Last Friday, Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD) opened the West line, its latest low-capacity rail (formerly known as light-rail) line. Officials gave opening speeches claiming that they built the West line “within the adopted budget” and, at the end of the day, sent a memo to RTD’s board bragging that the new line carried 35,000 passengers on the opening day, well above the projected 20,000 per weekday.
Of course, the reason they carried so many people is that the line was free on the first two days. But RTD officials can hardly open their mouths without some lie coming out.
Start with the claim that they built it under budget. As the Antiplanner pointed out in an op ed in yesterday’s Denver Post, when RTD decided to build the rail line in 1997, it projected a cost of $250 million ($350 million in today’s money). As of 2009, the “adopted budget” was for $710 million, more than twice projected. The actual cost ended up being $707 million, allowing RTD to say it was under the budgeted $710 million but still more than twice the projected cost.
Then there is the claim that they projected ridership of 20,000 people per weekday. In fact, the original projection was nearly 30,000. After gaining approval for the project, they cut this back so that if they carry, say, 20,001 they’ll be able to say the line exceeded expectations. Even at the 1997 cost and ridership estimates, bus-rapid transit was projected to be almost twice as cost-effective at reducing congestion than the rail option.
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If people had known in 1997 that rails would cost twice as much and carry only two-thirds as many people as 1997 estimates, would they have supported the rail line? Only if they believed, as so many rail advocates do, that trains are worthwhile no matter what the cost.
RTD also claims this is the “first leg” of the agency’s FasTracks plan to build 120 miles of rail lines in the region. For what it’s worth, the West line was already fully financed and would have been built even if voters had rejected the FasTracks ballot measure in 2004.
Meanwhile, RTD is going back on its promise to keep the basement of Denver’s Union Station available for use by local model railroaders. Most of the modelers, whose layouts have been in the station for several decades, no doubt supported RTD’s rail expansion plans and takeover of Union Station. Now the group that is renovating the station says the modelers are in the way.
This seems to be the pattern set by transit agencies nationwide. They will promise anything to get your support. Once voters or appropriators have approved funding, however, those promises are discarded as so much detritus and anyone who objects is portrayed as standing in the way of the “progress” of moving the city back to early twentieth-century transportation, combined, of course, with late twentieth-century traffic congestion.
And you can have it all for just $ 700,000,000. Call now and I’ll throw in your children’s future debt and economic disparity absolutely free. Call in the next ten minutes and I’ll personally throw in thousands of low income riders who can’t afford to ride the rail. YOU CAN’T GET A BARGAIN LIKE THAT ANYWHERE ELSE.
CALL TODAY 1-800-URS-KRWD
“They will promise anything to get your support. Once voters or appropriators have approved funding, however, those promises are discarded…”
Sometimes democracy is a bitch.
Be cautious of the term democracy. Democracy simply means “we voted” or the “I’s have it”. Majority agrees? It was a majority that put Hitler in power. The Founding Fathers intended this country as a Republic. They despised the world “Democracy” as a description of a nation. They instilled democratic principles to a Republic. We have a set of standards and rules.
“Be cautious of the term democracy. Democracy simply means “we voted” or the “I’s have it”. Majority agrees?”
If people don’t vote the way you want a) you didn’t explain it well enough, or b) it was a bad plan. Either way it’s your problem, not the fault of the voters or democracy.
$700 million for 20,000 passengers equals $35,000 per passenger–before counting costs of operation, maintenance, interest on bonds, etc.
Anither case where buying a Prius for each passenger would work best??
I wonder what the true cost of automobile transport is, if you were to add up all of it like the anti-rail folk are wont to do. Deaths per year, carbon emissions, eutrophication, urban stream degradation, urban heat island, noise…
DS
@antiplanner, don’t forget that the West Line isn’t what was promised voters. I’m not talking about ticky-tack differences between implementation and original plans. The line does not serve downtown Golden. It stops several miles short because RTD _assumed_ CDOT would hand a bunch land over to them for _free_.
The true costs of the line to build the line as planned into downtown Golden, that is to compare apples with apples, are more likely in the $850 million to $1 billion range. More problematic is that RTD sold the voters a bill of goods it had no right to sell them. They didn’t bother to even get a verbal agreement for CDOT for the land they needed.