Central planners disregard Coloradans’ true mobility needs

Freedom Unaffiliated

Central planners disregard Coloradans’ true mobility needs

By Jon Caldara

Tired of all the traffic? Tough. The central planners in charge command it only get worse at an exponential rate.

The reason our roads suck is money that could fix and expand them goes to transit which relatively no one uses. U.S. Census data shows only 4% of Denver’s commuting population uses transit.

Remember that number — 4%.

Yet, in the Denver metro area, almost all “transportation” dollars go to transit. The Regional Transportation District’s (RTD) failed FasTracks scam spent more than $7 billion at a time when all the highway needs statewide were around $9 billion. We could have fulfilled nearly all of the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) wish list for the entire state with what we spent on one choo-choo train boondoggle.

Next time you’re stuck in traffic, don’t get angry at the car in front of you. Get angry at the rarely used railroad tracks next to you. That’s where your road money went.

Central planners are wed to the three-century-old technology of trains for one simple reason: empire building. No one can compete with them on tracks no one else can use. Monopoly never goes out of style.

RTD just released a study on its stillborn train line from Longmont to Denver, promised since 2004. Their conclusion? It cannot be done unless voters are conned into more taxes, likely in the form of the “Front Range Train” system.

This means taxpayers would have to pay three times to fulfill RTD’s single promise of train tracks.

Most of us still remember RTD’s 2004 pledge of FasTracks being completed by 2017, and at half the current price. They don’t want us to remember that. This traumatic memory of theft will be the major obstacle in their quest to soak us for a Front Range rail system from Fort Collins to Pueblo.

So, expect a flurry of lip service about making the Longmont-Denver line a reality soon. How soon? Real soon, trust us, just approve this tax for a statewide system.

And what will Longmont get? Nothing close to what they were promised. According to RTD’s recent report, the best they can do would be to send three little one-way trains down to Denver in the morning and the same three back to Longmont in the evening carrying a mere one-tenth of what they promised in 2004.

You notice I said this would be the third promise to build out a system. Like Holocaust deniers, RTD and their cronies pretend the 1971 tax increase that committed to build 128 miles of rail by 1980 never existed. And bless the media for keeping it hidden.

Yes, you are still paying for that 1971 promise, a half-cent-a-dollar sales tax (which was to be cut in half in 1980 but wasn’t) and later increased to six-tenths of a cent. Add to that the 2004 Fastracks increase to a full penny per dollar, and you get one of the well-funded transit agencies in the nation.

But it’s even worse. Much worse. To “cut greenhouse gas emissions,” Colorado’s Department of Transportation is planning to suck even more money out of your roads to shower on transit people mostly don’t ride.

In an August 2021 rulemaking memo, CDOT says, “it is estimated that between a quarter and a third of resources will need to be shifted towards transportation projects that have air quality mitigation benefits — as well as other societal co-benefits — in order to achieve the targets set in the rule.”

CDOT plans to siphon 28% of the state’s road funding to multi-modal transport (read choo-choo trains and bike paths) by 2031.

So, the goal is to have a third of our road money stolen for transit that carries, at most, 4% of commuters. This isn’t bad policy. This is mobility malfeasance.

Of course, if we really cared about air quality, we would work on getting cars moving since stop-and-go traffic produces the most air pollution.

May I suggest a different guiding principle altogether. Every marginal transportation dollar must go to the project that reduces auto traffic the most. That’s it. Judge every dollar spent on how much it cuts car traffic.

If using 200-year-old train technology or a bike path reduces traffic more than new toll lanes or general-purpose lanes, then go for it. If not, stop robbing us for unicorn projects and stop robbing our time in traffic jams.