DENVER | Transportation Thread

[BG918]

Fastracks should be entirely finished by 2030 with the Boulder light rail possibly being cut back to only servicing Boulder and not Longmont. I think the funding issues will be resolved and it will mostly be built as originally planned with the Northwest and North lines opening by 2024.

I think it's realistic to think that the "central corridor" could possibly be built or at least under construction by 2030 utilizing Broadway/Lincoln and either 16th with surface light rail (more likely) or a 17th St subway (less likely) to connect the C and E lines to the commuter lines at Union Station and to the D, F and H lines that run through downtown. It also services the Civic Center, Golden Triangle, western Capitol Hill, Baker and Wash Park West via Broadway/Lincoln.

I also think the Colfax streetcar could be partially built or under construction at that time, with extensions planned and funded.

[Cirrus]

There is no Boulder light rail.

[Wizened Variations]

Originally Posted by SnyderBock

Oh yeah, I'm sure RTD/Denver will be razzing the CPV like Glass House, the future B and A Block buildings and even the Pepsi Center, by the year 2030.

Honestly, 2030 isn't that far off into the future. The changes from today, will not be as dramatic as Wizend is portraying. Think 1994, how different was it from today? Not really significantly different. That's the same time frame from today to 2030. There is no point in getting into alarmist, doomsday senarios, over and over again, because it is irrational to suggest that humanity won't continue to work through our problems, issues, wars or also continue to advance technology and innovation at a rate which outpaces the development of new, unforseen problems.

There certainly won't be any significant changes between now and 2030. Look out to something more like 2050 or 2075, if you want to make such wild speculatiion and irrational predictions.

Want to bet? How about $1000.00? In 2030 that should buy...a couple of good meals (1000% in real inflation net).

In the next 20 years, rounding up will see a far greater change than we have seen in the last. I am not talking technological here. I am talking above the US being poorer, less powerful, more populated, and very likely less free.

We have always had resources in the ground, and, a very high ratio of agricultural land to population. We really have had almost no economic competition for most of our history- our economy was largely domestic with a very low percentage of our GNP involved in exports/imports until the 1980s.

Since the 1980s (particularly since 2000) we have become the worlds largest debtor nation, we have lost millions of manufacturing and white collar jobs to both overseas competitors and to outsourcing by US firms in the name of their right to profit at domestic expense.

We face China's industrial might. China produces half of the world's steel. FoxCom, which manufactures iPods among other things, has 400,000 workers in one industrial complex. In the last 20 years, China's real GNP has increased 800% +. As of 2012, 50% of China's population lives in cities. In 1970? -maybe 15%.

What happens when you phone for help to a call center? Most often you get service on 'US' products from English speakers in Mumbai, Banglaroru, Hydrabad...

This transition is less than 20 years old. And will accelerate.

Our only way out is to become poor and live within our means. The rest of the world cares less about our domestic problems; we are not that entertaining or 'caring' anymore. Most overseas just want our troops out of their countries, and, no longer (if they ever really did) regard us as being 'good.'

Today, our government debt officially hit 101% of GNP.

No Synderbach, the changes are going to accelerate. Our wealth is now entombed in the 10,000 buildings in China over 20 stories built since 2000. Our easy times have been coopted by the booming cities all over South Asia.

Go to youtube and look at the world's foremost skylines. Every month our cities move down rank...nothing is being built here.

But we will survive. However, those with money and power, as well as those of us who believe that the 'good times' will come back soon, are living in a dream world. The real US world is a world of 'talk' and little action, where those with the means feed the masses cheap entertainment drugs, rather than foster the changes which could get us out of the mess we have made for ourselves.

We are like the computer head who measures progress in improved pixel density, while the real world crumbles due to lack of maintanence...

Take urban rail. Go to Japan and travel around a megalopolis of 30,000,000 and see just how easy it can be. Go to China and see what committing a big portion to providing the non-car option means- see their great train stations, and, monitor how things are improving on a month by month basis. Go to Europe and appreciate how well those 'Socialist' states have provided the passenger rail alternative to the automobile by improving their rail systems at the same time they built freeways.

No sir, the changes are going to come very very fast.

I am being an optimist, hoping the today's young people will get busy and not continue living in their parent's illusion of power, wealth, and, self importance.

Get busy and start changing the US by copying what the new leaders of the world are doing. Don't reinvent the wheel... That's the pure arrogance that brings down nations.

This is why I have been so strident for so long about Denver's rail system having capacity, efficientcy, short travel times, good design, and, public need based planning. I have seen good design in action in Japan, France, Germany, and, yes, even Canada. I know what could have been, and, IMO, must someday soon be with the decline of the automobile.. at least in the US.

[Brainpathology]

Originally Posted by Wizened Variations

Want to bet? How about $1000.00? In 2030 that should buy...a couple of good meals (1000% in real inflation net).

Great work there... there may have been one or two good points in the rest of your post but my mind was still agog over that little gem.

Next time pour a bunch of effort into something that might well have been thought through and then put a sentence at the very beginning saying, oh I don't know, "by 2030 Every building in China will be at least 11,000 stories tall."

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by SnyderBock

Honestly, 2030 isn't that far off into the future. The changes from today, will not be as dramatic as Wizend is portraying. Think 1994, how different was it from today? Not really significantly different. That's the same time frame from today to 2030. There is no point in getting into alarmist, doomsday senarios, over and over again, because it is irrational to suggest that humanity won't continue to work through our problems, issues, wars or also continue to advance technology and innovation at a rate which outpaces the development of new, unforseen problems.

There certainly won't be any significant changes between now and 2030. Look out to something more like 2050 or 2075, if you want to make such wild speculatiion and irrational predictions.

Not to defend WV's wild doomsday scenarios, but your viewpoint is very much a narrow, American-focused way of looking at things. Rapid change most certainly is possible. 1994 would've looked very different if you lived in Russia, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, China, anywhere in the Balkans, South Africa, need I go on? Those places have all experienced change every bit as significant as what WV describes. And the world is a changing place. Just because it hasn't happened in the U.S. in recent memory doesn't mean it's not possible.

[Brainpathology]

Originally Posted by SnyderBock

Honestly, 2030 isn't that far off into the future. The changes from today, will not be as dramatic as Wizend is portraying. Think 1994, how different was it from today? Not really significantly different. That's the same time frame from today to 2030. There is no point in getting into alarmist, doomsday senarios, over and over again, because it is irrational to suggest that humanity won't continue to work through our problems, issues, wars or also continue to advance technology and innovation at a rate which outpaces the development of new, unforseen problems.

In 1994 DIA, Coors Field, Insportsathorico field at Mile High, all of the light rail except the beginning of the central corridor, Pepsi Center, Spire, Hyatt, the 4 Seasons, The new Convention Center, Pretty much all of LODO, the Highlands (not the moron infested part.. the lower part), the new art museum, the new history museum, Still museum, new justice center, new Colorado courts building, new Webb Building, Denver Newspaper agency buildings (I could go on)... were not open or even begun.

Let hope that from now to 2030 is exactly as insignificantly different as you say now is from 1994.

I agree with pretty much everything else you've said about WV being off the deep end.. but mostly because Denver HAS come extremely far in the last 18 years. But I suppose I can understand all the doomsday predictions some people like to toss out here and lots of other places... It's nice to be pleasantly surprised when you predict a Sh*t Sand-witch with Sh*t dressing with a side of Sh*t. But when you predict it over and over and over again it becomes clear that what's actually full of Sh*t.

[bunt_q]

Not that I believe in doomsday anything, I think we'll be fine. But people also shouldn't discount the possibility of a sh*t sandwich future. Complacency, especially in the new "post-American" world, is dangerous. Ignoring the possibility of the sh*t extra value meal future might be exactly what gets us to that unlikely future.

I can think of lots of 20 year periods that didn't go so hot, and weren't probably foreseeable sh*t sandwich futures for the folks living through them.

The U.S. between 1845 and 1865. Yeah, that went well.

Western Europe between 1895 and 1915. Ouch.

For that matter, most of the world from 1925 to 1945. Yikes.

In fact, if I exclude the post-WWII United States, and especially the post-Cold War U.S., which really was a sort of golden age, it's hard to think of a 20 year period that didn't involve drastic change somewhere on earth, including in many cases, in the U.S.

Maybe a bunch of Americans born after 1970 (1950?) aren't the best group to be having this conversation? We are, after all, as a bunch, possibly the most advantaged (and naive?) generation anywhere in the history of our species. At least we were until about a decade ago. Change could smack us in the forehead and we wouldn't recognize it.

That said, I still think WV exaggerates a bit.

[Cirrus]

I would like to submit for the record:

[FrancoRey]

An exemplary photo that shows how fast change can occur. I remember arriving in Shanghai and 2009, and even in the three short years I have known the city so much has changed. A new Bund waterfront, many more buildings in Pudong above (including the 2,000+ foot Shanghai Tower being built), 5 new subway lines, a completely new nightlife district in Tian Zi Fang, the Shanghai Expo waterfront district, the list goes on. Shanghai is changing faster than one can blink an eye. Nanjing is no slouch either. The whole country's growth is astonishing and awe-inspiring, especially in the public transportation realm. But that's what you can achieve with near nil labor laws and an unlimited supply of cheap-wage workers.

[bunt_q]

Far on the other end of the spectrum, I would submit Hiroshima, 1925, 1945 (and 1965). Anybody have pictures? It only takes one slipping through the cracks. Frankly, if we all die having lived full lives and having not seen a city somewhere in the world annihilated, we will have been most fortunate.

[Brainpathology]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Not that I believe in doomsday anything, I think we'll be fine. But people also shouldn't discount the possibility of a sh*t sandwich future. Complacency, especially in the new "post-American" world, is dangerous. Ignoring the possibility of the sh*t extra value meal future might be exactly what gets us to that unlikely future.

I can think of lots of 20 year periods that didn't go so hot, and weren't probably foreseeable sh*t sandwich futures for the folks living through them.

The U.S. between 1845 and 1865. Yeah, that went well.

Western Europe between 1895 and 1915. Ouch.

For that matter, most of the world from 1925 to 1945. Yikes.

In fact, if I exclude the post-WWII United States, and especially the post-Cold War U.S., which really was a sort of golden age, it's hard to think of a 20 year period that didn't involve drastic change somewhere on earth, including in many cases, in the U.S.

Maybe a bunch of Americans born after 1970 (1950?) aren't the best group to be having this conversation? We are, after all, as a bunch, possibly the most advantaged (and naive?) generation anywhere in the history of our species. At least we were until about a decade ago. Change could smack us in the forehead and we wouldn't recognize it.

That said, I still think WV exaggerates a bit.

I'm not saying things bad can't ever happen. I can also read history, the thing about all of the 20 year periods you're mentioning is that they all ended. What I can't stand are people who when things are going downhill think that the downhill slope is infinite; exactly as the people who thought the uphill slope was infinite in the 1920's or maybe more recently in the .com boom and the real estate boom. Both species of thinkers are annoying and both are wrong. Things get worse, then things get better, then they get worse, then better, then worse (people who can't pick up on this pattern are annoying, to be kind). People who can't stand the US being the ONLY country in the world who invents, makes, controls, and decides everything for everyone are the people who say now that we are in decline. For all of the human population, however, what world is better?

If the NFL was made up on a single team that team would be world champions every single year. With 30 teams not one team gets to win all the time. But all 30 teams get pretty good games. Now that we have to compete with China, India, Japan, Latin America, Europe, etc it's the same thing. It's not the US and then some 10 orders of magnitude behind the USSR and then another couple orders of magnitude behind everyone else. If China eventually (and even with what they've done already that's a looooooooooooooong eventually) becomes just as prosperous, free, innovative, etc as the US that doesn't automatically mean the US is suddenly Somalia.

We as a country will, sooner or later, have to make changes to continue to compete. We as a country will, sooner or later, have to adjust to not being lord and master of everything everywhere. We as a country will, sooner or later, have to rethink our military spending, transportation models, etc. But we as a country will NOT, sooner or later, look like a 3rd world country where every decision we've ever made is lamented by wailing repentant citizens in the streets.

[SnyderBock]

Guys, that's not the kind of change I'm talking about. I'm not talking about how many buildings have been built, or rail lines, since 1994. I'm not talking about how rapidly China has developed or other developing nations. I'm talking about a developed nation (the United States), rapidly de-developing into 3rd world status between now and 2030, as Wizend keeps bashing into our brains. Where is an example of a large, powerful, post-industrial, first world nation rapidly declining into all out third world status?

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm only saying, how can one such as Wizend, be SO SURE it will happen? There is no scientific data to generate this opinion. It's to squarly based on intuition, beliefs, feelings, etc... I watched Glenn Beck trying to prove how this would happen, with his charts and theories about inflation. He never did prove anything. believe me, he tried as hard or harder than anyone.

I think China's growth is will plateau and is unsustainable. Meanwhile, the United States will continue to be an innovation generator and spawn new industries. Our universities will continue to attract the brightest people from around Earth. I see no reason the USA can't and won't be stronger in the 21st Century, than it was in the 20th.

Inflation, population growth, these are the things which will bring our nation down? On the contrary, inflation makes the US more competitive in International trade and populatin growth generates economic growth.

[BG918]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

There is no Boulder light rail.

Is that a done deal? I thought they were still trying to do it if they can find another funding source i.e. Higher tax.

[Brainpathology]

Originally Posted by BG918

Is that a done deal? I thought they were still trying to do it if they can find another funding source i.e. Higher tax.

It's commuter rail I think was the point he was making... although I'm not even certain commuter rail is the most correct term. It's definitely not light rail as a transportation stickler would categorize it. (which we really ought to be on this thread especially)

[Brainpathology]

Originally Posted by SnyderBock

Guys, that's not the kind of change I'm talking about. I'm not talking about how many buildings have been built, or rail lines, since 1994. I'm not talking about how rapidly China has developed or other developing nations. I'm talking about a developed nation (the United States), rapidly de-developing into 3rd world status between now and 2030, as Wizend keeps bashing into our brains. Where is an example of a large, powerful, post-industrial, first world nation rapidly declining into all out third world status?

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm only saying, how can one such as Wizend, be SO SURE it will happen? There is no scientific data to generate this opinion. It's to squarly based on intuition, beliefs, feelings, etc... I watched Glenn Beck trying to prove how this would happen, with his charts and theories about inflation. He never did prove anything. believe me, he tried as hard or harder than anyone.

I think China's growth is will plateau and is unsustainable. Meanwhile, the United States will continue to be an innovation generator and spawn new industries. Our universities will continue to attract the brightest people from around Earth. I see no reason the USA can't and won't be stronger in the 21st Century, than it was in the 20th.

Inflation, population growth, these are the things which will bring our nation down? On the contrary, inflation makes the US more competitive in International trade and populatin growth generates economic growth.

For my part I was agreeing with you.

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Maybe a bunch of Americans born after 1970 (1950?) aren't the best group to be having this conversation? We are, after all, as a bunch, possibly the most advantaged (and naive?) generation anywhere in the history of our species. At least we were until about a decade ago. Change could smack us in the forehead and we wouldn't recognize it.

Oh, but that last decade really did change a few of us.

[Cirrus]

Light rail has never been proposed for Boulder. What is proposed for Boulder is not light rail. It is an entirely different kind of train. Calling it "light rail" is every bit as incorrect as it would be to call it a "subway" or a "monorail".

This is what light rail looks like:



That isn't what is proposed for Boulder. Boulder is proposed to get commuter rail. Commuter rail comes in several different varieties, and I'm not sure if RTD has picked one for Boulder or not. Someone else here should know. In any event, none of the various varieties of commuter rail are the same as light rail.

This is what typical commuter rail looks like:



This is what a subset of commuter rail called "DMU" looks like. This is sort of similar to light rail, but not the same.


source: CenTexPhoto on flickr

And finally, this is another subset of commuter rail called "EMU". This is what RTD is using for the DIA and Arvada lines:

[BG918]

Originally Posted by Brainpathology

It's commuter rail I think was the point he was making... although I'm not even certain commuter rail is the most correct term. It's definitely not light rail as a transportation stickler would categorize it. (which we really ought to be on this thread especially)

You are correct...the commuter rail lines are the Northwest (Boulder/Longmont), East (airport), Gold (Arvada/Wheat Ridge) and North (Thornton). The light rail lines are the existing Southwest (Littleton), Southeast (Parker/Lone Tree), the under construction West (Golden) and the proposed I-225 corridor line connecting Nine Mile to the East line by the Fitzsimmons/CU medical campus.

[bunt_q]

The preferred alternative for Boulder was DMU.

Although, that's sort of up in the air now, and BRT is being evaluated as a possibility.

[glowrock]

Glad we're back to talking about transportation, as opposed to humoring Wizened Variations with his doomsday scenario blather...

Aaron (Glowrock)