DENVER | Main Development Thread #7

[TakeFive]

This is the way to do it!

Originally Posted by bunt_q

So take for comparison a new fee to construct sidewalks citywide, which you will soon see circulating for signature because we are proposing to put it on the November ballot by petition. The fee isn't small - about $100 for the average Denver home. That would generate about $40 million/year initially, escalating, or about $1.9 billion total over 30 years. (Which is on the low end of what's enough just to build and repair sidewalks.)

I suggested to Dave Sachs-and-friends over four years ago that if he really wanted better sidewalks then the best way to accomplish this would be to get the voters to approve a 'dedicated' revenue stream.

Not only does it provide a steady stream of needed $'s but DOTI could better organize and execute the program as a result. If you consider who the 'likely' voters are it should be an easy concept to sell; whether the timing is right I couldn't know but why not at least try?

Originally Posted by DenverInfill

BRT should not be viewed as any less worthy or sexy than rail.

Yes it should be deemed less worthy (b/c I want my choo choo train) and it's been proven over and over people prefer riding trains.

I dunno

Originally Posted by DenverInfill

The other point is the relationship between transit and land use. Currently, the land use along Colorado Blvd sucks. But it doesn't always have to be that way. About 99% of the architecture along Colorado is disposable, built with a couple decades of life expectancy. There's no reason why we can't transition Colorado Blvd over the course of the next few decades into a higher density, mixed use, walkable, corridor

Going from memory, I'd agree that on the WEST side of Colorado Blvd there's tons of potential as there exists lots of crap on large-sized sites. But on the East side of Colorado Blvd that won't be the case; not sure how much could be accomplished on that side.

IIRC, Colorado Blvd (between I-25 and Colfax) has the highest car density counts of any street in Denver. Not that change can't happen but I sorta agree with gopokes21 that this would be one very heavy political lift.

I will NOT abandon my dreams

Originally Posted by SirLucasTheGreat

I don't see any new, non-fastracks rail coming in my lifetime outside of maybe a new Front Range Passenger Rail operated by Amtrak. I'm much more excited about infill around our existing system. 38th and Blake, Alameda Station, and Belleview station are all seeing a lot of nearby development.

When I see how well 'urban-street aligned' light rail is working in Phoenix then I have to believe it would also work well in Denver. Colorado Blvd has the traffic counts that should make light rail work very well as it would connect two existing hubs at I-25/Colorado and 40th street & Colorado.

Ofc, there are reasons which I'll skip but basically Phoenix light rail passenger counts didn't drop as much as in most cities and it's bouncing back nicely this year - if not to pre-pandemic levels.

----------------------

Originally Posted by Interzen

Looks like I may have 7 stories worth of new residents looking down into my back yard in the near future:

It's interesting that AvalonBay wants a 3rd bite at the urban apple. I'm also curious when they plan to break ground on their second project near Governor's Park.

[TakeFive]

Side Pocket Topic - The Inflation Conundrum

I see a whole lot of change a-comin' over the next couple of years. First and foremost Chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell has promised to do whatever is necessary to slow rampaging inflation.

Also consider that BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says "Russia-Ukraine War Is Upending World Order And Will End Globalization" (as we know it). Both the invasion and COVID in China will continue to haunt supply-chain problems - which adds to the inflation challenge.

I DO NOT see any financial crisis or real estate depression. Rather this is very much like the Jimmy Carter times of the 1960's if for different reasons or causes.

Given inflation and increasing interest rates it's very likely that the consumer which is 70% of the GDP will (be forced to) cut back their spending spree which will feel quite recessionary.

It's hard to project how this will impact develop

but generally, 'winners' will still be able to afford a nice place to live and the lower end of the socioeconomic scale will survive partly due to the 'safety-net.' The number of winners will likely drop and it's the so-called middle class which will suffer the most. BTW, Chair Jerome Powell has the enthusiastic support of the business community as "what is bad for Main Street is also bad for Wall Street."

This will be a time of change that most of you have not experienced as adults.

[TakeFive]

Two Multifamily Communities Under Construction in Denver’s Central Park Neighborhood
March 28, 2022 - Mile High CRE


Solana Central Park, courtesy of ARK Architects

California-based Reylynn Properties and its construction arm ReyLenn Construction Company is currently under construction on two Solana projects in Denver’s Central Park community (formerly called Stapleton). Solana is Reylynn’s brand of luxury apartment communities featuring extensive amenities.

Solana Beeler Park
is a 270-unit project situated on a 3.76 acre site at the northwest corner of East 56th Ave and Boston Court. The type-V, “wrap” includes a 5 level above-grade parking structure surrounded by 4 floors of wood frame construction.

Solana Central Park
is a 307-unit project situated on a 4.5 acre parcel at the northwest corner of Central Park Blvd and East 32nd Ave. The type-V, “wrap” includes a 4 level above-grade parking structure surrounded by 4 floors of wood frame construction.

Neither grand nor grotesque IMO.

[gopokes21]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Here we go again. Yes, actually we do need to settle for BRT, we cannot afford (as a CITY) grade separated rail transit. We do not have the population and economic base to do it. It would have to be regional or state. (The region or state could afford a lot more.)

So take for comparison a new fee to construct sidewalks citywide, which you will soon see circulating for signature because we are proposing to put it on the November ballot by petition. The fee isn't small - about $100 for the average Denver home. That would generate about $40 million/year initially, escalating, or about $1.9 billion total over 30 years. (Which is on the low end of what's enough just to build and repair sidewalks.)

Take some of our best recent data points in the US for grade separated transit -

-Honolulu is about $600 million per mile, all elevated.
-NYC 2nd Avenue Subway was about $2.5 billion per mile.
-Austin is budgeting around $1 billion/mile for subway in tunnel, but nobody believes that number and it excludes all station costs.

Now back to Denver, our total general fund is $1.5 billion per year, but of that a lot is fees and such that are not available, so sale tax and property tax alone, call it right about $1 billion/year. Now, I assume we are not actually defunding the police ($567 million/yr) and we still want things like our parks department ($82 million/yr), planning department ($36 million/yr), etc. Let's just look at the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure - $140 million/year.

Then let's assume you double it! No idea where that money would come from, but just for fun. And cancel everything else DOTI does, I suppose, so I have $280 million/year to play with.

Pledge all of that - $280 million per year - you could bond about $4.6 billion. So say you need 60/40 capital/operations for a rail project, it means that Denver could buy just under $2.8 billion in capital costs.

So you could bond for maybe 1.5 miles of subway using Denver's entire DOTI budget, doubled. Call it 3 miles with federal grants. Or maybe 10 miles of elevated rail with reasonable assumptions for federal grants.

To be clear, my casual doubling of the DOTI budget amounts to about $350/year for your average Denver household in new taxes.

This compares to Honolulu - a 21 mile elevated rail system - that was $125 million/year just for operations, and the capital costs equal maybe $480 million/year. So that ONE RAIL LINE equals 16x the entire budget of Denver CPD each year. Just for comparison. That is why we struggle with large infrastructure projects in this country - most areas do not have the local tax bases to do it, and our federal money comes in irregular and unpredictable bursts (like the infrastructure bill).

"Here we go again" indeed. Are you really suggesting that a transit system, regardless of mode, is a regular budget line item? Just for fun, what are the annual budgets of Austin and Honolulu compared to Denver??

You mention Austin's subway. Denver is a more urban city and I think each time you say our density needs to increase, it literally does just that. So keep saying it, I guess. Denver is already a great pedestrian city, so long as you drive and park where you're going. Being a great pedestrian city is the basis of becoming a great transit city, except that Denver is literally the only city to spend billions on transit and AVOID anywhere with pedestrians. Billions down the drain.

As far as sidewalk fees go, that's just poor political leadership on council prioritizing funding for tent cities in collusion with NIMBY forces. It's literally beyond insane that Denver, which hadn't rejected a tax increase until the Coliseum Arena stupid idea, has to have a dedicated revenue mechanism to have freaking sidewalks. That's a joke with which you only damage your own credibility by repeating.

This city has made all the money in the world appear for every cause under the sun except for meaningful transit and walkability. We take our marching orders from the Park Hill crowd and it is what it is, but stop trying to make sense of it.

I'm just pointing out the obvious omission of transit in the donut hole, but by all means, continue to work around the edges I guess. Have fun with Colorado Blvd traffic studies dictating what can or can't be done for transit. The silly thing is you don't need a whole new subway network separate from FasTracks. It's hugely complimentary if you do it right. It wouldn't take a ton of subway or whatever to fill in the donut hole where density and pedestrians actually exist, and then you bring those folks into the fold. BRT on Colorado Blvd is penny wise and pound foolish, particularly if Polis is going to force RTD to blow $2-3 billion on the Boulder train. I'm not calling out any individuals as dishonest, but I would generally have concerns about anyone acting like a billion dollars is a lot of money when it comes to infrastructure in Denver in 2022. Sounds to me like someone who just doesn't want real transit. Maybe they live in Park Hill, maybe they live in Highlands Ranch, idk, but we should just get different ideas on the ballot before every other idea under the sun gets funded.

[TakeFive]

I'm looking forward to seeing what Austin ends up with

Originally Posted by gopokes21

You mention Austin's subway. Denver is a more urban city...

I wouldn't agree that Austin's downtown core is any less dense than Denver is, especially with the way it is developing.

Austin's vision is to run two of their light rail lines, the Orange Line and the Blue Line underground in the city core. This is what I'm curious about:

Austin's Project Connect is a smorgasbord of various transit pieces. But with respect to their light rail they are anticipating updated cost estimates for the Orange and Blue lines later this year. They have $7 billion to play with (for everything) assuming FTA participation. I'll be curious to hear what their updated cost analysis shows for just these two lines. Good guess that it will eat up most of the $7 billion available if that's what they choose to do. BTW, the Blue Line looks to be fairly useless outside of going to their airport which doesn't even handle that much air traffic.

In any case, grade separated lines anywhere outside of Denver's downtown core are not feasible and because Denver already has hubs at Union Station and the Civic Center there's no need to go underground in Denver.

[bobg]

Originally Posted by gopokes21

"Here we go again" indeed. Are you really suggesting that a transit system, regardless of mode, is a regular budget line item? Just for fun, what are the annual budgets of Austin and Honolulu compared to Denver??

You mention Austin's subway. Denver is a more urban city and I think each time you say our density needs to increase, it literally does just that. So keep saying it, I guess. Denver is already a great pedestrian city, so long as you drive and park where you're going. Being a great pedestrian city is the basis of becoming a great transit city, except that Denver is literally the only city to spend billions on transit and AVOID anywhere with pedestrians. Billions down the drain.

As far as sidewalk fees go, that's just poor political leadership on council prioritizing funding for tent cities in collusion with NIMBY forces. It's literally beyond insane that Denver, which hadn't rejected a tax increase until the Coliseum Arena stupid idea, has to have a dedicated revenue mechanism to have freaking sidewalks. That's a joke with which you only damage your own credibility by repeating.

This city has made all the money in the world appear for every cause under the sun except for meaningful transit and walkability. We take our marching orders from the Park Hill crowd and it is what it is, but stop trying to make sense of it.

I'm just pointing out the obvious omission of transit in the donut hole, but by all means, continue to work around the edges I guess. Have fun with Colorado Blvd traffic studies dictating what can or can't be done for transit. The silly thing is you don't need a whole new subway network separate from FasTracks. It's hugely complimentary if you do it right. It wouldn't take a ton of subway or whatever to fill in the donut hole where density and pedestrians actually exist, and then you bring those folks into the fold. BRT on Colorado Blvd is penny wise and pound foolish, particularly if Polis is going to force RTD to blow $2-3 billion on the Boulder train. I'm not calling out any individuals as dishonest, but I would generally have concerns about anyone acting like a billion dollars is a lot of money when it comes to infrastructure in Denver in 2022. Sounds to me like someone who just doesn't want real transit. Maybe they live in Park Hill, maybe they live in Highlands Ranch, idk, but we should just get different ideas on the ballot before every other idea under the sun gets funded.

Becoming a great transit and pedestrian city means striving to build streets like
this on existing stroads, and when needed going underground on narrow right of ways to preserve valuable streetscapes like this.

It does not mean spending several billion dollars more than the B line to Boulder/Longmont so you can build a subway that will likely have similar ridership to the Boulder buses. All so you don't disrupt automobile traffic and preserve streetscapes like this.

[coolmandan03]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

So take for comparison a new fee to construct sidewalks citywide, which you will soon see circulating for signature because we are proposing to put it on the November ballot by petition. The fee isn't small - about $100 for the average Denver home.

Can you explain more about this? I've already paid $2,500 to have my sidewalks fixed because I was in the first zone to require it (and the city came and did it and sent me the bill). Now the city is looking to charge everyone to fix everybody else? So I get to pay all of mine and other folks?

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by coolmandan03

Can you explain more about this? I've already paid $2,500 to have my sidewalks fixed because I was in the first zone to require it (and the city came and did it and sent me the bill). Now the city is looking to charge everyone to fix everybody else? So I get to pay all of mine and other folks?

Yep. And those of us who live in metro districts that paid for infrastructure will have to subsidize other areas of the the city that have avoided their responsibility.

[laniroj]

Originally Posted by bobg

Becoming a great transit and pedestrian city means striving to build streets like
this on existing stroads, and when needed going underground on narrow right of ways to preserve valuable streetscapes like this.

It does not mean spending several billion dollars more than the B line to Boulder/Longmont so you can build a subway that will likely have similar ridership to the Boulder buses. All so you don't disrupt automobile traffic and preserve streetscapes like this.

^^So true. However, as I have said in the past, I don't think Denver can do this unless we completely remove DOTI and the Fire Department from land planning discussions. We need to replace Department of Transportation & Infrastructure with a streetscape committee which comprehensively looks at pedestrians, the built environment, and multi-modal transportation when making decisions. We can continue creating these sterile environments with really nice buildings but a generally poor pedestrian experience or we can radically shift our thinking on planning and shrink roads, shrink right of ways, and allow the human experience to take precedent over cars and trucks.

[mishko27]

Originally Posted by bobg

Becoming a great transit and pedestrian city means striving to build streets like
this on existing stroads, and when needed going underground on narrow right of ways to preserve valuable streetscapes like this.

It does not mean spending several billion dollars more than the B line to Boulder/Longmont so you can build a subway that will likely have similar ridership to the Boulder buses. All so you don't disrupt automobile traffic and preserve streetscapes like this.

100% with you. We do not need grade separated rail on Colorado, a streetcar with priority signals would do just fine.

The bus itself on Colorado is not even that big of a problem - take it from someone who rode a LOT of RTD busses as a poor grad school student without a car (I was also born and raised in Slovakia, riding busses all my life, so I don't have the hang ups middle and upper class Americans have about them). The biggest problem was the frequency for me. Corridors like Colorado or Broadway need something with a 10 minute frequency, not 30-60 minute one. I once missed a bus on Colorado by 2 minutes and had to wait 28 minutes for the next one, at 7PM, on a weekday.

[jhwk]

Originally Posted by mishko27

100% with you. We do not need grade separated rail on Colorado, a streetcar with priority signals would do just fine.

The bus itself on Colorado is not even that big of a problem - take it from someone who rode a LOT of RTD busses as a poor grad school student without a car (I was also born and raised in Slovakia, riding busses all my life, so I don't have the hang ups middle and upper class Americans have about them). The biggest problem was the frequency for me. Corridors like Colorado or Broadway need something with a 10 minute frequency, not 30-60 minute one. I once missed a bus on Colorado by 2 minutes and had to wait 28 minutes for the next one, at 7PM, on a weekday.

I think the low ridership of the existing bus line shows that while Colorado is an attractive corridor for car trips, it is not attractive for transit. There are much higher ridership bus lines that would be better candidates for rail or BRT (other than Colfax & Broadway, Wadsworth and Leetsdale are the next two highest ridership bus lines).

[gopokes21]

Originally Posted by bobg

Becoming a great transit and pedestrian city means striving to build streets like
this on existing stroads, and when needed going underground on narrow right of ways to preserve valuable streetscapes like this.

It does not mean spending several billion dollars more than the B line to Boulder/Longmont so you can build a subway that will likely have similar ridership to the Boulder buses. All so you don't disrupt automobile traffic and preserve streetscapes like this.

Yeah, I would support some targeted tunneling rather than full subway (ie., Speer under 8th/Broadway/Lincoln). Look my advocacy has nothing to do with wanting a "subway system" for the sake of it. It's just the practicality of serving Cap Hill, Cheesman, Cherry Creek, Glendale (the latter of which should be easier at-grade). Basically the whole diagonal from Union Station down to 25/Colorado which by the way, is where 90% of the pedestrians in Denver are.

There is no way you're doing to barrel through Cap Hill at-grade. It's just a fact. And until we serve that critical neighborhood, which is Denver's densest and most affordable neighborhood (equity??) then you will continue to have old clunkers parked on every square inch of outdoor space, basically ruining the neighborhood and making corner visibility extremely unsafe. We need transit people in Cap Hill will frequently use, and the #10 isn't cutting it. Pre-pandemic I took the #10 every day and was thankful I got on at Colorado, because it couldn't even stop to pickup more people inside of Downing, but then I was screwed in the evening because it would already be full passing Broadway. Buses don't work for neighborhoods as urban as Cap Hill, but sure it's fine for a context like Colorado or Federal.

To say it would have similar ridership to an existing bus line, though, is insane. You're talking about the most meaningful connection through the bullseye of density, jobs, attractions, retail, and dining. Cherry Creek Shopping Center alone has thousands of low-wage workers, WHO WE NEED TO BETTER SERVE. We don't have a single fixed transit line serving existing neighborhoods, so why don't we actually give that a try?? Comparing it theoretically to a bus line through a buffalo preserve??

The fact of the matter is Denver has spent $7 billion on FasTracks and Union Station and is only getting more and more auto-dependent. Density is actually soaring in the city as you have a roughly 100 square mile city (excluding DIA, 153 sq mi with DIA) where the population has gone from 554,000 in 2000 to 715,000 in 2020. There's always another 20-30,000 units in the pipeline, and Denver isn't annexing land. Why can't we seem to make meaningful progress on this like other peer cities like Seattle or Portland? What if we stopped treating density (pre-existing or potential) like some kind of cancer in Denver??

(brace for internet people to ignore this and cite old density stats that include the airport)

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by gopokes21

Buses don't work for neighborhoods as urban as Cap Hill, but sure it's fine for a context like Colorado or Federal.

Buses have been working for Cap Hill for decades. And Cap Hill is effectively a zero growth area. I am not sure that is where I think we should be putting our transit dollars, versus in areas that can (or least, will) still accommodate the next generation of growth in Denver.

Do you understand how transit governance works in Denver, and why we keep drawing distinctions at the City/County line? (You pulled Austin in - again, more regional tax base.) RTD is a trainwreck and Fastracks was largely a waste, I do not think you'll get much disagreement here. Nobody here is loudly advocating for finishing the B-line - but it is an albatross around the neck of our regional transit agency that cannot be ignored. It's actually really difficult (read: impossible) to take a regional agency with a Board spread over an area bigger than some states, and focus that tax base into Denver-centric transit. And it is a much, much harder discussion when you have to do it with the City alone. You are conflating apples and oranges and trying to make a point that I think most of us already agree with. But most of us have also been having this conversation for 20 years, and are more interested in having it if there is some notion of 'how can this be implemented' as part of the conversation. Does that conversation including 'settling' for what we can afford? Obviously, that is the real world. It doesn't mean that sort of incrementalism can't have value, and materially improve transportation (and arguably by extension, land use) in our City. (Note I did not say region. The City vs. region dynamics are real and can't be ignored here. I can't speak to how that compares to similar regional dynamics in Seattle, but I don't live in Seattle - I know the problem set we are dealing with here. Although, it wasn't all that long ago that we mocked Sound Transit as a joke agency that hadn't accomplished anything, and RTD was the golden child. In a lot of ways, they had the luxury of learning from our mistakes.)

You think many of us haven't studied, at length - with professional resources brought to bear - how to implement transit on the exact corridor you're talking about - Downtown to Cherry Creek to Colorado? We have. If it was easy, it would be done. But the balance of cost, ridership potential, and political will, is a tough equation to balance.

I guess to summarize - most of us are not disagreeing with you. We just know more about it than you, and it's really damn difficult to do.

Edit: Agree 100% with bobg's post.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by laniroj

We can continue creating these sterile environments with really nice buildings but a generally poor pedestrian experience or we can radically shift our thinking on planning and shrink roads, shrink right of ways, and allow the human experience to take precedent over cars and trucks.

Stating the obvious here, but this is going to remain difficult until we have decent transportation alternatives in place. (The East Side planning process - and the never-ending chicken and egg conversation, made this apparent.) That is why the BRT conversation is so important. If we are going to upend three generations of how people view land use in the U.S., including Denver, we are probably not going to do that in a single revolution (sorry Bernie bros). Good BRT is the transitional transit solution that (a) works, (b) can be implemented affordably at the scale we need - many, many miles of it, to (c) allow the land use revolution to occur. And it isn't a check-and-egg problem, in my mind. The land use has to come first, I think; in today's world, and how we fund transportation, transportation always lags. So after our land use revolution, then, and only then, might fancy grade separated rail make sense. (Or maybe not - maybe BRT-done-right is something people actually like. If I lived in Lima, Peru, I wouldn't be agitating for rail, probably, because that bus is great to ride. I'd want more BRT before I'd want to waste money converting BRT I liked into something else.) In any case, we don't have the City we need, today, to justify it. So our focus needs to be on how we build that City. Widespread (good) BRT enables that.

[SirLucasTheGreat]

I really would love to see an explosion of BRT service but it seems that RTD has some fundamental budgetary/service quality issues that I think push a lot of people into cars. I think it is hard to find another metro area under 5 million people that has as large of a passenger rail system as Denver. However, we have some of the nation's highest fares, low frequency services, and the cost benefit analysis does not favor using transit for many people. If you could get a regional RTD pass for $50 to $80/month, I feel like the numbers would work out for substantially more people. Another issue, which the pandemic has only exacerbated, is that we don't seem to have all that consolidated of a downtown commercial core compared to other towns. A lot of people commute to DTC, Centennial, Lone Tree, etc... The percentage of commuters that need to travel to Union Station or 16th and California does not seem as substantial as I would like for it to be in an ideal, Sim City world. Is there a policy solution for revitalizing downtown into a larger commuter destination or is that world a thing of the past at this point?

[Sam Hill]

Originally Posted by gopokes21

The fact of the matter is Denver has spent $7 billion on FasTracks and Union Station

No, that was RTD, not Denver.

Denver couldn’t possibly come up with $7 billion to spend on anything. And RTD can’t expect the region it serves to provide billions to spend on new infrastructure that will only serve Denver. This is where we’re stuck. We’ve been over this and over this. This conversation has been had many times over the years.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by SirLucasTheGreat

Is there a policy solution for revitalizing downtown into a larger commuter destination or is that world a thing of the past at this point?

Lots and lots of articles about this in the transit world. RTD isn't even the worst off - plenty of commuter rail-only agencies that do not know what to do. What the heck is the future of the Metra system in Chicago, now, for example, if your daily commuter totals are down by 40-60% per day in a hybrid-work world?

Interestingly, the road traffic patterns are different now too - different peaks, lower peaks, but more of them and more spread out. In some ways, we are getting more traction out of our highway lane-miles than we were before the pandemic. But it actually makes the car-vs-transit trade-off different too. It's easier to drive on the 2-3 days/week a person still does it; 40-60% drop in parking demand makes that cheaper too; etc. COVID and hybrid work have realized the dreams of every transportation-demand-management program ever by flattening a lot of the peaks.

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Lots and lots of articles about this in the transit world. RTD isn't even the worst off - plenty of commuter rail-only agencies that do not know what to do. What the heck is the future of the Metra system in Chicago, now, for example, if your daily commuter totals are down by 40-60% per day in a hybrid-work world?

Interestingly, the road traffic patterns are different now too - different peaks, lower peaks, but more of them and more spread out. In some ways, we are getting more traction out of our highway lane-miles than we were before the pandemic. But it actually makes the car-vs-transit trade-off different too. It's easier to drive on the 2-3 days/week a person still does it; 40-60% drop in parking demand makes that cheaper too; etc. COVID and hybrid work have realized the dreams of every transportation-demand-management program ever by flattening a lot of the peaks.

Seems as if the commuting trends, assuming that this is what they look like going forwards, screams for RTD to implement their system optimization plan in an expedited manner. Given it's focus on around-the-clock service frequency, albeit on a regional level, it makes sense to get the 15-minute service frequency rolled out on the core routes asap. 18 hours of 15-minutes is a start, though it needs to be 24 hours and 10 minutes in the next five years or so.

Get 'da bus locked down, make some incremental improvements, and maybe in another 20-25 years we can talk some rail additions.

Still waiting on the drop in parking rates- it's currently cheaper for me to take the train downtown rather than parking anywhere including the sketchy Arapahoe Square lots.

[mhays]

Since Seattle came up, I'll chime in. We use multiple agencies and multiple funding levels.

Sound Transit handles light rail and long-distance buses in the developed parts of a three-county area. The challenge is that investments need to match tax revenues in subareas, and that's proving to be inadequate for a well-designed version of the upcoming round of expansions, including a decent version of a tunnel through Downtown. To address this, the state legislature just gave ST the ability to run additional funding measures for specific subareas, but really for Seattle itself. So we'll have a measure pretty soon and it'll pass.

Metro Transit operates in King County, the closest 2.3m. It handles local buses and a little streetcar service. The county provides better service than the other counties. Also, Seattle voters augment the county funding with additional funding for in-city routes.

This might be a good approach for Denver. Maybe a Fastrax2 plus additional in-city revenues?

[DenverInfill]

Originally Posted by mhays

Since Seattle came up, I'll chime in. We use multiple agencies and multiple funding levels.

Sound Transit handles light rail and long-distance buses in the developed parts of a three-county area. The challenge is that investments need to match tax revenues in subareas, and that's proving to be inadequate for a well-designed version of the upcoming round of expansions, including a decent version of a tunnel through Downtown. To address this, the state legislature just gave ST the ability to run additional funding measures for specific subareas, but really for Seattle itself. So we'll have a measure pretty soon and it'll pass.

Metro Transit operates in King County, the closest 2.3m. It handles local buses and a little streetcar service. The county provides better service than the other counties. Also, Seattle voters augment the county funding with additional funding for in-city routes.

This might be a good approach for Denver. Maybe a Fastrax2 plus additional in-city revenues?

Thanks, honorary Denver-thread member mhays for your always-insightful comments! Something needs to give because our one-size-fits-all transit agency covering an area of 1000+ square miles with a board elected from geographic districts just isn't working.