Hehe, don't see that from Ken every day. :) But come on, be fair, your personal center of gravity between home and work is much more convenient to DUS. But the vast majority of downtown employment is, and still will be, on the other end of downtown, you know that. And when you consider that the light rail is basically useless to downtown residents it's a legitimate concern in my opinion that our commuter hub is a sizable distance away from our employment center. It's not a dealbreaker, and we're still lucky to have what we have. But anything that adds 20 minutes to the commute of just about everybody is a problem. Maybe not a major problem, and maybe the benefits outweigh the costs, but it is still a problem. 20 minutes on a mall shuttle is inevitably a structural reduction in transit ridership. It does us no good to tell people that they "should" enjoy the exercise. Shoulds and guilt don't move many people from cars to trains. But anyways, it is what it is, a choice we made based on the available alternatives and budget.

I think we're all forgetting about the CIRCULATOR in 2014.. It's going to be much faster, stopping every other block down 17th and 18th as well as serving the Golden Triangle. You will spend at least half the time on the circulator as you would on the mall shuttle, and 17th St is the big main kahuna of the Central Business District, which you'll get dropped off to every other block. This will also significantly reduce the 16th Street mall shuttle traffic (hopefully). I live in Uptown and have no problem going to DUS if I need to.

It's no longer serving the Golden Triangle, the line will be truncated at Civic Center station. Denver opted not to go in on paying for an extended circulator to the GT and RTD isn't feeling very benevolent with cash.

If Denver wants to expand transit service in the center neighborhoods, they are going to have to eventually pony up the cash to do so.

I didn't know about that change. That kinda sucks.. But they will need to do something to connect the South of Colfax neighborhoods together. But granted the circulator still solves a lot of 'mall shuttle woes' and there's no way Denver is going to pony up to do an underground for CBD/Broadway/Uptown.

the new circulator will not run on weekends, and it will stop at like 6 or 7 at night too...(not sure why it isn't just a two-way loop of the 16th shuttle...sigh...branding competence issues...).

it's a start.

Certainly RTD's downtown facilities are not perfect, but the reality is that our Union Station is on the edge, not in the center, of downtown, and since it would be silly to not make Union Station the downtown transit hub, we are just going to have to live with the fact that people who want to get to the end of downtown opposite from where the transit hub is will just have to use the shuttle/circulator to get there. A lot of cities would love to have our downtown transit options, warts and all.

^ we should also keep in mind that the Civic Center station (which may have two street-cars serving it soon-ish...) will also remain a hub of major bus activity - with a little more love and "presence" at CCS we could have two world-class facilities that bookend downtown, connected by a circulator - i'll take that any day.

I think the fact that Denver is cutting funding to the circulator may actually be evidence that they may be planning something more robust in the future. Just a couple of weeks ago on this forum somebody mentioned that the ridership estimates for the circulator were not where Denver would like them to be to justify the funding. Why waste the money when that same cash could go towards something like a streetcar/subway/el train ect. in the near future?

Most successful commuter rail systems that I have encountered include an independent local distribution system (such as the MTA in NYC that people transfer to after arriving at Penn Station or Grand Central). This same kind of hub-and-distribution can be seen in cities like Paris and London too. The only system I can think of that works more like Denver's Central Loop would be Chicago's El Train "Loop."

As I said before, now that the Light-Rail has become more of a commuter system than originally designed, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Denver is already thinking about "what's next," and planning for it to be more than a simple circulator bus system.

Are there any plans to make CCS a little more.. Pleasant?

If Denver were to "buy up" service. Why would they do so for the Downtown Circulator? I'd imagine there are dozens of projects/services that are much more of a priority.

Let's not be mixing apples and oranges. "Denver" as in the City and County of Denver, has no control over the Circulator. That's RTD's baby. RTD did ask Denver if they'd like to contribute to funding the operations of the Circulator, but Denver said no. Nevertheless, there's no "decreasing funding on the Circulator to pay for a future streetcar" connection. Two separate things.

Also, RTD's recent reduction of the Circulator's route and schedule is, IMO, just a volley in a political game that will be played out over the next year or so. I wouldn't be surprised if the Circulator route/schedule is changed several more times before it is finalized. From what I understand, the dollar amount difference for operating the Circulator between the original plan and the latest scaled-back plan is not much (less than a million bucks a year IIRC) which is peanuts in a $7 billion transit program. Don't be surprised if there are various folks with a lot of influence around town that are working behind the scenes, in response to RTD's latest whining about the Circulator, to restore it back to something similar to its original route/schedule. Stay tuned. Be patient. These things have a way of working themselves out.

Are you talking to me?

NM, I think you're talking to mr1138.

Lots not be mixing apples and oranges between capital and operating costs, either. It's disingenuous to look at a $7 billion capital project, compare it to an ongoing $1 million annual operating expense, and conclude that one must be easy because it's so much smaller than the other. Completely different pots of money, revenue sources, budgeting, you name it. And frankly, it's oftentimes a whole lot easier to come up with capital money than it is to find operating funds year after year.

The Circulator will be mixed traffic, right?

Yes.

Some stops will have bus bulbs.

Some interesting points about the "center of gravity." But, while Union Station was always envisioned as a hub, I am not sure that it follows that light rail trains had to terminate there (or in the CPV).

Denver's original 1980s light rail plans called for light rail to cross the city in an "X." In addition to the north south LRT running on paired couplets (as was eventually built) A subway would have run under 15th Street and thence east to Colfax, rising to the surface.

That original 1980s plan recognized a number of factors:

- First, that the subway would have offered a very high capacity rapid transit spine through the downtown core. The mall shuttle was intended be a slower people mover for short hop trips. It worked better from the North-South axis, because trips were shorter.

- Second, that there is a strong east-west transit axis in Denver. Colfax has very high ridership. Moreover, much of the density in downtown is clustered at the Civic Center end of the mall.

Of course, that same plan never assumed that Union Station would be a major intermodal hub -- I think it was forecast to be converted to a gallery shopping center or festival market. But the plan did anticipate the Platte Valley we see today, including the consolidated main line.

If anyone has scans of the 1980s plans they could post the images of the proposed subway.

I've seen them here before - a long time ago. Please post if you have them!

This thread?
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...=187728&page=2

I have all of the old RTD plans scanned. I'll post when I get back into town.