Taking the A Line

Denver opened its rail line to the airport a few weeks ago, but it seems to have been rushed into operation. The Antiplanner took the train to Union Station on Wednesday and back on Thursday and fortunately allowed plenty of time because it was not very reliable.

The train is formally known as the University of Colorado A-Line, which is deceptive because it doesn’t actually go to the University of Colorado. Instead, the university paid $5 million for naming rights, which seems a strange thing for a public institution to do.

But then, deception is the name of the game for RTD’s new train. When I was on the airport subway to the terminal I heard a recorded announcement by Denver’s mayor, Michael Hancock, inviting people to take the A Line, which he said took “about 35 minutes to get to Union Station.” I happened to know that the train was scheduled to take 38 minutes, and mathematically, 38 is closer to “about 40” than “about 35.”

The deceptions began long before this. In 2004, RTD promised voters that this line would operate at an average speed of 45 mph. But 22 miles in 38 minutes is just 35 mph. In 1998, RTD said it could build the line for $350 million, or about $480 million in today’s dollars, but in fact they spent $1.1 billion.

After getting off the subway, I knew the train left from one end of the terminal, but Denver’s terminal is so symmetrical I always have a hard time determining which end is which. So I looked for signs pointing to the transit center, but none were visible from the subway escalators.

It took me a couple of minutes to orient myself, and that couple of minutes cost me 15 more because a train left just as I bought my ticket. That was poor planning on their part and disappointing for travelers (such as the Antiplanner) on a tight schedule.

After sitting on a stationary train for 14 minutes, we finally left the airport. Then, two station stops down, the operator announced that we would have to sit and wait for several more minutes because the next part of the rail line was single tracked and an airport-bound train was heading our way.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” I said to myself. They spent 2-1/4 times as much as the original projected cost and still couldn’t afford to double-track the entire line? No doubt they will come back in a few years and insist on spending another hundred million dollars or so fixing that bottleneck.

RTD formed a public-private partnership to build this particular line. The agency bragged that this would save money, but that’s another lie. In fact, they did it to avoid a debt limit that was included in the 2004 ballot measure. When cost overruns pushed the cost of the six lines from $4.7 to $7.6 billion, RTD knew it wouldn’t be able to complete those lines without exceeding the debt limit.
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The public-private partnership came to the rescue: the private partners borrowed the money and RTD contracted to pay the private partner a monthly fee that would be sufficient to repay the debt. Officially, the debt isn’t on RTD’s books, but it still has to repay it. Just another way to deceive the voters.

In any case, my “about 35 minutes” ride ended up taking 55 minutes including the 14 minutes waiting at the airport and the three-minute delay waiting for the on-coming train.

Arriving in Denver, I hustled the 1-1/2 mile walk to the event I was supposed to attend. There I learned there that just the day before the train had broken down, leaving eighty passengers stranded on a fifty-foot-high viaduct at 5 pm.

Eighty passengers at rush hour? Sounds like two buses would be sufficient to do what RTD is doing with a $1.2-billion train.

This was just one of several breakdowns in the train’s first month of operation. Even the crossing gates aren’t reliable, forcing the agency to put flaggers out at each crossing.

It’s too soon to tell what ridership will be, but RTD is already being deceptive there, too. Media reports say that weekday ridership in the first couple of weeks of operation was 15,680 people, which is short of the first-year ridership which “is expected to be 18,600.” In fact, page A-121 of the 2011 New Starts annual report says the first-year projected ridership was 27,500. RTD revised this downward so no one would be too upset when actual ridership fell well short of that level.

My return trip yesterday wasn’t quite as exciting. A train was waiting for me when I arrived at Union Station. Unfortunately, one of the two ticket machines next to the train was broken, and there was a long line in front of the other machine. A security guard pointed out some other machines in the distance, but almost none of the people in line were able to buy tickets before the train left.

RTD then had the crowd dance back and forth with successive announcements that the next train would arrive on track 2, then track 1, then track 2 again. Finally, the train did arrive on track 2 and the return trip to the airport was uneventful.

The Antiplanner isn’t surprised that everything about this line is a deception: speed claims, cost overruns, changed ridership projections, and on and on. Maybe ridership will increase, but even if it does, the region still would have been better off with a bus-rapid transit line like the one that recently opened between Denver and Boulder.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

6 Responses to Taking the A Line

  1. OFP2003 says:

    So much material here. You could almost make a “sitcom” something like Bob Newhart or “Green Acres” where there is only one sane person involved and all the politicians, planners, engineers, etc are all crazy.
    .
    “Well of course everyone knows 38 is closer to 35 than 40 because I was thinking of all 10 minutes between 30 and 39 and since I didn’t think “40” then 38 is closer because I actually said: “Thirty” before I said “eight” so it most certainly is closer.”
    .
    “Why are waiting”
    “We are single tracking here and another train is coming”
    “Well, why didn’t we just leave the station 3 minutes earlier then we could single track before them and they wouldn’t have to wait on us.”
    ” We count the time on the platform as part of the time we are providing service to our customers, but not as time they are receiving service from us. So if they wait on the train we can claim we are serving more customers but if they wait on the platform then we have to increase the number of riders we carry.”
    etc etc etc

  2. JOHN1000 says:

    “Instead, the university paid $5 million for naming rights, which seems strange for a public institution to do.”
    Just one taxpayer funded institution helping out a taxpayer funded boondoggle. Another $5,000,000.00 that doesn’t count against the debt limit.

    Fits right in with the post from a couple of days ago (also about Denver) : “if you steal from someone else, you’re out of the family forever.” But by “stealing” he meant one city taking from another, not lying to and stealing from the taxpayers, which was perfectly fine.

    Stealing from the taxpayers (whether by a university or a train line or a joint theft) is still perfectly fine

  3. CapitalistRoader says:

    Strange to hear negative comments about Denver light rail. According to every single local media outlet, the A-LIne is going to make Denver a WORLD CLASS CITY! It will be a GAME CHANGER! Realtors are giddy with excitement over the CORRIDOR of OPPORTUNITY that the A-Line creates. But what are we getting for our hard earned money? Not much:

    So with all those riders taking the new trains and buses instead of driving, will Denver’s traffic jams will be a thing of the past?

    No, said Steve Cook, a transportation and planning expert at the Denver Regional Council of Governments.

    “This is going to be a huge, huge year for Denver — FasTracks is a region-shaping initiative,” Cook said.

    But if the city continues to prosper economically, that means there will be congestion no matter what, he said.

    “All the biggest, best cities in the world have traffic congestion,” Cook said.
    RTD’s ride into the future: 2016 is a big year for Denver transit

  4. Dave Brough says:

    For me, the question is, How many of those 15,000-plus riders actually started or ended their trip at the airport? Given that most airport users also have bags in tow and would likely never consider a walk of any kind, let alone the 1.5 miles a la Randal, my guess that DIA’s airport ridership has reached its all-time high.
    Too bad the antiplanner didn’t Uber at least one leg so he could compare time, price and convenience.

  5. prk166 says:

    It’s too bad this train killed sky ride of Stapleton. It was nice being to drive a couple miles, park in the old ramp for free and spend $6 to take the bus to the airport where you got dropped off at the terminal.

    Luckily for most folks in Denver, SkyRide is still operating from it’s other locations.

  6. CapitalistRoader says:

    It’s been a few years since the P&R was free at Stapleton. I still preferred the old parking garage though even @ $1/day since it offered a roof with protection from hail. The new 40th & Colorado Station is a straight two miles north for me but it only has 200 spaces vs. Central Park Station’s 1500. Both are pricey @ $2/day + $18 for the RT ticket, so $32 for a five day trip. I think you can still buy discounted off-airport parking for $7/day.

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