Quote:
Originally Posted by PLANSIT
Look, the Denver region made its bed. They chose to build a commuter, suburb to downtown, focused system largely built on the notion of park-n-rides. Arguably, it's really the only system that could have been built politically. If a system was built only for need, it would be substantially more Denver focused and other municipalities would have never voted for it. At least not in 2004. If anything, we would have gotten a much smaller, more concentrated system, with a couple lines - maybe. And maybe that would have been better, but we'll never know.
Having said that, it's also important to take into account the long-play. What we have now (commuter, park-n-ride) will eventually (50-100 years) evolve into the region's best hope for more efficient/sustainable growth and density. It effectively shifts some (not all or close to all) development to station areas with somewhat higher densities than would be built if not for the system. Lone Tree, for instance, would never be working toward TOD type of densities without the SE Line. Albeit mostly still car focused unfortunately.
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So well said.
I've of course been a big proponent of Fastracks and its ultimate potential and I'd expect more noticeable results in the next 15-25 years. There actually is quite a lot of interest in TOD but with so many stations spread all over the metro area a project here and another one over there doesn't yet make much of an impact. Some of the plans are yet to take seed but I assume they will.
Revisiting the Urban Signature Project
I never denied the value of
Cirrus/PLANSIT textbook approach to transit; we were having a different conversation with respect to FasTracks. I can say I've come to understand and appreciate better their points.
Take two non-coastal peer cities as examples. First there's Phoenix, home to a First in Class freeway system that never-the-less has a 20-mile urban LRT line that has grown to 26 miles while its weekday ridership has grown to ~59,000. Then there's the Twin Cities new LRT 11-mile Green Line with a weekday ridership of 40,000 after only one year. If you like Cirrus' ridership per mile metric then that's quite impressive.
It would be such a shame if Denver can't get at least one urban LRT line. Since I'm content with East Colfax getting a nice BRT line, then a LRT down So Broadway from the Civic Center Station then along the Speer Blvd/Leetsdale corridor (with a segment from Speer along So Broadway to the I-25 Station) makes too much sense. You'd only need 4/5 stops before arriving in Cherry Creek with a few stops there including Colorado Blvd, perhaps a quick stop at Holly and then Monaco, Quebec and a Phase One end-of-the-line station at Parker, Mississippi and the High Line Canal Trail.
I can't imagine that such a line couldn't equal or exceed the ridership of Phoenix and the Twin Cities.
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