and reallocated $100 million to transit projects. A regional planning body in Denver also shifted $900 million from highway expansions to transit and multimodal projects.
- This policy shift in Colorado is seen as a "gold standard" for how states can address transportation's contribution to climate change. Other states like Minnesota and Maryland are now considering similar approaches.
- The article highlights the long-standing fight against highway expansions, as activists argue they worsen air pollution and disproportionately impact minority communities. It also explains the concept of "induced demand" - how expanding highways leads to more driving and emissions.
In summary, Colorado has implemented a pioneering policy to deprioritize highway expansion in favor of transit and emissions reduction, setting an example for other states to follow in addressing the transportation sector's climate impacts.
This feels more like marketing than reality. Would’ve been nice to see a japan-level high speed transit line go up along i70 out to the mountains, but instead they filled that space with, of all things, a fucking toll lane.
I dont know how many times I have to say this on this subreddit, **high speed rail cannot run along US interstate medians because the turns are too sharp and the elevation gains are too steep**. The turns will make you sick at more than 90mph, and trains have much more restrictive limitations when it comes to inclines because steel on steel slips much more easily.
I am all for public transit, and would love to take a train to ski instead of drive. But everyone needs to understand it's not that simple, and we need to put in a lot more work to make public transit effective. We can do it, but we cant just put a train down the middle of a highway.
You’re 100% right, and that’s why CDOT is in the very early stages of planning a standard speed rail line out through the Rockies to the Steamboat or Craig area. It’ll run at the same speed on the same tracks as the Amtrak Zephyr but have more stops and leave from Denver. Link for proof! I’m cautiously optimistic about transit in CO over the next two decades.
https://www.codot.gov/news/2023/october/cdot-exploring-mountain-rail-line-expanded-transit-statewide
Honest curiosity -- trains like the "ski train" to Winter Park and others do exist using more gentle-sloped routes. What's limiting the significant expansion of these lines and other freight lines like them?
Private ownership. Railroads defend their rights of way with a zealous fervor. Amtrak and the Ski Train have track rights in the Union Pacific railroad but are at a lower priority than the commercial rail traffic.
Could you speak to the potential cost of altering the track priority rights if that’s even possible?
I only ask because the state seems to be willing to spend a lot to make it happen and it maybe would be a good project.
Since you sound like you know about trains, how difficult would you say it would be to have a line going from Winter Park to Kremmling and then build tracks up the Blue River to reach Summit Co.?
Change to this would probably have to happen at the federal level, like nationalizing the railways or seizing land through eminent domain or something. (So probably won’t ever happen).
In our rush to settle the West, railway companies were given way too much power and they really don’t want or care to give any of it back.
Won't ever happen. Railroad right-of-way rights go back to the Western Expansion. My experience working with railroads goes back to the 2000s when I was involved in siting electric transmission lines. I would prefer going up against The Nature Conservancy and Green Peace rather than Union Pacific or BNSF.
By law, Amtrak already must be given priority over freight. See https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/HostRailroadReports/mythbusters-enforcing-amtraks-legal-right-to-preference.pdf. It is just that it has been essentially unenforced. The Biden administration has started enforcing it though.
If standard HSR can't cope with with turns and elevation changes in the mountains without running mostly underground due to speed, what makes you think a faster system would be a better solution?
Not to mention, maglev is almost totally economically unjustifiable even on flat land. China explored the idea for their rail network and nixed it very early on, Japan is only able to justify one because of the incredible transit commuter traffic that already exists every single day at all hours between Tokyo and Osaka. Proposing a maglev line for *recreational use* is completely laughable.
My commentary wasn’t around HSR, it was about defeating friction which was the primary concern stated by the post I responded to. HSR likely won’t be feasible based on commentary found within the thread - which as a layman I do agree with.
The reality is that there isn't an appetite to pay the taxes to fund a project like that.
We've had decades of politicians who believe taxes can only go down. We're reaping the rewards. Current transportation funding mechanisms can barely pay for maintenance, much less expansion.
Personally i think the gas tax should be roughly doubled. 1/3 of it goes towards maintenance and safety improvements which have been deferred for decades. The remainder goes towards transit expansion.
Lots of that too. People need a mindset change.
Americans would rather take home a little more money and be able to afford that expensive new car, instead of funding transit and relying on that car a lot less.
Current funding mechanism is a bit broken too. We pay for a lot of our transportation system with license plate fees and keep gas taxes very low. So out of state traffic gets a free ride...
We could raise gas taxes and lower license fees to keep it revenue neutral for residents and the state would get more money since out of state traffic would be paying their fair share.
I’d bet the costs over just a couple years of passes and getting up to the slopes would pay taxes for a few years to fund such a project, but not many people are willing to pay for something they won’t tangibly see for more than a few years.
High speed rail from Denver to summit county would be one of the largest infrastructure projects in the history of the US. It would take decades to pay off even with high ridership
If we didn't have tabor, wouldn't we have at least 1B to spend towards some better transit/ transport options? I'd rather that than an extra $750 in my pocket.
What evidence can you provide to suggest TABOR refunds would be diverted to building out our transit system? There are already TABOR carve-outs our legislature employs every session to redirect budget surpluses. Transit doesn't rank when there are so many pet projects and voter blocks angling for a hand-out.
BTW...transit costs billions; TABOR surpluses run in the millions.
I have no evidence for how it’d be allocated. But my tabor checks have always been $750. Colorados population is 5.8M, so even if we assume only half are getting TABOR, that’s still almost 2B 🤷♂️
NIMBYs happy to vote against taxes or housing expansion to artificially inflate their property values, yet the ceiling is only so high on your home’s value out here if we can’t build the right infrastructure to keep it a good place to live and commute for everybody.
But sure, let’s throw in another twenty toll roads.
I voted against the train to winter park because I live in Boulder county and they still haven't built the B line we voted for in 2004 and have been taxed for ever since. Current state for the B line is " when finding is available" aka never. because they took the tax dollars we have contributed and built the line to DIA instead. Fuck the RTD. I vote against any proposal they put forward. Liars.
I don’t understand why people think that privatizing public services actually gets better service. They are just as inefficient as government AND want a lot of profit on top of it!
The tax dollars are still in a savings account. BSNF was going to charge them upwards of 500 million for the track use which was crazy. Those funds will get rolled into the front range passenger rail to build out that segment to Boulder
There is $194 million in the entire Fast Tracks fund for all the uncompleted lines. Which RTD is going to use to make up a budget shortfall of $166 million. They will never ever build it. It was a lie to get Broomfield and Boulder counties to vote for FastTracks, nothing more.
I'm not arguing your point, just that the problem is Summit County's geography. There are no good paths to put a train into the Dillon area without coming from the Kremmling area to the north. Summit County is basically a horseshoe shaped area. There are a lot of twists and turns just to get to Georgetown (up US-6 from Golden), then up and through the Eisenhower/Johnson Tunnel area would be a massive (read expensive) endeavor. Then getting over to the Vail area might not be as difficult as I-70 isn't that badly laid out and could probably handle a railroad grade without a lot of engineering. But there are ecological concerns that environmentalists would fight along the way.
There is already a railroad line that goes to Kremmling, but again, it's not a straight shot from Denver. Unless we wanted to something like a narrow gauge line, like they have in Switzerland, standard gauge is limited to where it can go. Also, there is a line that goes to I-70/US-24 just west of Vail. That line is mostly out of service. And neither path is suitable for high-speed. Plus the corporation that owns those lines does not give priority to passenger service, even though they're supposed to by law, as their trains are too long.
I don't have a modern solution but to re-utilize the existing railroad grades. There isn't a good candidate path from Denver to the Dillon area without a very large expense.
"For fun"
No we were getting smoked by Russians in early aerospace. The moon was a "well you beat us on everything else, but we'll get to the moon first you commie bastards!"
There's the path of the old DSP&P High Line that used to run from Como to Breckenridge (and all the way on to Leadville).
Certainly wouldn't be easy, but the region used to have at least narrow gauge service to Denver at one point.
Strontia Spring dam in Waterton Canyon is in the way. Getting to Como at this point would need a new way up. Basically followed the North Fork of the South Platte River to Kenosha Pass and then over to Como. Also a narrow gauge line.
The line after leaving Como went to Nathrop, up to St. Elmo, through the Alpine Tunnel, past the Palisades and then to Gunnison.
Fun fact, the DSP&P line went down Platte Canyon Road in Littleton.
You don’t get that kind of infrastructure overnight. There’s no one single step that gets us where we need to be, just lots and lots of important little steps. These are some of them. Now we have to capitalize on the opportunity to take them further
They canceled widening I-25 through Denver? And reallocated $100M to transit projects? Where's the rest of the probably $900M it would have taken to widen I-25 through Denver?
I'm a person who fully believes in the effects of induced demand, but transit needs to be better. If you live north of Denver and work in the Tech Center, the options are to spend 1.5 hours (or more) on a bus then train or drive and have it take an hour (there used to be a bus directly from Boulder/Broomfield, that also took about an hour). People will choose the option that takes less time, always. And it's not like RTD or CDOT can do a whole lot to expand service because, newsflash, no one anywhere on the planet wants to drive a bus!
I'm all for climate goals and whatnot and I'm a HUGE supporter of transit, but we need to be smarter about this. We need to clean up the system we have (looking at you, West Rail). We need to look at the TIME investment involved (there was an article posted here the other day about "is it faster to take the train to the airport" - that's an important question). We need a real hub and spoke system in the metro. We need people to stop prioritizing trains over buses (the capital outlay is huge, they are not nimble so they can't change alignment as the population moves around). We need to figure out how to keep drivers safe and comfortable (split shifts do NOT help). We need to figure out how to serve both the commuting population and local population. We need to give RTD and other transit authorities the power to build alignments that make sense and prioritize RIDERS rather than other stakeholders (looking at you 20 minute U through the Aurora City Center that was completely unnecessary - and has resulted in at least two derailments). All of these are things RTD struggles with.
As someone who has spent far too many years in a bus centric city (Seattle) - busses are the worst possible solution to transit. Grade separation is mandatory for a functioning transit system otherwise you end up getting stuck in the same damn traffic as the cars. You can’t say dedicated bus lanes because if they aren’t physically separated they get clogged with cars too because enforcement will invariably be non-existent.
Busses sound good until you’re stuck on a packed one not going anywhere for an hour or more even though you’re in a dedicated bus lane - that is now a daily occurrence in Seattle. The light rail on the other hand runs consistently and is dependable.
The cost difference between building physically isolated bus routes and light rail isn’t great enough to go with busses most of the time. Busses save money when you compromise on usability.
Busses are the best transitionary solution - since you don't have to wait 20-30 years to build a massive rail network.
And then even with comprehensive train networks they can still be very valuable since:
* They can run on your existing paved infrastructure
* They can support both local-serving & express modes without requiring additional expensive rail architecture
* They can deliver people far closer to their homes & work that trains can
Now, that doesn't mean that you don't have edge issues with buses - like people illegally driving in a HOV lane. But that's not a problem with buses, it's a problem with a city that refuses to enforce laws. Take that up with them.
Agreed. I was thinking more from the commuting perspective. I take the 120X a lot and it's quite nice. But on surface streets and whatnot, yes, I can see that it would be terrible. But I don't think we can do the tunneling on the scale that Seattle has done - at least not with the budgets we have!! And if you're in urban areas, the train will be subject to the same issues as a bus (as in downtown Denver). Trying to elevate everything or bury everything would be so expensive.
Either you have to separate transit or you have to increase enforcement.
We can’t even get people to register their cars - trying to get people to pay traffic fines is a nightmare. Either they challenge it in court and they get tossed (goodbye automated enforcement like Europe) or they simply ignore them.
The answer to most of the problems Colorado has with cars should be resolved with enforcement but that is something nobody seems to be eager to address so instead we’re going to have to get used to paying for it in other ways.
I mean, yeh, enforcement is a problem. Ever since Covid slowed traffic stops and whatnot, presumably in an effort to keep first responders from interacting with a contagious person, and then the George Floyd protests, there's been a massive slowdown in policing. But I'm really conflicted about traffic stops - and I'm sure many people are. Maybe we need to update our laws to allow for automated ticketing and whatnot - make it harder to challenge in court. Stop from pulling people over for traffic stops and rather issue mailed tickets - that we somehow make more difficult to challenge in court. It would be safer for offenders and officers.
This pre-dates our current crisis, but I feel like it addresses a lot of concerns we all have: [https://jalopnik.com/the-case-for-ending-all-traffic-stops-1843925565](https://jalopnik.com/the-case-for-ending-all-traffic-stops-1843925565)
None of what I said up there really addresses unregistered vehicles, which are a different animal.
There are functional examples of bus systems with dedicated infrastructure; we could build brt similar to Bogota that functions exceptionally well for a fraction of similar rail network
The difference is only about 15% - brt is cheap when it uses existing infrastructure with minimum changes - which leads to problems with interference to operations from cars.
Busses are the best possible solution to transit because all it takes to create a dedicated bus lane is paint. It takes a fuckton more money to build out a rail line.
Apparently you missed the part where paint does all of jack shit to dissuade people from using the lane.
If you don’t enforce traffic laws then you need to put barriers to vehicles.
We don't need to make this solution harder than it needs to be. You don't replace your entire kitchen because you have a leaky sink.
Paint dissuades most people. For everyone else, cameras and high fines. That seems to work just fine to keep our HOV lanes functional and it works just fine for plenty of other countries, too.
Everything can be made better.
Why should 10+ mile commutes be prioritized when the funding and effort to improve them could be spent on anything else?
TBH, the existence of the Tech Center irritates me. It makes that whole hub and spoke thing pretty much useless. Why does that need to exist? It makes half the metro area unlivable for anyone who works there. Just put offices downtown - where most people are going anyway.
> Why does that need to exist?
Short answer: eccentric wealth and racism. George Mackenzie Wallace was pissed when "some goddamn [ethnic slur] left a scratch in [his] shiny new black Lincoln sedan", bought up 40 acres and established the Denver Tech Center as a deliberately commuting-oriented office park in unincorporated Arapahoe county.
Eventually it was annexed by Greenwood Village so that they could siphon taxes from the commercial businesses.
When Denver sought to annex part of the DTC area, Greenwood Village likened the proposal to Hitler's annexation of Poland. The incident contributed to the passing of the [Poundstone Amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundstone_Amendment) to the state constitution whose existence primarily owes itself to Denver's mandatory busing.
Sounds simple. I can uproot my kid in her senior year of high school. I can get rid of my 2.5% mortgage interest rate. And I'm sure I could buy a similar house closet to downtown Denver, with good schools, at around the same as what I can sell my current house in the burbs for. And, clearly I will never get a different job in a different location, so nothing to worry about there.
And I'm a priveleged person. Can you imagine if I had housing assistance? Or needed a daycare that took state assistance? Or any other myriad things that cause people to not be able to just "move closer to work."
DRCOG is just labeling everything "multimodal" now to get around this. Widening Pena is "multimodal" because the project bundles in a random trail construction to the middle of nowhere. So, some work still to do to get this policy fully buttoned up.
As a Minnesotan I really hope we jump on this train. I admire your state from afar and would consider moving there, but I have hopes for my state yet :]
> This policy shift in Colorado is seen as a "gold standard"
Of course. Stop new projects, funnel tax money into cronies pockets to get that sweet "mass transit" implemented... never get the mass transit implemented.
What's not to like if you're a politician or friends with one.
Ok…but where is the actual infrastructure to replace that. I was carless for a month and without uber i was going to be screwed. The buses are inconsistent and have really long routes. Metro only takes you to certain destinations. And don’t even try and travel outside the metro area
Yep I’m in Westminster, so is my office. It’s 6 miles away and it would take transit 90 minutes to get me to work, and google maps has me budget 70 minutes of that to be walking. I can drive in less than 15 and bike in 30, but it should also be noted that to get there in 30 on a bike I have to go down some dangerous roads.
I think a combination of bike and transit is ideal for this reason; buses & trains can get you through major arteries, and bikes are perfect for the last 1-3 miles. But that only works if we invest in infrastructure that actually protects people on bicycles, not just a white line painted on the side of the road. And we also need to have capacity for more than 2 bikes per bus rack.
Westminster is a whole new level of bad... Wadsworth for example in one section near rocky mountain metropolitan airport literally is a 55 mph highway with no sidewalk or bike lane. You just can't even pass it, so it's impossible to walk between some areas.
To start, we can clear the bike lanes! (We do here in Boulder.) But our snowfall definitely isn't consistent. Along the Front Range, we might get 10 or so actual snowstorms each year, but a day or two later the sun's come out and melted it off the tarmac. If you want to bike through those days, you can get snow/studded tires for your bike just like you do for your car. Either way, it's a far cry from the kind of snow you get out East (that never really melts until April).
The last 14. Snow is not the main barrier to biking in this city. It's only a few days per winter I need to take the bus to work instead of biking. And with 38% of workers in Colorado work from home at least one day a week already, that's an option too.
[The B Line, also referred to as the Northwest Rail Line, is part of RTD’s 2004 voter-approved FasTracks plan to expand transit across the Denver metro region. The proposed 41-mile diesel commuter rail corridor would operate between Denver’s Union Station and Longmont, passing through north Denver, Adams County, Westminster, Broomfield, Louisville, Boulder, and Boulder County. The line's seven proposed stations are Westminster (completed July 25, 2016), Church Ranch, Flatiron, Louisville, Boulder Transit Village, Gunbarrel, and downtown Longmont.](https://www.rtd-denver.com/open-records/reports-and-policies/facts-and-figures/b-line)
So it’s been 20 years and only one stop has happened.
Maybe in 30 years another stop will be added?
I mean, it quite literally does. That’s why people value transparency, because it allows the public to mount pressure on politicians. That’s, kinda how a democracy works.
You think the interstates were built based on nothing?
I’ve been carless since 2019. You can make Denver work, barely, without a car, but it’s a huge pain. I’m glad these days that I have an entirely WFH situation and a very flexible work schedule. I feel for anyone who has to regularly rely on RTD to make it anywhere on time.
RTD can be made to work. And for a ciry our size in the US it’s a better than average system. But it unreliable in the best of circumstances and wholly inadequate for most the metro area.
It depends on where you live and work.
I chose to live in south boulder and work out of downtown Denver every day. About a 60 mile round trip. I had to walk about 3 blocks a day to/from stops, new buses every 7 minutes during rush hour, a typical bus ride was 30 minutes, and the companies I worked for always paid for my annual pass.
You can't get any better than that. Now, that's an amazing route, but they exist - especially if locality to a great stop is part of your home & job selection process. Like it should be.
I think a major issue is land use. We separated all of our destinations from where we live to the point where we have to go many miles to meet our basic needs
Cool, now finally build the light rail line up to Boulder please. We already voted and paid for it. Or were you not *that* serious about all this after all?
You didn't fully pay for it. Boulder county has funded $275 million since 2005. The project cost is $1.5 billion, with a B. You've funded less than 20% of it.
That money has also gone to increase Flatiron Flyer service and increase bus connectivity to FF and raise service levels in town.
The initial plans for the B-line called for trains once an hour (with a couple extra trips in the morning and evening rush hours). The bulk of Boulder to Denver traffic was always planned to be carried by the pseudo-BRT on US-36. The trains were always going to supplemental to the FF primarily during rush hours. And Boulder got most of what was promised, a service that carries 3.5 million riders annually.
So what we got was 90% of what was promised as far as service levels and speed were concerned. But most people in Boulder never read the full plans, and saw train and now want the train that was promised. Monkey brain see train; love train. Monkey brain see faster more frequent service but bus; hate bus.
Yeah, people have a real stigma against buses even though they are better 90% of the time. The only time a tram is better is if you already have the ridership to justify the massive increase in infrastructure costs to replace a bus.
The FF is vastly better and cheaper than a trail will be:
* Can pick people up at multiple locations from downtown Boulder, down Broadway, then across table mesa before hitting 36. Then on 36 it makes one more stop at McCaslin.
* New buses came every 7 minutes until covid.
* Buses ran about 2x the speed of the lightline going from Union Station to Golden.
No comparison - the FF bus line beat the pants off a train.
Busses are great in theory, but in practice they suck. They're unreliable and the schedules are useless. Last time I tried taking a bus to the airport I waited over 30 minutes before I gave up and drove. The line was supposed to run every 15 but I never saw it.
You there's nothing inherently more unreliable about buses than trams, right? RTD tends to prioritize tram reliability over bus reliability, but they could also decide to make buses just as reliable.
Busses use the same roads as cars and get stuck in traffic and accidents just like cars. How do you prioritize that?
Anytime I've ridden the train it's been exactly on time or even a minute early.
Ok, well it’s been 20 years and still hardly any progress, and that’s a hell of a lot of money for nothing. Not even to factor in how inflation balloons projected costs. So let’s not pretend that the only issue is funding.
You didn't get nothing. You got a vastly improved BRT system that, when fully staffed, made transit between Boulder and Denver faster than the train ever would have been.
Maybe if Boulderites actually voted to increase the density of the city so there would be a greater demand for transit, it would make sense to spend the money for a dedicated rail line vs a bus line. The bus line works just fine.
I'm not pretending that. It's just really dumb everyone says "reeeee we paid for it!" And that's far from the truth. Even the original projected cost was in the $700m range so it's not even near the original proposed price.
We're you even around before they expanded the bus service? It was dog shit compared to today. Even the commute on 36 was straight trash back to Denver. Boulder used to pride themselves on how difficult it was to commute there. It's miles better now
Sorry I didn't intend to come off offensive. I grew up in Boulder and went to high school and graduated college in the early 00s. It was always a joke how Boulder was cool because how inaccessible it was. It was always just a touch out of reach for people so it had a unique feel that it's lost honestly.
People move here and get upset public transit isn't great but it's 200% better than it used to be and I'm happy to pay taxes for that.
Transit here still sucks and article is putting quite a spin on lazy policy. They mention “redirecting” $100M to transit but that wouldn’t have been enough money to widen any highway anyways.
Dude, you can't compare the USA to the Swiss. That's like comparing your average high school track runner to Usain Bolt. lol
The thing is that Europe has the advantage that their cities are a lot more dense so the economics of public transit make more sense. That's why the latest law to zone high density along transit corridors is so important. It starts a virtuous cycle.
The Strong Towns research has found that car dependency is a money pit. Cities with massive sprawling suburbs typically don't make enough tax revenue to cover the long-term costs of suburban sprawl infrastructure unless the people living there are very wealthy. Many suburbs have a negative revenue-to-obligation ratio.
It works when tax revenues increase because there's a housing shortage driving up prices (even though your citizens will also push you to lower their property taxes), but that shortage is largely due to demographics. In \~20 years when more than half of the boomers are dead or in retirement homes, housing prices and tax revenues are going to shit the bed.
The cities that will survive this change are going to be the ones that encourage this virtuous cycle as much as possible because they are maximizing development on high-value land and projects that have high revenue-to-obligation ratios.
It felt like the i25 expansion to CO Springs took a decade. I have very little faith in plans to implement effective mass transit beyond the metro/light rail anytime in the next 20 years.
If our politicians actually acted on this, it could be brilliant. However, we’ll continue to do what we do best as Americans. When the public finally demands results, the state will outsource the project to a company that *gasp* is actually greedy and uses the contract money to provide subpar service while pocketing the rest.
The state needs a unified, organized, and committed department to fulfill these ambitious goals. Otherwise, it’s just talk. Like everything is these days. All talk no action.
Love the sentiment, but RTD hasn't given me any confidence that throwing money at them will make them usable. Doesn't help that the bus doesn't run late and frequently enough for the only reasons I'd use it: going to concerts and to and from the airport.
We do but where is the giant mass transit development project that would be equal to widening I-25 through Denver? It just sounds like they decided to do nothing and are out of ideas.
Federal BRT and Colfax BRT could help a lot, as could running the light rail much more often, which is more of a possibility now that we’re building more housing nearby.
And also to do it right. Colfax BRT is putting on a significant road diet, center-running the buses to minimize conflict with cars and increase bus speeds, and pedestrianizing the fuck of the area. They should do that for all of Denver’s BRTs.
Also city council needs to get cracking on the transit-oriented upzoning required by HB 24-1313. That will make these corridors a lot more usable and support more frequent bus headways, which are crucial for making them work.
Reducing emissions by 90% in a state where [97.50%](https://www.ppacg.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Chap12-Freight.pdf)of the state relies on semi trucks is a bold plan.
The current means of transportation are the results of past infrastructure spending decisions. The future means of transportation will be determined by our current infrastructure spending decisions. We don't have to keep making the same mistakes. If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
I’m up in Fort Collins which is pretty bike friendly; I’ve been a daily cyclist for about 8 years now. Other cities could learn a lot from us on how to build out cycling infrastructure. I think of places like LA that used to have dedicated bike highways that would take you from the suburbs to downtown. Pair those with an e-bike and it’d be so easy to get around.
Speaking as someone who's now living car-free, it's crazy now much I used to drive when I had a car. I'd use it for 3-minute errands to pick up stuff I could carry in my pocket. When you have a car available, it's your default mode of transportation and you don't think about whether that makes sense or not.
It wasn't until I sold my car that I realized I didn't actually need one for 90% of my trips. (When I do, I rent a CarShare.) Creating protected bike infrastructure is absolutely necessary, but we also need to work on shifting people's mindset around transportation. Most people view bikes as recreational toys, when they're actually incredibly functional.
The problem with the light rail is public perception. Many women don’t feel safe on it for example. The trains are operating at less than 20% capacity most of the time.
Are they going to have at least 3 lanes between Fort Collins and Denver? It already is other than a small stretch a few miles north of the Hwy 119 - Longmont exit. That 2 lane choke point on an otherwise 3 lane interstate is a nightmare.
Governor Lamm had the same idea. He thought if we didn’t build them, no one would move here. He was wrong. And that’s why the C/E 470 loop is 15 miles too far out.
In other words, continue to let the highways go to shit so that we can all ride a train or bus with the local area meth head. If you haven’t used public transport lately, it’s a coin flip whether you’ll have a safe ride.
Honestly the best way to cut down on emissions is to start incentivizing people to live closer to where they work. So many people in this state commute 30 miles or more for work and that’s just not sustainable without rapid transit.
The best way to incentivize people to live closer to where they work is to rethink how we design communities. Isolating most housing away from jobs and services means that most people *can't* live where they work. Until there are jobs where the housing is or more housing where the jobs are, living near work is a privilege available mostly to the wealthiest folks, not a choice that can simply be incentivized.
We're decades into this experiment where business, retail, and housing are all segregated from one another, and the way we've developed the Front Range (and the entire U.S., really) will be slow to change, if it ever does. In the meantime we need better mass transit to give the people who are *forced* to live in un-walkable housing in suburban/exurban manicured lawn HOA hellscapes and middle-of-nowhere apartment mega-complexes better ways to get to the jobs and groceries and other things they need to access.
Yep, and what’s sad is thanks to shitheads online, 50% of this country believes that a 15 minute city is an open air prison. But we need more 15 minute cities or 15 minute communities to help reduce emissions.
What will the impact to commute times be from this policy and when? Will a large portion of people in the extended Denver metro area suddenly stop driving to use this yet to be developed transportation? Think about yourself, would you today get on public transportation to go to the museum, out to eat or a hike? What would need to be in place for you to do this? What do your answers say about our leaders and policies?
Transit would have to be frequent, on time, fast, safe, convenient, easy to use. Right now it is none of those things. To pick my kid up from school would take 52 minutes (20 minutes by car) and the bus runs at an inconvenient time so I’d sit there and wait for 30 minutes. To get from school to her after school activities would be an hour and 45 minutes (40 minutes by car) so she’d miss an hour of school or her activities. It’s unworkable.
I have been to cities with working public transit (NYC, much of Europe) and their transit systems are easy to navigate, frequent, and drop you right where you need to be. That’s what Denver should shoot for.
CDOT is rolling out Bus Rapid Transit projects on Federal and Colorado. When these are done, fast and frequent bus service will connect our train stations while being faster than car travel. It's already very doable to be car free in Denver's core neighborhoods. We just need to keep expanding the BRT network and continue upzoning to allow for dense housing along all high quality transit corridors and hubs. More people should be able to live closer to transit options and their jobs. When you have a 3-5 mile commute, walking, biking, or taking the bus are pretty attractive options.
Which is a damn shame! We should push CDOT to stop watering down its own projects. They are dragging their feet on change, but at least they are changing.
I’m all for this, but it would’ve been nice for them to at least finish 470 on the west side of town where it drops to 2 lanes for a few miles while the rest of the road is 2+ 1 toll lane. We have no good public transit options out here and I doubt they’ll do anything viable to remedy that. Get us a damn light rail out here!
Agree, we should at least finish the highways we started. Denver has 7/8 of a loop, and the last 1/8 we're just gonna leave blank? And don't even get me started on Santa Fe and Hampden being half highway/half surface street which is a super dangerous combo. Just finish them.
The Jefferson Parkway was supposed to connect the Northwest Parkway to Highway 93, but Broomfield pulled out due to a single radioactive reading. Arvada and JeffCo still support it, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of movement.
But even still, the Parkway would only connect from Highway 128/Interloken to Highway 93/58th Ave. Which means that there would be 3 miles of surface street between the highways in Broomfield and the loop around Denver still wouldn't be complete. Plus, it would push more traffic onto Highway 93, which is already overtaxed with traffic. Given these restrictions, who in their right mind would pay a toll to take this road when it wouldn't be that much slower to use existing roads? The only way it makes sense is to have a full freeway or expressway to I-70.
Is it even possible to finish the 470 loop at this point? The entire missing section through Arvada is full of parks or relatively new development, there's not really a corridor for it
You do realize that 65%+ of Denver's workforce doesn't live in the city right? It was designed to have suburbs from the onset. Almost all of the housing being built right now is 10+ miles outside the city. Without highspeed rail, more trains and a shit ton more protections for riders, this plan is doomed to fail. It takes me 30 mins to drive into the city in traffic. Taking the light rail would be over an hour all-in.
If we take money that was going to be used for highway expansion and instead put it into mass transit and also legalize infill housing that makes transit work better, then the light-rail trip will take a lot less time.
Oh god. Colorado is going to be worse off with zero HWY changes. When i lived in Longmont we all voted for RTD to take our taxes and expand. What they did was expand south RTD and lightrails but never north.
And now transit is mostly empty. In 2019 before the pandemic, stations were packed solid by 8:30 am. Now, during the day, there are hundreds of open spots.
Adding the fact that they “could find it in the budget” to do the free July and August this year, and it seems like this “plan” is backfiring
I think a high speed rail up and down i-25 from Fort Collins to the springs would be a great long term goal. The tricky part is going to be anything in the mountains as someone that lives in Grand Junction public transit is not utilitied at all out here. The Roaring fork valley (Glenwood Aspen area) has a good bus system or at least used to when I lived up there. But the mountains and tight corridors make it really hard to think of any way to build in public transport. And back to the western slope with the oil and gas industry that used to dominate here it’s going to be near impossible to change peoples view on using public transit.
As someone who used a lot of public transit in Denver, I am honestly surprised. This is gonna end poorly, no body- passengers, cops or even the employees take transit seriously. They run late almost every single stop , routes change often without a reason, and worse of all so much vandalism and crime.
Hopefully things will change, I’d love a world where mass transit is reliable, but I know this is nothing. We need stronger audits else we are all gonna suffer and someone (you know who) is gonna get very Rich
summary by poe- Here is a summary of the key points from the article: - Colorado has taken a bold new approach to transportation policy, focused on reducing highway expansion and investing more in transit instead. This shift was driven by the state's goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% in 30 years. - In 2021, Colorado passed a rule requiring the state transportation agency and regional planning bodies to demonstrate how new projects, including highway expansions, will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If they cannot, they risk losing funding. - Within a year of this rule, Colorado canceled two major highway expansion projects, including widening Interstate 25 through Denver, and reallocated $100 million to transit projects. A regional planning body in Denver also shifted $900 million from highway expansions to transit and multimodal projects. - This policy shift in Colorado is seen as a "gold standard" for how states can address transportation's contribution to climate change. Other states like Minnesota and Maryland are now considering similar approaches. - The article highlights the long-standing fight against highway expansions, as activists argue they worsen air pollution and disproportionately impact minority communities. It also explains the concept of "induced demand" - how expanding highways leads to more driving and emissions. In summary, Colorado has implemented a pioneering policy to deprioritize highway expansion in favor of transit and emissions reduction, setting an example for other states to follow in addressing the transportation sector's climate impacts.
This feels more like marketing than reality. Would’ve been nice to see a japan-level high speed transit line go up along i70 out to the mountains, but instead they filled that space with, of all things, a fucking toll lane.
I dont know how many times I have to say this on this subreddit, **high speed rail cannot run along US interstate medians because the turns are too sharp and the elevation gains are too steep**. The turns will make you sick at more than 90mph, and trains have much more restrictive limitations when it comes to inclines because steel on steel slips much more easily. I am all for public transit, and would love to take a train to ski instead of drive. But everyone needs to understand it's not that simple, and we need to put in a lot more work to make public transit effective. We can do it, but we cant just put a train down the middle of a highway.
You’re 100% right, and that’s why CDOT is in the very early stages of planning a standard speed rail line out through the Rockies to the Steamboat or Craig area. It’ll run at the same speed on the same tracks as the Amtrak Zephyr but have more stops and leave from Denver. Link for proof! I’m cautiously optimistic about transit in CO over the next two decades. https://www.codot.gov/news/2023/october/cdot-exploring-mountain-rail-line-expanded-transit-statewide
Honest curiosity -- trains like the "ski train" to Winter Park and others do exist using more gentle-sloped routes. What's limiting the significant expansion of these lines and other freight lines like them?
Private ownership. Railroads defend their rights of way with a zealous fervor. Amtrak and the Ski Train have track rights in the Union Pacific railroad but are at a lower priority than the commercial rail traffic.
Could you speak to the potential cost of altering the track priority rights if that’s even possible? I only ask because the state seems to be willing to spend a lot to make it happen and it maybe would be a good project. Since you sound like you know about trains, how difficult would you say it would be to have a line going from Winter Park to Kremmling and then build tracks up the Blue River to reach Summit Co.?
Change to this would probably have to happen at the federal level, like nationalizing the railways or seizing land through eminent domain or something. (So probably won’t ever happen). In our rush to settle the West, railway companies were given way too much power and they really don’t want or care to give any of it back.
Won't ever happen. Railroad right-of-way rights go back to the Western Expansion. My experience working with railroads goes back to the 2000s when I was involved in siting electric transmission lines. I would prefer going up against The Nature Conservancy and Green Peace rather than Union Pacific or BNSF.
By law, Amtrak already must be given priority over freight. See https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/HostRailroadReports/mythbusters-enforcing-amtraks-legal-right-to-preference.pdf. It is just that it has been essentially unenforced. The Biden administration has started enforcing it though.
https://www.solutionaryrail.org/
https://www.solutionaryrail.org/
It may be worthwhile to look at maglev for any of the routes through the mountains unless the power draw is far more than what could be supported.
If standard HSR can't cope with with turns and elevation changes in the mountains without running mostly underground due to speed, what makes you think a faster system would be a better solution? Not to mention, maglev is almost totally economically unjustifiable even on flat land. China explored the idea for their rail network and nixed it very early on, Japan is only able to justify one because of the incredible transit commuter traffic that already exists every single day at all hours between Tokyo and Osaka. Proposing a maglev line for *recreational use* is completely laughable.
My commentary wasn’t around HSR, it was about defeating friction which was the primary concern stated by the post I responded to. HSR likely won’t be feasible based on commentary found within the thread - which as a layman I do agree with.
Or just build next to the preexisting lines if its practical
The reality is that there isn't an appetite to pay the taxes to fund a project like that. We've had decades of politicians who believe taxes can only go down. We're reaping the rewards. Current transportation funding mechanisms can barely pay for maintenance, much less expansion. Personally i think the gas tax should be roughly doubled. 1/3 of it goes towards maintenance and safety improvements which have been deferred for decades. The remainder goes towards transit expansion.
Its not the politicians, its the people. Coloradans refuse to vote for funding.
Lots of that too. People need a mindset change. Americans would rather take home a little more money and be able to afford that expensive new car, instead of funding transit and relying on that car a lot less. Current funding mechanism is a bit broken too. We pay for a lot of our transportation system with license plate fees and keep gas taxes very low. So out of state traffic gets a free ride... We could raise gas taxes and lower license fees to keep it revenue neutral for residents and the state would get more money since out of state traffic would be paying their fair share.
I’d bet the costs over just a couple years of passes and getting up to the slopes would pay taxes for a few years to fund such a project, but not many people are willing to pay for something they won’t tangibly see for more than a few years.
High speed rail from Denver to summit county would be one of the largest infrastructure projects in the history of the US. It would take decades to pay off even with high ridership
We refuse to raise taxes or address TABOR. People in this state confuse me a lot of the time
If we didn't have tabor, wouldn't we have at least 1B to spend towards some better transit/ transport options? I'd rather that than an extra $750 in my pocket.
What evidence can you provide to suggest TABOR refunds would be diverted to building out our transit system? There are already TABOR carve-outs our legislature employs every session to redirect budget surpluses. Transit doesn't rank when there are so many pet projects and voter blocks angling for a hand-out. BTW...transit costs billions; TABOR surpluses run in the millions.
I have no evidence for how it’d be allocated. But my tabor checks have always been $750. Colorados population is 5.8M, so even if we assume only half are getting TABOR, that’s still almost 2B 🤷♂️
NIMBYs happy to vote against taxes or housing expansion to artificially inflate their property values, yet the ceiling is only so high on your home’s value out here if we can’t build the right infrastructure to keep it a good place to live and commute for everybody. But sure, let’s throw in another twenty toll roads.
We tried. Voters rejected it.
I have to wonder how it was presented to them. Old town Arvada to Winter Park in eight minutes would be mind blowing.
I voted against the train to winter park because I live in Boulder county and they still haven't built the B line we voted for in 2004 and have been taxed for ever since. Current state for the B line is " when finding is available" aka never. because they took the tax dollars we have contributed and built the line to DIA instead. Fuck the RTD. I vote against any proposal they put forward. Liars.
I don’t understand why people think that privatizing public services actually gets better service. They are just as inefficient as government AND want a lot of profit on top of it!
The tax dollars are still in a savings account. BSNF was going to charge them upwards of 500 million for the track use which was crazy. Those funds will get rolled into the front range passenger rail to build out that segment to Boulder
There is $194 million in the entire Fast Tracks fund for all the uncompleted lines. Which RTD is going to use to make up a budget shortfall of $166 million. They will never ever build it. It was a lie to get Broomfield and Boulder counties to vote for FastTracks, nothing more.
You can Google it — I70 corridor monorail. It was expensive and not packaged/marketed well to population who think TABOR is a good idea.
I'm not arguing your point, just that the problem is Summit County's geography. There are no good paths to put a train into the Dillon area without coming from the Kremmling area to the north. Summit County is basically a horseshoe shaped area. There are a lot of twists and turns just to get to Georgetown (up US-6 from Golden), then up and through the Eisenhower/Johnson Tunnel area would be a massive (read expensive) endeavor. Then getting over to the Vail area might not be as difficult as I-70 isn't that badly laid out and could probably handle a railroad grade without a lot of engineering. But there are ecological concerns that environmentalists would fight along the way. There is already a railroad line that goes to Kremmling, but again, it's not a straight shot from Denver. Unless we wanted to something like a narrow gauge line, like they have in Switzerland, standard gauge is limited to where it can go. Also, there is a line that goes to I-70/US-24 just west of Vail. That line is mostly out of service. And neither path is suitable for high-speed. Plus the corporation that owns those lines does not give priority to passenger service, even though they're supposed to by law, as their trains are too long. I don't have a modern solution but to re-utilize the existing railroad grades. There isn't a good candidate path from Denver to the Dillon area without a very large expense.
We went to the god damn moon. For fun.
There are no topological constraints between here and the moon. It's apples and swingsets.
"For fun" No we were getting smoked by Russians in early aerospace. The moon was a "well you beat us on everything else, but we'll get to the moon first you commie bastards!"
There's the path of the old DSP&P High Line that used to run from Como to Breckenridge (and all the way on to Leadville). Certainly wouldn't be easy, but the region used to have at least narrow gauge service to Denver at one point.
Strontia Spring dam in Waterton Canyon is in the way. Getting to Como at this point would need a new way up. Basically followed the North Fork of the South Platte River to Kenosha Pass and then over to Como. Also a narrow gauge line. The line after leaving Como went to Nathrop, up to St. Elmo, through the Alpine Tunnel, past the Palisades and then to Gunnison. Fun fact, the DSP&P line went down Platte Canyon Road in Littleton.
You’ve got to be joking. High speed rail lines are incredibly straight and flat. That’s like the opposite of i70.
Sure thing bro. Weve got a space station and billionaires with space planes as pet projects, but a train that goes up? Thats just beyond our species.
Oh it’s possible but we’ll blow the state budget on barf bags and zofran
I get that everybody wants a ski train and there's jobs up there but it seems like a silly first-build. Why not a CoS - Golden - Boulder line instead?
> japan-level high speed transit line go up along i70 out to the mountains lol this isn’t how high speed trains work
You don’t get that kind of infrastructure overnight. There’s no one single step that gets us where we need to be, just lots and lots of important little steps. These are some of them. Now we have to capitalize on the opportunity to take them further
They canceled widening I-25 through Denver? And reallocated $100M to transit projects? Where's the rest of the probably $900M it would have taken to widen I-25 through Denver? I'm a person who fully believes in the effects of induced demand, but transit needs to be better. If you live north of Denver and work in the Tech Center, the options are to spend 1.5 hours (or more) on a bus then train or drive and have it take an hour (there used to be a bus directly from Boulder/Broomfield, that also took about an hour). People will choose the option that takes less time, always. And it's not like RTD or CDOT can do a whole lot to expand service because, newsflash, no one anywhere on the planet wants to drive a bus! I'm all for climate goals and whatnot and I'm a HUGE supporter of transit, but we need to be smarter about this. We need to clean up the system we have (looking at you, West Rail). We need to look at the TIME investment involved (there was an article posted here the other day about "is it faster to take the train to the airport" - that's an important question). We need a real hub and spoke system in the metro. We need people to stop prioritizing trains over buses (the capital outlay is huge, they are not nimble so they can't change alignment as the population moves around). We need to figure out how to keep drivers safe and comfortable (split shifts do NOT help). We need to figure out how to serve both the commuting population and local population. We need to give RTD and other transit authorities the power to build alignments that make sense and prioritize RIDERS rather than other stakeholders (looking at you 20 minute U through the Aurora City Center that was completely unnecessary - and has resulted in at least two derailments). All of these are things RTD struggles with.
As someone who has spent far too many years in a bus centric city (Seattle) - busses are the worst possible solution to transit. Grade separation is mandatory for a functioning transit system otherwise you end up getting stuck in the same damn traffic as the cars. You can’t say dedicated bus lanes because if they aren’t physically separated they get clogged with cars too because enforcement will invariably be non-existent. Busses sound good until you’re stuck on a packed one not going anywhere for an hour or more even though you’re in a dedicated bus lane - that is now a daily occurrence in Seattle. The light rail on the other hand runs consistently and is dependable. The cost difference between building physically isolated bus routes and light rail isn’t great enough to go with busses most of the time. Busses save money when you compromise on usability.
Alright here me out; what if we put a big-ass plow on the front of each bus? 👀
>big ass plow I’m listening…
Oh man do I want a chance to drive that
https://youtu.be/WK6NBsWOi7A
Busses are the best transitionary solution - since you don't have to wait 20-30 years to build a massive rail network. And then even with comprehensive train networks they can still be very valuable since: * They can run on your existing paved infrastructure * They can support both local-serving & express modes without requiring additional expensive rail architecture * They can deliver people far closer to their homes & work that trains can Now, that doesn't mean that you don't have edge issues with buses - like people illegally driving in a HOV lane. But that's not a problem with buses, it's a problem with a city that refuses to enforce laws. Take that up with them.
Agreed. I was thinking more from the commuting perspective. I take the 120X a lot and it's quite nice. But on surface streets and whatnot, yes, I can see that it would be terrible. But I don't think we can do the tunneling on the scale that Seattle has done - at least not with the budgets we have!! And if you're in urban areas, the train will be subject to the same issues as a bus (as in downtown Denver). Trying to elevate everything or bury everything would be so expensive.
Either you have to separate transit or you have to increase enforcement. We can’t even get people to register their cars - trying to get people to pay traffic fines is a nightmare. Either they challenge it in court and they get tossed (goodbye automated enforcement like Europe) or they simply ignore them. The answer to most of the problems Colorado has with cars should be resolved with enforcement but that is something nobody seems to be eager to address so instead we’re going to have to get used to paying for it in other ways.
I mean, yeh, enforcement is a problem. Ever since Covid slowed traffic stops and whatnot, presumably in an effort to keep first responders from interacting with a contagious person, and then the George Floyd protests, there's been a massive slowdown in policing. But I'm really conflicted about traffic stops - and I'm sure many people are. Maybe we need to update our laws to allow for automated ticketing and whatnot - make it harder to challenge in court. Stop from pulling people over for traffic stops and rather issue mailed tickets - that we somehow make more difficult to challenge in court. It would be safer for offenders and officers. This pre-dates our current crisis, but I feel like it addresses a lot of concerns we all have: [https://jalopnik.com/the-case-for-ending-all-traffic-stops-1843925565](https://jalopnik.com/the-case-for-ending-all-traffic-stops-1843925565) None of what I said up there really addresses unregistered vehicles, which are a different animal.
You know that enforcement can pay for itself because it's revenue-generating.
There are functional examples of bus systems with dedicated infrastructure; we could build brt similar to Bogota that functions exceptionally well for a fraction of similar rail network
The difference is only about 15% - brt is cheap when it uses existing infrastructure with minimum changes - which leads to problems with interference to operations from cars.
Busses are the best possible solution to transit because all it takes to create a dedicated bus lane is paint. It takes a fuckton more money to build out a rail line.
Apparently you missed the part where paint does all of jack shit to dissuade people from using the lane. If you don’t enforce traffic laws then you need to put barriers to vehicles.
We don't need to make this solution harder than it needs to be. You don't replace your entire kitchen because you have a leaky sink. Paint dissuades most people. For everyone else, cameras and high fines. That seems to work just fine to keep our HOV lanes functional and it works just fine for plenty of other countries, too.
Well this state and municipalities like Denver have decided against enforcement so that really only leaves one option.
Living in North Denver and going to the Tech Center would be a nightmare.
Yeah. That's a fuckin lifestyle choice.
You're not wrong. But there are ways it could be made better.
Everything can be made better. Why should 10+ mile commutes be prioritized when the funding and effort to improve them could be spent on anything else?
TBH, the existence of the Tech Center irritates me. It makes that whole hub and spoke thing pretty much useless. Why does that need to exist? It makes half the metro area unlivable for anyone who works there. Just put offices downtown - where most people are going anyway.
> Why does that need to exist? Short answer: eccentric wealth and racism. George Mackenzie Wallace was pissed when "some goddamn [ethnic slur] left a scratch in [his] shiny new black Lincoln sedan", bought up 40 acres and established the Denver Tech Center as a deliberately commuting-oriented office park in unincorporated Arapahoe county. Eventually it was annexed by Greenwood Village so that they could siphon taxes from the commercial businesses. When Denver sought to annex part of the DTC area, Greenwood Village likened the proposal to Hitler's annexation of Poland. The incident contributed to the passing of the [Poundstone Amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundstone_Amendment) to the state constitution whose existence primarily owes itself to Denver's mandatory busing.
Wow, thank you. I didn't expect to actually learn the answer.
Need to move closer to work.
Sounds simple. I can uproot my kid in her senior year of high school. I can get rid of my 2.5% mortgage interest rate. And I'm sure I could buy a similar house closet to downtown Denver, with good schools, at around the same as what I can sell my current house in the burbs for. And, clearly I will never get a different job in a different location, so nothing to worry about there. And I'm a priveleged person. Can you imagine if I had housing assistance? Or needed a daycare that took state assistance? Or any other myriad things that cause people to not be able to just "move closer to work."
DRCOG is just labeling everything "multimodal" now to get around this. Widening Pena is "multimodal" because the project bundles in a random trail construction to the middle of nowhere. So, some work still to do to get this policy fully buttoned up.
As a Minnesotan I really hope we jump on this train. I admire your state from afar and would consider moving there, but I have hopes for my state yet :]
> This policy shift in Colorado is seen as a "gold standard" Of course. Stop new projects, funnel tax money into cronies pockets to get that sweet "mass transit" implemented... never get the mass transit implemented. What's not to like if you're a politician or friends with one.
Ok…but where is the actual infrastructure to replace that. I was carless for a month and without uber i was going to be screwed. The buses are inconsistent and have really long routes. Metro only takes you to certain destinations. And don’t even try and travel outside the metro area
Yep I’m in Westminster, so is my office. It’s 6 miles away and it would take transit 90 minutes to get me to work, and google maps has me budget 70 minutes of that to be walking. I can drive in less than 15 and bike in 30, but it should also be noted that to get there in 30 on a bike I have to go down some dangerous roads.
I think a combination of bike and transit is ideal for this reason; buses & trains can get you through major arteries, and bikes are perfect for the last 1-3 miles. But that only works if we invest in infrastructure that actually protects people on bicycles, not just a white line painted on the side of the road. And we also need to have capacity for more than 2 bikes per bus rack.
I love how they have been taking what was previously the road shoulder, adding a little painted bike, then calling that a bike lane.
What, you mean you don't trust drivers going 60mph while staring at their phones to not drift over the line?
Westminster is a whole new level of bad... Wadsworth for example in one section near rocky mountain metropolitan airport literally is a 55 mph highway with no sidewalk or bike lane. You just can't even pass it, so it's impossible to walk between some areas.
But how does that work with consistent snow fall 6 months a year and bike lanes never cleared?
To start, we can clear the bike lanes! (We do here in Boulder.) But our snowfall definitely isn't consistent. Along the Front Range, we might get 10 or so actual snowstorms each year, but a day or two later the sun's come out and melted it off the tarmac. If you want to bike through those days, you can get snow/studded tires for your bike just like you do for your car. Either way, it's a far cry from the kind of snow you get out East (that never really melts until April).
LMAO. It snows in Denver like 15 days a year. And it mostly melts by noon. Calmate.
Have you lived in Denver the last two winters?
The last 14. Snow is not the main barrier to biking in this city. It's only a few days per winter I need to take the bus to work instead of biking. And with 38% of workers in Colorado work from home at least one day a week already, that's an option too.
I also bike in the winter and where I am the only time I don't bike is when its actively snowing.
Westminster is AWFUL for bikes. I was appalled when I started a new job there
That’s the whole point. To invest in transit and light rail vs widening highways everywhere
Yes lets see them! They have been talking about a front range railroad or lightrail for years. Nothing yet :/
They literally just announced expansion plans this past week….. of the rail system It’s moving, it takes time, but it’s happening
[The B Line, also referred to as the Northwest Rail Line, is part of RTD’s 2004 voter-approved FasTracks plan to expand transit across the Denver metro region. The proposed 41-mile diesel commuter rail corridor would operate between Denver’s Union Station and Longmont, passing through north Denver, Adams County, Westminster, Broomfield, Louisville, Boulder, and Boulder County. The line's seven proposed stations are Westminster (completed July 25, 2016), Church Ranch, Flatiron, Louisville, Boulder Transit Village, Gunbarrel, and downtown Longmont.](https://www.rtd-denver.com/open-records/reports-and-policies/facts-and-figures/b-line) So it’s been 20 years and only one stop has happened. Maybe in 30 years another stop will be added?
https://www.cpr.org/2023/12/06/front-range-rail-project-grant-program/ https://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/polis-pen-keeps-passenger-rail-bill-on-track-in-northwest-colorado/ https://coloradonewsline.com/2024/05/22/denver-craig-passenger-rail/
Announced plans. From the government. Which has happened before for this very initiative
They have legally passed new funding for transit from oil&gas drilling fees. It's not just a "plan."
As the other reply said, they have even funded a similar project! Never was built.
I'm still waiting for that light rail through Boulder and Longmont as promised, I even paid the taxes for that, almost 20 years ago.
And it’s got funds already attached. It’s moving. Pay more attention or just whine. You do you.
Paying attention certainly gets things done🫡
I mean, it quite literally does. That’s why people value transparency, because it allows the public to mount pressure on politicians. That’s, kinda how a democracy works. You think the interstates were built based on nothing?
I’ve been carless since 2019. You can make Denver work, barely, without a car, but it’s a huge pain. I’m glad these days that I have an entirely WFH situation and a very flexible work schedule. I feel for anyone who has to regularly rely on RTD to make it anywhere on time. RTD can be made to work. And for a ciry our size in the US it’s a better than average system. But it unreliable in the best of circumstances and wholly inadequate for most the metro area.
The unreliability is an issue too. Its ok if you are just heading to a friends or something, but if you are on a tighter schedule it can be brutal
It depends on where you live and work. I chose to live in south boulder and work out of downtown Denver every day. About a 60 mile round trip. I had to walk about 3 blocks a day to/from stops, new buses every 7 minutes during rush hour, a typical bus ride was 30 minutes, and the companies I worked for always paid for my annual pass. You can't get any better than that. Now, that's an amazing route, but they exist - especially if locality to a great stop is part of your home & job selection process. Like it should be.
I think a major issue is land use. We separated all of our destinations from where we live to the point where we have to go many miles to meet our basic needs
Cool, now finally build the light rail line up to Boulder please. We already voted and paid for it. Or were you not *that* serious about all this after all?
You didn't fully pay for it. Boulder county has funded $275 million since 2005. The project cost is $1.5 billion, with a B. You've funded less than 20% of it.
That money has also gone to increase Flatiron Flyer service and increase bus connectivity to FF and raise service levels in town. The initial plans for the B-line called for trains once an hour (with a couple extra trips in the morning and evening rush hours). The bulk of Boulder to Denver traffic was always planned to be carried by the pseudo-BRT on US-36. The trains were always going to supplemental to the FF primarily during rush hours. And Boulder got most of what was promised, a service that carries 3.5 million riders annually. So what we got was 90% of what was promised as far as service levels and speed were concerned. But most people in Boulder never read the full plans, and saw train and now want the train that was promised. Monkey brain see train; love train. Monkey brain see faster more frequent service but bus; hate bus.
Yeah, people have a real stigma against buses even though they are better 90% of the time. The only time a tram is better is if you already have the ridership to justify the massive increase in infrastructure costs to replace a bus.
The FF is vastly better and cheaper than a trail will be: * Can pick people up at multiple locations from downtown Boulder, down Broadway, then across table mesa before hitting 36. Then on 36 it makes one more stop at McCaslin. * New buses came every 7 minutes until covid. * Buses ran about 2x the speed of the lightline going from Union Station to Golden. No comparison - the FF bus line beat the pants off a train.
Busses are great in theory, but in practice they suck. They're unreliable and the schedules are useless. Last time I tried taking a bus to the airport I waited over 30 minutes before I gave up and drove. The line was supposed to run every 15 but I never saw it.
You there's nothing inherently more unreliable about buses than trams, right? RTD tends to prioritize tram reliability over bus reliability, but they could also decide to make buses just as reliable.
Busses use the same roads as cars and get stuck in traffic and accidents just like cars. How do you prioritize that? Anytime I've ridden the train it's been exactly on time or even a minute early.
Bus lanes.
Ok, well it’s been 20 years and still hardly any progress, and that’s a hell of a lot of money for nothing. Not even to factor in how inflation balloons projected costs. So let’s not pretend that the only issue is funding.
You didn't get nothing. You got a vastly improved BRT system that, when fully staffed, made transit between Boulder and Denver faster than the train ever would have been.
Maybe if Boulderites actually voted to increase the density of the city so there would be a greater demand for transit, it would make sense to spend the money for a dedicated rail line vs a bus line. The bus line works just fine.
And if there were more people, there would be more taxpayers.
I'm not pretending that. It's just really dumb everyone says "reeeee we paid for it!" And that's far from the truth. Even the original projected cost was in the $700m range so it's not even near the original proposed price.
What has been accomplished on this so far? Honestly curious, given that some money has obviously been allocated to making this happen.
See the other reply. The expanded bus service was part of what was promised and delivered.
Not to mention. How much money did the Flat Iron Flyer cost? That $275M could have already been spent on the service that was built and provided.
We're you even around before they expanded the bus service? It was dog shit compared to today. Even the commute on 36 was straight trash back to Denver. Boulder used to pride themselves on how difficult it was to commute there. It's miles better now
I moved here in 2010. So yes. If it wasn't clear, I was agreeing with you.
Sorry I didn't intend to come off offensive. I grew up in Boulder and went to high school and graduated college in the early 00s. It was always a joke how Boulder was cool because how inaccessible it was. It was always just a touch out of reach for people so it had a unique feel that it's lost honestly. People move here and get upset public transit isn't great but it's 200% better than it used to be and I'm happy to pay taxes for that.
Transit here still sucks and article is putting quite a spin on lazy policy. They mention “redirecting” $100M to transit but that wouldn’t have been enough money to widen any highway anyways.
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Dude, you can't compare the USA to the Swiss. That's like comparing your average high school track runner to Usain Bolt. lol The thing is that Europe has the advantage that their cities are a lot more dense so the economics of public transit make more sense. That's why the latest law to zone high density along transit corridors is so important. It starts a virtuous cycle. The Strong Towns research has found that car dependency is a money pit. Cities with massive sprawling suburbs typically don't make enough tax revenue to cover the long-term costs of suburban sprawl infrastructure unless the people living there are very wealthy. Many suburbs have a negative revenue-to-obligation ratio. It works when tax revenues increase because there's a housing shortage driving up prices (even though your citizens will also push you to lower their property taxes), but that shortage is largely due to demographics. In \~20 years when more than half of the boomers are dead or in retirement homes, housing prices and tax revenues are going to shit the bed. The cities that will survive this change are going to be the ones that encourage this virtuous cycle as much as possible because they are maximizing development on high-value land and projects that have high revenue-to-obligation ratios.
Surprise to me. There have been construction slowdowns on I-70 and I-25 all this century.
It felt like the i25 expansion to CO Springs took a decade. I have very little faith in plans to implement effective mass transit beyond the metro/light rail anytime in the next 20 years.
At least rail construction wont directly interfere with road traffic.
If our politicians actually acted on this, it could be brilliant. However, we’ll continue to do what we do best as Americans. When the public finally demands results, the state will outsource the project to a company that *gasp* is actually greedy and uses the contract money to provide subpar service while pocketing the rest. The state needs a unified, organized, and committed department to fulfill these ambitious goals. Otherwise, it’s just talk. Like everything is these days. All talk no action.
And not fixing them either
Love the sentiment, but RTD hasn't given me any confidence that throwing money at them will make them usable. Doesn't help that the bus doesn't run late and frequently enough for the only reasons I'd use it: going to concerts and to and from the airport.
There's a strategy: lets make sure they don't have any money and insist that they improve service.
Good. We need more mass transit.
We do but where is the giant mass transit development project that would be equal to widening I-25 through Denver? It just sounds like they decided to do nothing and are out of ideas.
Federal BRT and Colfax BRT could help a lot, as could running the light rail much more often, which is more of a possibility now that we’re building more housing nearby.
Federal BRT is slated to open in like 2030. I recommend starting to yell loudly and often that we need the city, CDOT, and RTD to speed the fuck up.
And also to do it right. Colfax BRT is putting on a significant road diet, center-running the buses to minimize conflict with cars and increase bus speeds, and pedestrianizing the fuck of the area. They should do that for all of Denver’s BRTs. Also city council needs to get cracking on the transit-oriented upzoning required by HB 24-1313. That will make these corridors a lot more usable and support more frequent bus headways, which are crucial for making them work.
Yeah Federal BRT is "enhanced bus" for 2/3 without dedicated lanes. Like, c'mon guys. Commit.
BRT!!!! * * (not BRT)
Shhh you're on to them.
It's called the light rail that already runs from 124th to Lone Tree and you expand it by adding more trains on the same lines.
I do love sitting next to people while they smoke meth. Can't get enough of that shit.
They've really started cracking down on that
Great!
Reducing emissions by 90% in a state where [97.50%](https://www.ppacg.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Chap12-Freight.pdf)of the state relies on semi trucks is a bold plan.
The current means of transportation are the results of past infrastructure spending decisions. The future means of transportation will be determined by our current infrastructure spending decisions. We don't have to keep making the same mistakes. If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
Or where 1% of people bike on a daily basis in a bike friendly state where the average commute is 5 miles or less.
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I’m up in Fort Collins which is pretty bike friendly; I’ve been a daily cyclist for about 8 years now. Other cities could learn a lot from us on how to build out cycling infrastructure. I think of places like LA that used to have dedicated bike highways that would take you from the suburbs to downtown. Pair those with an e-bike and it’d be so easy to get around.
Speaking as someone who's now living car-free, it's crazy now much I used to drive when I had a car. I'd use it for 3-minute errands to pick up stuff I could carry in my pocket. When you have a car available, it's your default mode of transportation and you don't think about whether that makes sense or not. It wasn't until I sold my car that I realized I didn't actually need one for 90% of my trips. (When I do, I rent a CarShare.) Creating protected bike infrastructure is absolutely necessary, but we also need to work on shifting people's mindset around transportation. Most people view bikes as recreational toys, when they're actually incredibly functional.
The problem with the light rail is public perception. Many women don’t feel safe on it for example. The trains are operating at less than 20% capacity most of the time.
The interstates were meant to ease intercity and interstate travel, not to make commutes easier.
Take the energy spent on bitching in the comments to finding a way to get involved locally. Rome wasn't built in a day
Are they going to have at least 3 lanes between Fort Collins and Denver? It already is other than a small stretch a few miles north of the Hwy 119 - Longmont exit. That 2 lane choke point on an otherwise 3 lane interstate is a nightmare.
Governor Lamm had the same idea. He thought if we didn’t build them, no one would move here. He was wrong. And that’s why the C/E 470 loop is 15 miles too far out.
In other words, continue to let the highways go to shit so that we can all ride a train or bus with the local area meth head. If you haven’t used public transport lately, it’s a coin flip whether you’ll have a safe ride.
Honestly the best way to cut down on emissions is to start incentivizing people to live closer to where they work. So many people in this state commute 30 miles or more for work and that’s just not sustainable without rapid transit.
Give me $1,000,000 to get a townhouse downtown and I’m 100% in!
The best way to incentivize people to live closer to where they work is to rethink how we design communities. Isolating most housing away from jobs and services means that most people *can't* live where they work. Until there are jobs where the housing is or more housing where the jobs are, living near work is a privilege available mostly to the wealthiest folks, not a choice that can simply be incentivized. We're decades into this experiment where business, retail, and housing are all segregated from one another, and the way we've developed the Front Range (and the entire U.S., really) will be slow to change, if it ever does. In the meantime we need better mass transit to give the people who are *forced* to live in un-walkable housing in suburban/exurban manicured lawn HOA hellscapes and middle-of-nowhere apartment mega-complexes better ways to get to the jobs and groceries and other things they need to access.
Yep, and what’s sad is thanks to shitheads online, 50% of this country believes that a 15 minute city is an open air prison. But we need more 15 minute cities or 15 minute communities to help reduce emissions.
Are there a bunch of empty rooms in the middle of city centers in Colorado? (no)
Removing u+2 and high density housing bans is a good first step to this (looking at you boulder)
What will the impact to commute times be from this policy and when? Will a large portion of people in the extended Denver metro area suddenly stop driving to use this yet to be developed transportation? Think about yourself, would you today get on public transportation to go to the museum, out to eat or a hike? What would need to be in place for you to do this? What do your answers say about our leaders and policies?
Transit would have to be frequent, on time, fast, safe, convenient, easy to use. Right now it is none of those things. To pick my kid up from school would take 52 minutes (20 minutes by car) and the bus runs at an inconvenient time so I’d sit there and wait for 30 minutes. To get from school to her after school activities would be an hour and 45 minutes (40 minutes by car) so she’d miss an hour of school or her activities. It’s unworkable. I have been to cities with working public transit (NYC, much of Europe) and their transit systems are easy to navigate, frequent, and drop you right where you need to be. That’s what Denver should shoot for.
CDOT is rolling out Bus Rapid Transit projects on Federal and Colorado. When these are done, fast and frequent bus service will connect our train stations while being faster than car travel. It's already very doable to be car free in Denver's core neighborhoods. We just need to keep expanding the BRT network and continue upzoning to allow for dense housing along all high quality transit corridors and hubs. More people should be able to live closer to transit options and their jobs. When you have a 3-5 mile commute, walking, biking, or taking the bus are pretty attractive options.
a portion of federal is BRT. the other 2/3 is "enhanced bus" meaning no dedicated lane.
Which is a damn shame! We should push CDOT to stop watering down its own projects. They are dragging their feet on change, but at least they are changing.
I’m all for this, but it would’ve been nice for them to at least finish 470 on the west side of town where it drops to 2 lanes for a few miles while the rest of the road is 2+ 1 toll lane. We have no good public transit options out here and I doubt they’ll do anything viable to remedy that. Get us a damn light rail out here!
Agree, we should at least finish the highways we started. Denver has 7/8 of a loop, and the last 1/8 we're just gonna leave blank? And don't even get me started on Santa Fe and Hampden being half highway/half surface street which is a super dangerous combo. Just finish them.
The Jefferson Parkway was supposed to connect the Northwest Parkway to Highway 93, but Broomfield pulled out due to a single radioactive reading. Arvada and JeffCo still support it, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of movement. But even still, the Parkway would only connect from Highway 128/Interloken to Highway 93/58th Ave. Which means that there would be 3 miles of surface street between the highways in Broomfield and the loop around Denver still wouldn't be complete. Plus, it would push more traffic onto Highway 93, which is already overtaxed with traffic. Given these restrictions, who in their right mind would pay a toll to take this road when it wouldn't be that much slower to use existing roads? The only way it makes sense is to have a full freeway or expressway to I-70.
Is it even possible to finish the 470 loop at this point? The entire missing section through Arvada is full of parks or relatively new development, there's not really a corridor for it
Buys single family house in exurban area that is engineered for needing a car only. Complains about not having transit options.
You do realize that 65%+ of Denver's workforce doesn't live in the city right? It was designed to have suburbs from the onset. Almost all of the housing being built right now is 10+ miles outside the city. Without highspeed rail, more trains and a shit ton more protections for riders, this plan is doomed to fail. It takes me 30 mins to drive into the city in traffic. Taking the light rail would be over an hour all-in.
> It was designed to have suburbs from the onset. It wasn't designed for anything from the onset. That's part of the problem.
If we take money that was going to be used for highway expansion and instead put it into mass transit and also legalize infill housing that makes transit work better, then the light-rail trip will take a lot less time.
Oh god. Colorado is going to be worse off with zero HWY changes. When i lived in Longmont we all voted for RTD to take our taxes and expand. What they did was expand south RTD and lightrails but never north.
And now transit is mostly empty. In 2019 before the pandemic, stations were packed solid by 8:30 am. Now, during the day, there are hundreds of open spots. Adding the fact that they “could find it in the budget” to do the free July and August this year, and it seems like this “plan” is backfiring
I think a high speed rail up and down i-25 from Fort Collins to the springs would be a great long term goal. The tricky part is going to be anything in the mountains as someone that lives in Grand Junction public transit is not utilitied at all out here. The Roaring fork valley (Glenwood Aspen area) has a good bus system or at least used to when I lived up there. But the mountains and tight corridors make it really hard to think of any way to build in public transport. And back to the western slope with the oil and gas industry that used to dominate here it’s going to be near impossible to change peoples view on using public transit.
Lol. That is all.
# r/fuckcars
Reminds me of Toronto, in a good way.
I love our state ♥️
As someone who used a lot of public transit in Denver, I am honestly surprised. This is gonna end poorly, no body- passengers, cops or even the employees take transit seriously. They run late almost every single stop , routes change often without a reason, and worse of all so much vandalism and crime. Hopefully things will change, I’d love a world where mass transit is reliable, but I know this is nothing. We need stronger audits else we are all gonna suffer and someone (you know who) is gonna get very Rich