“When the facts change,” John Maynard Keynes once said, “I change my mind. What do you do?”
If you are a government agency like Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD), you simply ignore the new facts. That’s because your plans are based on a delicate political compromise, not on a realistic assessment of those facts.
The latest facts show that one of RTD’s proposed FasTracks rail lines will cost almost 60% more and will carry only 55% as many riders than projected in 2004. As a result, the cost-per-rider on that line has ballooned to more than $60, nearly four times the 2004 estimate and more than six times the cost of bus-rapid transit. Yet RTD still wants to build the line.
That’s because of politics. When RTD wrote its 2004 FasTracks plan, the mayors of Denver’s major suburbs all said they would support it if they all got a rail line and all of the rail lines were built simultaneously. They knew there would probably be cost overruns, and figured that if some lines were built later than others, the last ones would probably never get done.
Of course, there have been cost overruns — so far, the 2004 projection of $4.7 billion has swelled to $7.9 billion — and RTD doesn’t have enough money to build all of the lines. But the various cities insist on holding RTD to its promise of building all of the lines (which means they want to go to the voters to ask for another tax increase).
The incapability to accomplish maternity may be because of drop in par sperm formation or because of poor cheap tadalafil 20mg sperm motility. Medical researchers proved that only 10% rx generic viagra of this total will actually seek help. Tech Savvy Younger Generation With time and the effect of the medicine will last check out address levitra online for 6 hours. price of cialis It helps to eliminate worn out cells from your body. Boulder is not Denver’s largest suburb (Aurora, Arvada, Lakewood, Thornton, and Westminister are all bigger), but it is one of the loudest, that is, most politically active. The rail line RTD wanted to build towards Boulder followed an existing rail corridor, but that corridor only served a corner of Boulder and missed both the downtown and university area. So to provide Boulder with better service, RTD proposed a bus-rapid transit line to the university and downtown.
That bus-rapid transit line was, by all measures, far more cost-effective than any of the rail lines, which raised embarrassing questions about why RTD was so intent on rail in the rest of the region — questions that RTD ignored. That’s because of the politics: Even though Boulder’s bus-rapid transit will be faster and more frequent than the rail lines to any of the other cities, Boulder has to have a rail line too or it will be considered a second-class suburb.
RTD’s latest analysis is even worse for the Boulder rail line. Not only has the projected cost risen from $565 million to $897 million (see p. 2), projected ridership has fallen from 8,000 to 4,400 people per day. As a result, RTD now projects that the cost of carrying one rider for one trip on that line has increased from the $16 estimated in 2004 to more than $60 (see page 7). The cost per trip of the BRT line has increased too, but is still under $10.
Note that this is not the cost per new trip, that is, the cost of getting someone out of their car and onto transit. This is simply the cost per average trip. If half the riders would otherwise have taken the bus-rapid transit or some other bus line, then the cost per new trip would be $120. Very few rail lines are that expensive — even the BART to San Jose line was projected to cost “only” $100 per new trip.
The solution to RTD’s dilemma is simple. Replace all of the rail lines with BRT. Then none of the suburbs will feel they are short-changed. Service can be implemented a lot sooner than waiting for rail construction, and taxpayers will get the mobility they wanted while saving billions of dollars.
Of course, RTD refuses to consider this option. That’s the problem with government planning: Once an agency has written a plan, it becomes almost impossible to change it no matter how the facts change.
Of course, RTD refuses to consider this option. That’s the problem with government planning: Once an agency has written a plan, it becomes almost impossible to change it no matter how the facts
If the politicians wanted to change the plan, they would.
Let me see if I understand.
1. The mayors of Denver’s major suburbs want RTD to build a rail line.
2. RTD doesn’t have enough money to build all of the lines, but the various cities insist on having RTD build the lines. The politicians will ask the voters for more money.
3. The city of Boulder is insisting that RTD build them a rail line, apparently because its politicians (who are concerned about “imageâ€Â) don’t want to be considered a “second-class suburbâ€Â.
To summarize: local elected officials are mandating that RTD build them rail lines. Rather than basing their mandates on “a realistic assessment†of the facts, politicians are basing their mandates on their desire to look good in relation to other jurisdictions, which ultimately helps determine the success of their own political careers.
Having read all that, surely the Antiplanner will end by criticizing politics and politicians, right? Surely the Antiplanner will criticize a system that allows politicians to make decisions based on such trivialities as city image rather than on sound principles like cost effectiveness? Surely the Antiplanner will criticize the decision-makers rather than those who are mandated to carry out the decisions, right?
WRONG!!! The Antiplanner DOES NOT criticize the politicians!
Instead, amazingly, the Antiplanner criticizes…wait for it…PLANNING!
Even though the mayors are making the decisions, and even though the voters will ultimately decide whether to fund the rail lines, the Antiplanner concludes that planning is to blame.
Amazing. I guess that’s what happens when you write with an agenda…
In the Antiplanner’s world,
1. if politicians order a planning agency to do X, and
2. if the voters give politicians the money to give the planning agency to do X, and
3. the planning agency obeys by doing X, and
4. the Antiplanner doesn’t like X, then
5. the planning agency is at fault, not the politicians or voters, and one can conclude that planning doesn’t work.
The irony is that if the planning agency disobeyed by NOT doing X, the Antiplanner would criticize the planning agency for having too much power, pursuing its own agenda, not representing the public will, etc. etc. etc.
D4P, things are more complex than metro Denver mayors wanting their rail lines. What they want is to not lose out on what they’ve already been promised. And what they were promised was Fastracks. Fastracks was arguably assembled in a manner to appease politicians and not what would make most sense in terms of transporting people. That’s why things like the heavy rail line from Boulder to Longmont were in the plan in the first place. Even under the most optimistic projections, that line was projected to only carry a couple thousand people a day and still cost over $280 million. That’s why there is barely anything going on, just extending the SE line a few miles, with the SE corridor with Fastracks even though it is Denver’s job center. Nor do areas projected to have large portions of job growth in the next 2 decades, such as DIA / Pena / I70 or Interlocken, have anything but lines connecting them with downtown, a downtown that doesn’t have any more jobs than it did 25 years ago.
I don’t believe the mayors care that much if it is rail or cow paths. What they don’t want to lose out on is something they were already told they were going to get (and are all paying for in many ways). They don’t want to see Lakewood get a LRT line while they end up getting nothing while other get something.
Now it may not be planners that should be blamed for that. It’s the nature of politics. But with so much planning being done by governments and with politics being intertwined with those things, the result is the same either way. A plan that once it’s put out there is very difficult to change no matter what new things we learn.
A plan that once it’s put out there is very difficult to change no matter what new things we learn.
Does that mean we should never create plans to build new roads and highways, or new suburban subdivisions?
I agree with D4P. It seems ridiculous that planning/planners should be blamed for the political motivations of individuals. Under this logic we should blame the troops for the war in Iraq.
Also, wasn’t the “PLAN” to have BRT going to boulder, not rail?
“The solution to RTD’s dilemma is simple. Replace all of the rail lines with BRT.”
Almost. Replace all HOV lanes with BRT. In fact wasn’t that the “PLAN” for the Boulder BRT line?
Even better. Replace all low occupancy lanes with BRT.
We also must remember that few of the cities in the RTD jurisdiction have strong mayors. This allows City Councils to jerk around in political posturing, while the costs of materials go up and up.
The issue with BRT is that a large fraction of riders on the Front Range prefer trains over buses. They are more likely to ride LR than BRT. That’s how it is.
DS
The issue with BRT is that a large fraction of riders on the Front Range prefer trains over buses. They are more likely to ride LR than BRT. That’s how it is.
Are you saying that the Antiplanner is an elitist trying to impose on Colorado his own ideas of how best to live…?
Dan-
What do you mean by “a large fraction of riders on the Front Range prefer trains over buses?” Is it that more people will take a train than a bus if the speed, frequency, etc. are the same for both modes? Do you have any evidence to support your claim?
Dan wrote:
> The issue with BRT is that a large fraction of riders on the Front Range prefer trains
> over buses. They are more likely to ride LR than BRT. That’s how it is.
Dan, please provide a source for your assertions above, beyond That’s how it is.
D4P wrote:
“In the Antiplanner’s world,
1. if politicians order a planning agency to do X, and
2. if the voters give politicians the money to give the planning agency to do X, and
3. the planning agency obeys by doing X, and
4. the Antiplanner doesn’t like X, then
5. the planning agency is at fault, not the politicians or voters, and one can conclude that planning doesn’t work.
The irony is that if the planning agency disobeyed by NOT doing X, the Antiplanner would criticize the planning agency for having too much power, pursuing its own agenda, not representing the public will, etc. etc. etc.”
That’s true.
Dan, please provide a source for your assertions above, beyond That’s how it is.
Oops. Apologies.
It is basic knowledge that certain demographics have negative perceptions about riding buses. This goes into all of our transportation planning. Viz.:
To wit, there are numerous psychological reasons involved here, and aside from the above, there are sorting issues as well, as the above link teases out:
and the perception of safety may be demographic as well.
So, ceterus paribus, most folk prefer trains.
One wonders whether ideologies advocating the less safer transit alternative is a rhetorical strategy to foster negative perceptions of transit, to allow positive perceptions of automobile advocacy.
DS
The real question mark for me in this matter is how the ridership projections fell by half. It raises a lot of questions about the modeling. Surely metro Denver hasn’t changed that much in the last 5-10 years to cause that large of a shift. And even if it had, how would the US36 corridor incur such a large drop in ridership? It still has plenty of space for growth and plenty of reason for growth. Interlocken is emerging as a metro’s 3rd largest concentration of office space. And places like Boulder continue to add jobs while severely restricting how many new residents the city may add. On top of that Broomfield, Westminister, Superior and others are looking at adding plenty of jobs.
Such a severe drop in such a short amount of time leads me to question the models. Do the models work with back testing? Have they been shown to properly predict future events? Were the models changed at all?
It’d be nice to know more about them. Politically RTD would’ve had incentive at the time of Fastracks planning to fish for reasons to shower Boulder country with potential rewards for voting for the project. They needed those votes to make up for other areas that were unlikely to have many voters in favor of the project.
At this point in time they could really use some good reasons to drop a line from the project. IIRC the spending cap for the project is $7.1 billion. This could be a chance for them to get back under that by dropping the Denver – Boulder – Longmont heavy rail line. The line has always made the least sense. And they don’t have any apparent means to get everything else built without some major cutbacks.
“The issue with BRT is that a large fraction of riders on the Front Range prefer trains over buses. They are more likely to ride LR than BRT. That’s how it is.”
True, LRT has about a 25% premium in terms of ridership. So on any one given corridor you will get more people on the train. On the other hand, for the cost of one LRT corridor you could build 3 BRT corridors and carry 250% more riders. So which one does more good?
That’s the question between long term and short term.
Also the rail line to Golden that the RTD is doing is a restoration of service project.
Technically it’s not a restoration of service. The old narrow gauge trolley was an interurban line. Since then the area has grown. Golden is now part of the Denver-Aurora MSA. It’s now an intraburban line. More importantly it’s standard gauge instead of the cheap ol’ narrow gauge rails that it had. The cars have more capacity too. They carry 125 people, 1/2 of those standing, instead of the 50 the old cars could carry.
I’d be curious what the old time tables were like and exactly which old routes are being followed with the West Corridor. The old system had something like 250 miles of track so it shouldn’t be too hard to end up following some of the old routes. Just curious how exact it is and if any wre the exact same route versus following a few routes. But it is good that they’re not trying to fully reproduce what used to be there. Although steam engines and a branch route to the ghetto (Barnum nbhd) would be kinda cool.
So, it’s still a restoration of rail service to the area.
The government’s fixing some thing that it broke for a change, quite freaky!