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Originally Posted by Cirrus
But that point's not super relevant to the quality of what gets built, except to the extent that cities are influenced by federal design guidelines. The various criticisms and praises are all still true. And if we don't talk about them, we don't learn to do things better over time.
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Fair enough and while I do respect your professional background and experience (srsly), the advantage I've got over number crunchers who draw short-term conclusions, is that even after a decade of absence I still know Denver like the back of my hand.
Hint: number crunchers use static historical facts including the NBA for example but they're not very good with dynamics nor predicting the future and they are too easily manipulated and cherry-picked.
Let's summarize in the order of project construction.
The SE Corridor T-REX project (aided by Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transp...ansion_Project)
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It's considered by some to be one of the most successful transportation upgrade projects in the United States.[2][3][4][5] It also received a National Design-Build Award from the Design-Build Institute of America.[6] The T-REX project finished 3.2% under its $1.67B budget and 22 months ahead of schedule in 2006[7] and is considered to be an example of inter-governmental agency cooperation for transportation projects for North America and Worldwide. Stakeholders have been recognized nationally and internationally for its success, including quality management.[8]
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Voters approved of both light rail and road projects in 1999. Running light rail in this corridor seemed like a no-brainer decision for the future. Light rail cost about a $billion more than the road expansion (about $42 million per mile IIRC). It has its design weaknesses but the idea of adding another 20-25% to the project costs was not viable at that time.
Denver is hardly the only place where the ideal is constrained by financial realities.
SE Denver had always been the favored part of the city as it developed and was well-planned with a mix of starter-home neighborhoods, middle-income neighborhoods as well as areas of high density including both apartments and condos. This development occurred especially east of I-25 according to Denver city boundaries. Running light rail through SE Denver and the heart of DTC only made sense as did extending it out to Douglas Co. A lot of power and influence (and votes) lives within DougCo.
Ridership continues to climb but there remains first and last-mile issues that need and can be mitigated.
The West or W Line
While taking advantage of existing (abandoned freight) ROW the W Line follows a non-freeway path generally along 13th Ave which is only 2 blocks south of West Colfax Ave until it gets to the Federal Center. The Federal Center got a whole new masterplan with the Feds deciding to sell off significant land to the private sector for redevelopment. The fact that much of that is still 5 years off from groundbreaking is just the way things go but it's still very much alive. They could have stopped the line at the Federal Center but Golden has the Colorado School of Mines, Coors Brewing and the Taj Mahal. Considering the time value of money, the fact that they single-tracked it out to Golden to save money plus the ever-present politics made building that section now the only sensible decision.
Denver is hardly the only place to save costs by utilizing existing ROW
The A Line Train to the Planes
No explanation or justification is needed.
Next up the A, G and N Lines.