DENVER | Transportation Thread

[PLANSIT]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

You just like the Madison Street BRT bcuz it uses ETB's.

At $57 million per mile that would make the East Cofax BRT $570 million as opposed to the $115/120 million it's currently pegged at. Not really a fair comparison though and I'd agree that on short, high value routes that top shelf finish may be totally justified. Per the link, Madison Street from downtown goes through high density neighborhoods, links with their streetcar and with their ferry service as well as "dozens" of bus routes.

My "proposal" was to use segments for top shelf finish where the rest of the route would drop to an enhanced level of upgrades. That's actually what Seattle did with (at least) some of their first six routes. There are areas of dedicated lanes and even queue jumps B4 the route dropped to a lower level of service.

It's not that simple, as Seattle is purchasing a whole new trolley-bus fleet with left-side doors to allow for shared center platforms. That's a big capital cost. Colfax BRT isn't planning to buy an entire new fleet (30-40 buses).

[The Dirt]

Also, it's not BRT. It's barely enhanced bus marketed as BRT.

[TakeFive]

Originally Posted by PLANSIT

It's not that simple, as Seattle is purchasing a whole new trolley-bus fleet with left-side doors to allow for shared center platforms. That's a big capital cost. Colfax BRT isn't planning to buy an entire new fleet (30-40 buses).

Thanks for the clarification; that would make a yuge difference. I did see where they mentioned using "state-of-the-art electric trolley buses" but what had little meaning to me, you've explained.

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Except there is no new revenue to pay for the COPs. So it's a massive hit to the CDOT maintenance budget for the term of the debt.

It appears that your concern is partly justified.

Erica Meltzer in today's Denverite has some followup and additional details.

Funds a $1.8 billion roads program and a $120 million capital construction program by selling certificates of participation on state property. This is a debt mechanism that doesn’t require voter approval, and it obligates the state to pay $100 million in general fund money and $50 million in Highway User Tax Fund money to pay off that debt.

Unsurprising, some Republicans are dismayed by the "end run" around TABOR by the hospital provider fee into an enterprise fund. I'm still amazed they were able to get this part accomplished.

In the House, Rep. John Becker said the bill forces the state to prioritize roads spending out of existing revenue rather than going to the voters for a tax increase, something Republicans have wanted, perhaps as badly as Democrats have wanted to reclassify the provider fee.

“That is putting skin in the game for transportation,” Becker said. “That is the stuff we’ve been asking for.”

Admittedly, this is a bandaid for CDOT even if a nice big bandaid. I was really hoping they would pass the originally proposed bill (as you might recall).

Over at the DBJ, Ed Sealover has a 5/8 article addressing that issue:

But Colorado Contractors Association Executive Director Tony Milo, who arguably has pushed harder than any other figure outside the Capitol for the Legislature to ramp up highway funding, called that amount “a small down payment” on what needs to be done. He will huddle with other business leaders in the three weeks after the session to decide whether to go forward with one of six proposed tax-hike ballot initiatives that would pump more money into the state’s transportation system.

He's right ofc and eventually they still need to come with additional dedicated revenue for CDOT.

[PLANSIT]

Originally Posted by The Dirt

Also, it's not BRT. It's barely enhanced bus marketed as BRT.

Stay tuned.

[TakeFive]

Learning Something New Every Day

Photo credit: KINKISHARYO/flickr via Planetizen

Tempe Streetcar
Don't want no stinkin' unsightly poles and wires on Mill Ave?
Go with hybrid streetcars.

Tempe will be home to a hybrid streetcar
Apr 28, 2017 By Jeff Van Sant - 3TV/CBS 5

Now, what makes this stand out is the fact that this streetcar is a hybrid. There will be some areas, like on Mill Avenue, where it will run solely on batteries.

"We have a lot of trees here on Mill Avenue and that would be a conflict so this is a perfect area to make this happen."

Mill Ave is the widely popular, ASU millennial infested business district. Another interesting tidbit is that construction on Mill Ave (for the most part) will only occur in June and July for 2017, 2018 and 2019 and from 1:00 am - 10:00 am. This ofc is off-season for both students and tourists.

It turns out that an article by Philip Rojc 12/7/15 in Planetizen points out that
"Dallas Has Nation's First Hybrid Streetcar"

At critical points, Dallas' streetcar system runs without overhead cables. Two batteries underneath the car store enough power to propel the train across a mile-long bridge.

Dallas has joined Guangzhou, China as one of the only cities with a "wireless" battery-powered streetcar. Bill Zeeble reports, "Unlike almost every street car in the world – from San Francisco to Strasbourg, France – this one lacks a pole constantly connected to a live wire overhead."

Bottom of the 6th inning, Rockies 10 - Cubs 2

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

Admittedly, this is a bandaid for CDOT even if a nice big bandaid. I was really hoping they would pass the originally proposed bill (as you might recall).

It's a funny bandaid. CDOT is going to suffer a ~10% decrease in maintenance funding to help pay for some capital projects (i.e. expanded capacity). Which will then have to be maintained using the decreased maintenance budget. But it does force the State to provide $100M annually from the General Fund to pay for the COPs- so the State is effectively forced to resume General Fund transfers to CDOT. But, it doesn't address the structural gap between maintenance needs and funding. Which means that existing roads will continue to degrade.

[TakeFive]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

It's a funny bandaid. CDOT is going to suffer a ~10% decrease in maintenance funding to help pay for some capital projects (i.e. expanded capacity). Which will then have to be maintained using the decreased maintenance budget. But it does force the State to provide $100M annually from the General Fund to pay for the COPs- so the State is effectively forced to resume General Fund transfers to CDOT. But, it doesn't address the structural gap between maintenance needs and funding. Which means that existing roads will continue to degrade.

Certainly more questions than answers here and I agree that CDOT is still woefully underfunded. Still, don't totally discount the value of $1.8 billion. If $450 million goes to rural non-freeway spending then that's a good bit of maintenance. Actually some of those projects will likely combine expansion with repaving. I have no idea what projects will be tackled though.

Just for grins I decided to look at The Gap which is the expansion of I-25 from Monument to Castle Rock. I found this recent nifty pdf presentation. Not sure where you came up with your 10% maintenance figure but on page 9 there's a graphic that indicates CDOT spends $750 million on maintaining existing roads. 10% is reasonably close though.

So many questions so let's guess at some answers
I found the project estimated at $300 million to $500 million. Let's assume $450 million. BTW, from looking through the presentation it's clear that project will be a total rebuild. How much Federal Grant money can CDOT get? Let's apply the Trump Formula. Let's assume that CDOT receives $75 million in Federal money and $225 million in P3 money. That leaves CDOT to come up with $150-$200 million depending on final costs. If they sign a design/build/manage and maintain contract then they won't have to worry about future maintenance so there's that. I'll also guess that the Express Lane gets extended back towards Colorado Springs if they do the project this way.

So there are potential silver linings behind those grey clouds.

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

Just for grins I decided to look at The Gap which is the expansion of I-25 from Monument to Castle Rock. I found this recent nifty pdf presentation. Not sure where you came up with your 10% maintenance figure but on page 9 there's a graphic that indicates CDOT spends $750 million on maintaining existing roads. 10% is reasonably close though.

FY16-17 CDOT Final budget. That $750M figure is from the FY17-18 CDOT Draft Budget. I fudged the math at bit as the budget was actually $588M for maintenance. However, before you point to the increase, that's not the State being generous and addressing the structural maintenance gap. That's CDOT retiring $120M in debt service and moving the entire amount up the sheet to maintenance. But, now that's going to be reduced by the mandated bonding program.

Wonder why CDOT didn't put that $120M towards capital projects? Maybe because they understand just how woefully underfunded the maintenance program is and what deferred maintenance does in the long run?

[Cirrus]

Yeah, wireless streetcars are coming to more and more places. Savannah, Georgia also has one, although theirs is a diesel hybrid. We've done a lot to study them in DC too because of anti-wire rules around the federal monuments.

But it's all kind of silly because there are tons of wire-based streetcar systems in front of major world landmarks that nobody complains about. See the Roman colosseum, and the Vienna state opera, and Amsterdam's royal palace, none of which suffer remotely because of the wires. So we'll double the cost of our streetcars by getting rid of the wires, and all the same people will probably still find something else about the project to oppose, because it's rarely really about the wires.

I'd prefer we just keep the damn wires.

[CharlesCO]

...or at the very least, keep the wires, but ditch them and go battery-operated for the few hundred or thousand feet in the places where they might be deemed too sensitive. The tramway in Nice does that at sections through Place Garibaldi, where the whole thing is essentially a huge pedestrian plaza.

[TakeFive]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

FY16-17 CDOT Final budget. That $750M figure is from the FY17-18 CDOT Draft Budget. ... That's CDOT retiring $120M in debt service and moving the entire amount up the sheet to maintenance. But, now that's going to be reduced by the mandated bonding program.

I figured you had a good source. Good sleuthing on the debt retirement.

For now, I'm just glad that CDOT is getting what they are and that the hospital provider fees will now be an enterprise fund.

My preference would be for Colorado to follow the lead of other growing states like Utah, Washington and Georgia where each raised sizable sums for their state DOT through gas and other tax increases. In WA and GA it was nearly a trillion dollars. It's sad that it only takes a few key Republicans who pledge their allegiance to the Koch Bro/Prosperity for America ideology to scuttle even taking something to the voters.

Oregon transportation plan calls for I-5 tolls, gas tax hike, payroll tax
May 8, 2017 by Tracy Loew - Statesman Journal

Oregon lawmakers are proposing raising the state gas tax, increasing vehicle title and registration fees, and implementing a payroll tax to raise billions of dollars for transportation infrastructure improvements.

It's projected to raise about $8.1 billion over ten years. This is the part that I like:

The current 30 cent per gallon state fuel tax would increase by 6 cents next year, and another 2 cents every other year through 2026.

Oregon's fuel tax would initially go up to $.36 a gallon and to $.44 in 2026. Colorado's is stuck at $.22 cents. Not a done deal as this a draft in the proposal stage so time will tell.

[TakeFive]

Originally Posted by COtoOC

And I really don't get the big "bridge over Colfax" stop. There's no parking, and it's a long walk from there to anywhere in Anschutz. When we stopped at Colfax, I think 1 or 2 people got on. Seems like a lot of buck for not much bang.

The primary purpose of the Colfax Station bridge (apparently) is to look pretty... or 'studly' for the urban cowboys out there. It does seem to have accomplished that.


Photos courtesy of RTD/flickr

[jubguy3]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

The primary purpose of the Colfax Station bridge (apparently) is to look pretty... or 'studly' for the urban cowboys out there. It does seem to have accomplished that.


Photos courtesy of RTD/flickr

How could that possibly be the best place to put the station? It would have to be so much wider (more expensive) to accommodate the platform, and based on what I understand it's really far from actual destinations. The only bridge stop that we have is a flying junction station with frontrunner and the airport TRAX but even then it was part of the project to replace the crumbling north temple viaduct. How much did this line cost?





Our transit may be a little ugly, but at least it's functional and cheap. Is FasTracks over budget yet? Have all the lines opened since the debacle over the crossing gates? Yikes.

[PLANSIT]

^ It's a transfer location to the busiest bus corridor in the Mountain West (~ twice the ridership as the LRT/R-Line itself).

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by jubguy3

Our transit may be a little ugly, but at least it's functional and cheap. Is FasTracks over budget yet? Have all the lines opened since the debacle over the crossing gates? Yikes.

As was mentioned, it serves as a transfer station for the Colfax bus corridor that serves roughly the equivalent of a >1/3 of UTA's rail ridership daily. RTD's bus system is vastly larger then it's light rail system, about 3x more riders on the bus then the rail and bus to rail transfers are more important.

That said, the R Line is more of a salve to the largest Denver Metro suburb that suffers from a sever inferiority complex that was designed moreso for politics than transit policy.

[Cirrus]

It's also a very good TOD location. The R-line has serious other problems and really shouldn't have been built from a pure transit perspective, but I'm OK with this station.

And in the interests of not turning this into an SLC/Denver versus thread, I'll avoid directly hitting back on the "at least ours is functional" comment. But suffice it to say UTA has questionable lines too.

[jubguy3]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

It's also a very good TOD location. The R-line has serious other problems and really shouldn't have been built from a pure transit perspective, but I'm OK with this station.

And in the interests of not turning this into an SLC/Denver versus thread, I'll avoid directly hitting back on the "at least ours is functional" comment. But suffice it to say UTA has questionable lines too.

I'm just curious, what parts of UTA's system do you think are questionable?

[CharlesCO]

I think the Colfax station is fine. The bigger travesty is putting the Fitzsimons station next to, well, absolutely nothing, instead of putting it through, you know, Fitzsimons...

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by jubguy3

I'm just curious, what parts of UTA's system do you think are questionable?

If you promise not to get defensive and turn this into versus debate about any other city:

The S-line is not a good line, and its main problems will not be solved by future phases extending it deeper into Sugar House.

• The single track means it can never have headways frequent enough to justify the cost of rail, or be sufficiently practical for its intended function--local circulator type trips. 20 minutes is just not often enough to be worth it, for that sort of line.
• Combined with the 20 minute headways, the forced transfer to the rest of the system (despite being exactly the same vehicle) guarantees it will never be more than a low-ridership local shuttle.
• Despite having completely dedicated right-of-way (yay!), it still somehow manages to be as slow as mixed-traffic streetcars, defeating any benefit from running off-street rather than on 2100 S (where it also would've been slow but at least would've gotten more riders)

It was a good idea that was poorly executed, which is why its only getting 1/3 (maybe 1/2 now) of its projected riders, and ranks in the bottom quartile of US LRT/streetcar on a ridership-per-mile basis (ie even normalizing for how short it is, it's bad).

Now lemme be positive for a minute: I'm very impressed by SLC's system overall. No other comparably-sized US city has anywhere near as robust a rail system. And unlike Denver's R-Line (which was doomed from the start because it's a bad route--notice nobody is defending it), SLC's S-Line *could* have been good, had UTA designed it better. I'm not trying to hate on SLC here at all.

But UTA makes mistakes and builds dysfunctional lines, just like everybody else. And just like everybody else, I'm sure there are good political reasons for it.

[trubador]

there was really no other place to put that Colfax station. The absolute best place would be to run it down colfax, but there was just too much in the way (buildings, parking garages, etc). If they had just run it through campus (via Montview) then everything would have been much better with access to both the new VA hospital and a short walk to both Childrens and UCH.