Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus
My point is just that zoning and transit planning don't happen independently of each other.
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They do when you put your rail off on the edge of freight corridors, and other places people don't really want to be. Sure, we're seeing a few apartment projects here and there (Alameda - with a great deal of public assistance). But most of the station area growth we are seeing are in places where growth would have happened anyways. The places where growth organically wants to happen in Denver are largely nowhere near transit. Which means our density pressures are not around stations, where that political cover is available. We are not creating a Northern Virginia type TOD landscape because we didn't put the transit in the right places. We all knew that, though. You can basically ignore Fastracks for long term land use effects. When I talk about the interplay of our (non-existent) urban transit and land use (slowly being dominated by anti-growth forces), Fastracks is not what I am talking about.
We just can't afford grade separated urban rail. We've had this discussion - it is why I am fiercely protective of ROW. When it comes time to have a serious discussion about taking a lane for transit (e.g. Colfax), we are going to have a fight on our hands. If all the low hanging fruit (e.g. streets with lots of ROW, like Broadway) have already given up their extra lanes for bikes, there won't be anything left for transit. You *might* have a shot at getting improved transit on Broadway someday. You have zero shot of that on side streets, say Logan. Which is why I want the bikes put on side-streets like Logan, where they are more politically palatable.
And the context for all of that is a city where nobody making $100k can afford to live, which is basically what we are becoming. That's fine, but I am not going to also let those people make it harder for the less-well-off to get in and out of the city. This is where Denver appears to be unlike many other cities, who seem to accept that commuters matter. Denver has a mentality where the local neighborhoods are more important, even if those local neighborhoods are basically downtown, and what they want requires undermining commuters to create a bucolic residential haven. It's sort of the antithesis of what a "city" is. Denver is not a city; it is a giant small town full of people harboring a "progressive" small town attitude.
This is because all commuters are "bad" people who make the "wrong" choices by not living in the urban core. They live in the "suburbs" (which includes half of the Denver proper; read: the less desirable neighborhoods) and are generally lesser humans. Or thought to all be backward-thinking conservatives. There is zero appreciation for people who are forced out on price alone, because those people are invisible. This is a very common attitude in Denver. It's also very Boulder-ey. I would say it is San Francisco-ey, but that would be giving Denver too much credit.
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