The estimated cost of building the Northwest rail line of the FasTracks transit project by 2024 has nearly doubled to $1.714 billion, and the Regional Transportation District is now exploring the possibility of not building the line.
Instead, the Denver-area transit agency would expand bus service in the area, RTD officials said Wednesday at a meeting of the Metro Mayors Caucus’ FasTracks task force.
A year ago, RTD’s cost estimate for the rail line from downtown Denver to Boulder and Longmont was $894.6 million, with a completion date of 2020.
But the price tag jumped to $1.411 billion ...
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Not Build It?
1-13-12 posted in Transportation |AntiplannerThe cost of one of Denver’s FasTracks lines has gotten so high that RTD, the transit agency, is actually considering not building it. The press kindly reports the cost of the Longmont-to-Denver “Northwest” commuter-rail line as rising from $895 million to more than $1.7 billion, but that ignores the actual initial cost projections.
As the Antiplanner has previously noted, the original cost was projected to be just $211 million. As of last month, that had increased to $1.4 billion. Now it’s above $1.7 billion.
Rather than not build it, RTD would like to ask voters to increase the sales tax to fund this and the other lines that it had previously promised would be built without cost overruns. But it realizes that voters are not likely to support such a measure. So it is now considering throwing some new highways into the pot, hoping voters will support that. It might be surprised to find that at least some voters oppose subsidies to highways as much as they oppose subsidies to rail transit.
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