In 2004, Denver’s Regional Transportation District (RTD) promised voters that by 2015 it could build six new rail transit lines and complete three extensions to existing lines for $4.7 billion. Today, it has spent $5.5 billion to complete five of the six lines and still has three extensions to build. Now a new report from RTD estimates it will cost at least another $1.2 billion to “complete the system.”
The report estimates the cost of finishing these lines to be $1.6 billion and says the agency only has $0.4 billion available to do it. Amazingly, the report admits that both of these numbers are optimistic: the actual cost of construction, it says, “will be much higher” while the funding estimate “assumes a larger share of statewide funds will be allocated to FasTracks than is likely.”
Back in 2004, when RTD was thumping for voter approval of FasTracks, it steadfastly refused to admit that either its cost estimates were low or its revenue estimates were high, both of which proved to be the case.
Soon after voters approved FasTracks, RTD realized that its costs would be higher and tax revenues lower than it had projected. An analysis of the six major rail lines found that the line to Longmont would cost more than $60 per rider, while most of the other lines would cost less than $10 per rider. As a result, RTD decided that the Longmont line was “no longer viable” and dropped it so it could afford to complete the other lines.
Things haven’t improved since then. The new report estimates the capital and operating costs of the proposed Longmont line and the three extensions as well as the projected ridership (page 5). Amortizing the capital costs over 30 years at a 4 percent interest rate — which is less than current interest rates on Treasury bonds — makes it possible to calculate the cost per rider for each of these projects.
|
|
Capital Cost
|
Amortized Cost
|
Operating Cost
|
Ridership
|
Cost/Rider
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Longmont | 649.6 | 37.2 | 14 | 380,600 | 134.57 |
| N. Metro | 395.7 | 22.7 | 5.4 | 507,000 | 55.36 |
| SW Ext | 343.5 | 19.7 | 2.5 | 236,600 | 93.74 |
| Central Ext | 210.5 | 12.1 | 0.7 | 101,400 | 125.83 |
One of the three extensions, North Metro, is expected to cost $55 per rider. Another, the Southwest extension, is $94 per rider. A central extension is $126 per rider. But the Longmont line will cost at least $135 per rider. In 2023, the average fares on light-rail lines like the extensions was under $1 per ride, while the average fare on commuter-rail lines like the one to Longmont was a bit more than $2 per ride. Thus, if it is built, taxpayers will have to spend more than $132 every time someone boards a Longmont train.
RTD didn’t include costs per trip in its new report. It did, however, mention its previous analysis that concluded the Longmont line was not viable and adds that its ridership projections today are much lower than they were when it did that analysis (page 11).
I suspect that the main reason RTD issued this report is pressure from Longmont, the only city promised a new transit line that didn’t actually get one. The idea of running rail transit 36 miles from Longmont to Denver also fits in with more grandiose plans to run passenger trains 176 miles from Fort Collins to Pueblo.
Given the report’s cautious wording and these dismal results, I can’t help but think that RTD is not enthused about spending any more of its limited resources on a line to Longmont (or, for that matter, the other extensions). After all, the agency has spent $8 billion on rail transit so far (including money spent or committed before the FasTracks election) and has little to show for it. Ridership was much lower than projected. The percentage of commuters taking transit to work in 2019 was no greater than it had been before voters approved FasTracks, and today it is much less.
One reason why the line isn’t viable is rail transit is so slow. RTD estimates it will take 66 minutes to get from Longmont to Denver’s Union Station. A second reason is that the line goes nowhere. Less than 10 percent of Denver-area jobs were in downtown before the pandemic, but today many downtown office buildings are nearly empty and their owners are defaulting on loans and failing to pay property taxes.
The only reason to “finish FasTracks” is to satisfy the egos of Longmont city officials. That’s not worth a million dollars, much less well over a billion.
Randal O’Toole is director of transportation policy at Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver. A version of this article originally appeared at The Antiplanner.
