Regional Transit Update

Regional Transit Update

This event was generously sponsored by The Colorado Group.

The vision for regional transit improvements and the impacts for the business community was the topic of Boulder Tomorrows February membership meeting. Louisville Mayor Chuck Sisk and Regional Transportation District Board member John Tayer spoke to the audience with former RTD Board member and VP of the Boulder Area Realtor Association Ken Hotard as moderator.

John started with an honest depiction of the FasTracks projects budget challenge as the projected budget has ballooned from $4.7 billion cost sold to the voters in 2004 to nearly $8 billion coupled with declining tax revenues to fund the plan. I come here as a friend but I know the program has raised some strong feelings and divergent opinions he said. John took a straw poll of the room asking how many people are still willing to support additional funding to see FasTracks built about 2/3rds of the room raised their hands. That is actually a little bit higher than our recent poll that showed 63 percent were in support of upwards of a 4 percent sales tax increase to fund FasTracks.

I could make a number of arguments in favor of the FasTracks and regional transit build out John continued. But I know Boulder Tomorrows focus is on the economy. To be clear what Boulder is targeted to get includes Bus Rapid Transit and dedicated high occupancy vehicle lanes along US Hwy 36 and the northwest commuter rail line. With further details of each component John acknowledged the difficulty defending specific up front costs and operational projections especially regarding the rail. It is the long term vision with a focus on the economy that I want to emphasize he said. We are looking at significant economic activity in the short term 10,000 jobs to build out the project. But the projection of how transit oriented development will impact the economy in the long run is most important.