My question is when cars can drive themselves why will the non-impoverished population need public mass-transportation. I envision a grid of cars (belonging to competing private companies) that have no drivers and can take a person from A to B, for a set fee -- much lower than when you need a driver. Light-rail, why? We already have the infrastructure for cars. Give it 20 years.
How Denver Is Becoming the Most Advanced Transit City in the West
61–69 of 69 posts
Re: How Denver Is Becoming the Most Advanced Transit City in the West
#62Will metro residents give up their cars? I wonder if the rise of Uber will affect this. When I lived in Seattle, I noticed that a lot of people didn't commute to work via car but had one anyway, usually for one or two trips per week. Public transportation (buses and later light rail) were pretty good from about 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. or so during weekdays but were horrible the rest of the time. Bikes could be used intermit…
Nobody is going to use Uber to make trips to Home Depot, the grocery store, weekend getaway to the mountains, etc. That's what that one car per household is for.
There are other services such as Zip Car and Car2Go that work very well for running errands. I live downtown Denver and sold my car nearly a year ago, haven't looked back since. There are times I rely on friends to go to the mountains and such, but for the most part I'm just fine without a car.
Re: How Denver Is Becoming the Most Advanced Transit City in the West
#63The Northwest suburbs (Boulder, Louisville, Lafayette, Broomfield, Longmont) got quite screwed over in this deal - we approved and paid into the 0.4% sales tax in 2004, but ended up with only years of disruptive highway construction leading to a privatized tollway and fake Bus Rapid Transit. We didn't even get real BRT as the buses run in the private toll lanes rather than their own grade and the buses board and debo…
The Northwest suburbs (Boulder, Louisville, Lafayette, Broomfield, Longmont) got quite screwed over in this deal - we approved and paid into...
I wonder if, in a political science game theory sense, this is similar to the "red states get the most government spending" phenomenon. That is, it's unlikely that the people of Boulder would ever vote against rapid transit projects. So, a rapid transit program can have political success without serving those "reliable" voters as well as it serves more fickle areas, whose votes could change if they become unhappy with the program.
Re: How Denver Is Becoming the Most Advanced Transit City in the West
#64Downtown Denver resident here. I have to attest that the light-rail has been a tremendous win for Denver and surrounding area residents. Along with the bus system, Uber, and Car2Go, I started using light rail last December and never looked back. Even though there are hopeful plans to expand commuter rail to Boulder, I still think the FastTrack Program is a good decision. Boulder's been a stiffed by the new developmen…
I have to counter some of the comments regarding buses and light rail being empty. This is completely untrue. People are using the light rail and buses in large sums. It has its off peaks but certainly before and after working hours is extremely busy. Most people who say their empty are likely the same folks not using public transportation. I had the same consensus before trying out RTD.
I live in Grand Junction, Colorado and I visit Denver 4 to 6 times a year for business or pleasure.
I think that this article is missing a huge part of the success of the Denver region. It is not just the RTD but many other factors. The transit efforts are not in isolation.
Denver is a sub-urban city, but they have strongly revitalized their downtown and older districts. Downtown has the 16th Street outdoor shopping mall, all of the stadiums for major sports, convention centers, museums. The amount of new housing units that have been built within walking distance of downtown is huge.
The article briefly mentions some of the projects in LoDo as if they were all part of the RTD, but LoDo had been rejuvenated long before the current rebuilding of the Station.
And there seems to be thought into not just rebuilding the old downtown, but I see this around the Tech Center and Stapleton.
Re: How Denver Is Becoming the Most Advanced Transit City in the West
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any idea why this is the case? Some aspect of Mormonism?
There's a huge racial aspect in anti-mass-transit politics in many American cities that's missing in SLC. Transit is fundamentally urban, and in a lot of the country 'urban' is code for black.
Hmm. Transit in SLC isn't "fundamentally urban". Also, SLC doesn't have a very large black population.
Re: How Denver Is Becoming the Most Advanced Transit City in the West
#66The Northwest suburbs (Boulder, Louisville, Lafayette, Broomfield, Longmont) got quite screwed over in this deal - we approved and paid into the 0.4% sales tax in 2004, but ended up with only years of disruptive highway construction leading to a privatized tollway and fake Bus Rapid Transit. We didn't even get real BRT as the buses run in the private toll lanes rather than their own grade and the buses board and debo…
The Northwest suburbs (Boulder, Louisville, Lafayette, Broomfield, Longmont) got quite screwed over in this deal - we approved and paid into... I wonder if, in a political science game theory sense, this is similar to the "red states get the most government spending" phenomenon. That is, it's unlikely that the people of Boulder would ever vote against rapid transit projects. So, a rapid transit program can have polit…
Yes, that is exactly it. Boulder has been the biggest proponent of public transit, but gets the least in return. Former Democratic Colorado state legislator Ron Tupa a while back used to make an issue of this. If memory serves correct, it was city of Boulder that originally set up the successful HOP bus service not RTD (it was eventually absorbed into RTD). Apparently there is no (political) upshot for RTD to serve Boulder in any decent fashion. But this can only last so long before even Boulderites get fed up. My hunch is another tax increase would not pass. Of course, most of the FasTracks system will be complete soon so now so that does not matter except if you live in the neglected NW corridor, of course.
Re: How Denver Is Becoming the Most Advanced Transit City in the West
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody is going to use Uber to make trips to Home Depot, the grocery store, weekend getaway to the mountains, etc. That's what that one car per household is for.
There are other services such as Zip Car and Car2Go that work very well for running errands. I live downtown Denver and sold my car nearly a year ago, haven't looked back since. There are times I rely on friends to go to the mountains and such, but for the most part I'm just fine without a car.
Zipcar is fail because you pay as long as the car is away from its original "home" parking spot. Why can't I drive it to another Zipcar spot in front of the mall? For example instead of paying just for the 15 minutes it takes to drive there, I have to pay for the drive time plus the time it sits in the parking lot for 3 hours while I shop. Fifty dollars, no thanks.
Re: How Denver Is Becoming the Most Advanced Transit City in the West
#68It seems no article can positively describe a city, without mentioning that it's also a tech cluster. Is there a city that doesn't claim to be a tech cluster? We need to recalibrate that term.
They're not exaggerating. Over the course of a decade.
DTC (Denver Tech Center) and Centennial Airport sprawled for miles around with tech companies and their employees who migrated from Southern California.
In the North West (Broomfield) around the Front Range Airport (or whatever they call it these days) tech companies and R&D centers started popping up all around Interlocken including Sun Microsystems.
Boulder is home to a number of smaller tech startups including SparkFun Electronics, and a Google facility downtown.
In the South West Lockheed Martin has a number of facilities that work on space systems (ie rockets, satellites).
Downtown Denver doesn't have much in terms of tech but the city is going through an urban revival and the light rail system is supposed to connect it all together (if they ever build the northwest rail line).
High wages and increased standard of living are a win/win.
Re: How Denver Is Becoming the Most Advanced Transit City in the West
#69I've never been there, but from afar the Moscow Metro is a thing of beauty.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Moscow_me...
In particular one thing Moscow has that the Denver map doesn't have much of is a ring line connecting the spokes.
A ring means that arbitrary trips don't need to go thru downtown. Not having a ring means that the transit system models the 19th century layout of having "farm roads" connecting into the "market" in the middle of the city.
Perhaps Denver uses buses to form a ring?