Someone woke up to the RTD FasTracks boondoggle

Avarda CO - Denver suburbanites are beginning to take notice that the RTD's FasTracks program was over-hyped, full of lies and is costing them plenty. An opinion piece in the Mile High News by Tom Graham expresses many of the concerns that I have long held about rail and many other public transit projects.

Graham appeared to be a supporter of the FasTracks project to place new rail lines in the suburbs that would connect to Denver. Today he calls it a boondoggle. Why the change? The Utopian facade of rail is starting to fall apart with rapidly escalating costs, promises that weren't fulfilled, total lies and plans to take even more money from the residents to pay for it all.

RTD planners originally touted the project as a relief to the mounting traffic congestion in the Denver area. I could have told Mr. Graham from day one that reason was just spin to garner support by the traffic weary residents. There isn't one study, that anyone can produce, which shows rail will have a significant effect on the reduction of traffic. In most cases it is just the opposite and traffic congestion increases after a rail line opens for passenger traffic.

As Graham feels his wallet getting lighter by the minute, he has woken up to the fact that rail isn't the answer for Denver, or for many areas for that matter. He states that Avarda residents are already paying $2,600 each per year and not even one train is running. He fully expects that amount to increase and I agree.

He then complains that what is happening isn't what the people voted for. Again, I have to agree but also add this; What did he expect to happen when government is involved? What the voter wants rarely coincides with what they actually end up with. The Utopian vision painted by the supporters makes it easy to say "I want that" and cast a vote in favor of the plan. The reality is that what is presented is just spin. The ballot initiatives are written to encourage a yes vote as well.

Reality is like a slap in the face with a dead fish but the voters in Avarda and other Denver communities got exactly what they voted for because they didn't do their homework and find out more. Just listening to the RTD, politician and activist spin without bothering to take the time to look at the opposite side of the issue just played right into their hands. It's exactly what they were counting on.

Tom Graham has nailed the situation in the Denver area pretty good. It's just too bad he didn't see the light before now since it's too late to do anything about it. It's an expensive lesson that too many people learn after its too late simply because they believe the Utopian spin that rail is the Saviour and everything will be fine once a rail line is slapped down.

RTD could be $1 billion or more in the hole

Denver CO - The Rocky Mountain News reports that Denver's Fast Trax program could be $1 billion in the hole due to overestimating the revenues from a 0.4 percent tax hike approved in 2004. This is hardly a surprise to me as transit systems, as well as any government entity, always wildly inflate projected revenues and underestimate costs.

The $1 billion number is the projected deficit over 25 years but still accounts for 11 percent of the total. This 11% reduction in the tax hike isn't the only loss either, the dedicated sales tax that pays to operate the system is also taking a $1.63 billion dollar hit over the next 25 years.

This reduced revenue not only effects transit projects, it effects the operation of the transit system. In other words, Denver overestimated the revenues so they could justify building various transit projects and now they'll be screaming soon for more money or they'll cut service and raise fares.

This is a big problem throughout the transit industry. Too many operations rely on wildly inflated revenue projections to justify building rail lines and other costly transit projects. When the economy takes a hit, the hit to the transit system is greatly amplified due to using heavily tweaked revenue and cost projections.

The RTD is on an ambitious building campaign to extend its rail system and they may end up with major problems running what they have in place already. With the projections based on the current as well as planned operation over the next 25 years, this negative change in revenue predictions will have one of two effects as the projections may come down even further.

First is that the Fast Trax program, which millions have been spent on already, may be shelved which would be just tossing tax money away. Second is that they'll continue on building the entire plan, cutting corners where they can, and then do a major hack and slash of service on the bus side of the operation.

The taxpayers need to understand this important point when they hear about their transit system going on a building spree. Projected revenues are always greatly inflated as is projected ridership and project costs are always vastly underestimated. When the public remembers this simple fact, they begin to ask the tough questions about expensive transit projects. By blindly following the politicians and transit officials, you'll end up with a transit system that has a bunch of pretty and expensive transit projects but no money to operate them.

LRT and fare avoidance

Denver CO - A story out of the Denver Post gives yet another problem with Light Rail Transit (LRT), fare avoidance. Many LRT systems use the "honor fare" set up to get around expensive fare collection methods such as manned booths or turnstiles.

The problem with the honor fare method is the penalties issued to riders that don't have a valid proof-of-payment (POP) don't deter the fare cheats. Most transit systems don't have the money to hire a crew of fare inspectors to wander around the LRT cars to check for a riders POP.

As with Denver, the odds of getting caught are slim. In the other systems, the odds aren't much better that you'll get caught without valid POP.

The costs to add expensive fare barriers that riders must pass through are much more expensive than paying a few fare inspectors so the transit system opts to go with the honor fare. Here is where the transit systems make a big mistake. They only hire a handful of fare inspectors to cover hundreds of daily trips and their appearances are few and far between.

In Salt Lake City, they have transit police checking for POP instead of doing the job they should be doing which is responding to problems. In Pittsburgh, they will have the transit police checking the subway once the new fare increase goes into effect which eliminates the free zone. Again, this pulls the transit police away from what they should be doing.

This is just another issue with LRT that few think of. The cost to enforce fare collection. It's far cheaper and easier on a bus than it is with an LRT system that requires either millions of dollars of expensive fare barrier devices or a full crew of fare inspectors annoying everyone with demands to see their POP.

Nationwide, millions of dollars in lost revenue can be attributed to fare cheats and LRT leads the way in allowing the fare cheats to succeed. This only further raises the cost to operate LRT.

The RFTA's BRT pothole

Carbondale CO - The Aspen Times reports that the Roaring Forks Transit Authority's (RFTA) plan for a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) operation has hit a bump. The City of Aspen voted against funding a design and management team for the proposed BRT system.

I personally like the RFTA. It is a rapidly growing transit system that is currently doing rather well overall. From reading this news story however, I question if perhaps they are growing a bit too much and a bit too fast. Considering they unofficially refer to the BRT plan as "the RFTA on steriods", it does makes one wonder if they're biting off more than they can chew.

The all-for-one, one-for-all attitude of the governing body of the RFTA makes me question a few things. Primary of which is if there is uncontrolled growth of the operation. By uncontrolled growth, I mean growth of the operation without concern for what lays in the future.

Aspen has shown what could very well happen in the future if the system is allowed to become bloated. One or two of the contributing governing entities could very well vote against funding in the future and that could spell a major cutback in services to a heavily bloated system that needs more and more money every year just to survive.

The Three Musketeer's style of governing the system makes me question how in depth potential problems are really looked at. When you have a "good idea" that sounds great brought forth to the board by another board member, is it analyzed properly for problems or does everyone just vote in favor of it? In my experiences with government bodies that follow the all-for-one, one-for-all governing style, it's usually the latter.

While I'm sure the BRT plan that the RFTA has proposed is needed given the traffic and bus ridership levels in the area, one still must ask: "Can the system really afford it, now and in the future?"

Bus stop snowed in? Don't complain to your transit system

Denver CO - A 9News report out of Denver tells of snowed in bus stops and the reaction from the public to them. The story also points out a little more than the reporter thought as well.

The snow packed bus shelters don't belong to Denver's Regional Transit District (RTD) but to private advertising companies that have contracted with private land owners to erect advertising shelters. This creates a legal dilemma for the RTD and its riders as the RTD isn't legally allowed or obligated to shovel out the snow to make the shelters accessible.

The RTD's 585 shelters that it owns are cleaned out and ready to go however.

This points out an issue I have had concern with for a while now. When a private company supplies a shelter or bus bench for advertising and doesn't maintain it properly, the general public instantly points fingers at the transit system as though it was their responsibility. This ultimately gives a public relations black eye to the operation.

The issue at hand is that the transit system doesn't own the vast majority of the stops nor has the right to maintain them. In most instances, the property owner is the municipal government but contracts for shelters often come with a provision that the shelter owner take responsibility for the stop so the land owner doesn't have to deal with it.

With advertisers realizing that transit advertising works and has been under utilized for years, they're rushing to erect ad shelters and ad benches as fast as they can get the contracts with the land owners the stop is located at. In most cases, the transit system receives no revenue from these ad benches and ad shelters nor even has a say in the placement, design and ads displayed even though those shelters reflect directly on the transit system.

Shelters and benches should be labeled clearly as to who owns and maintains them and contracts between the ad agency and stop owner need to call for a 24 hour period at most to respond to any problems. After all, these shelters reflect directly on the transit system, not the advertising agency that put them up. The Denver news report shows that many people just blamed the RTD and had no idea that those shelters were privately owned and I'm willing to bet that there was no clearly visible labels stating who to call for problems regarding those shelters. The RTD received a public relations black eye from the advertising companies not getting the shelters dug out in a timely manner.

In the RTD's case, one of the ad shelter owners, CBS Outdoors, was unprepared for the snow storm and now has a vast crew of 11 people out shoveling the snow out the 2,600 stops it owns. No word on the other 4 ad firms that own many of the other stops in the RTD operating area.