Members of the newly formed Keep FasTracks on Track coalition say
that completing the beleaguered transit project within a decade is still
feasible.
It will just mean drumming up new sources of revenue
to make up for more than $2 billion in shortfalls, a sum that could come
in the form of a sales tax increase from the Regional Transportation
District or attracting more federal funding.
What’s important is
getting the entire system built with the next decade, they say, no
matter the source of funding. It’s a message that members of the
nonprofit worked to spread June 3 at the Anschutz Medical Campus in
Aurora as volunteers sought signatures to support their cause.
“If
RTD put another sales tax question on the ballot in 2011, or even 2012,
the system could be built in its entirety. It’s still totally
possible,” said Danny Katz, a Keep FasTracks on Track representative and
the director of the nonprofit Colorado Public Interest Research Group.
“Hope isn’t lost. There’s still the opportunity ... We don’t want to
wake up on June 30 in 2011 and go, ‘Let’s start showing that there is
support for this. It will be too late.’”
Katz and two other
volunteers from the coalition came to Aurora following the group’s
formal launch in Downtown Denver earlier in the day. Throughout the
summer, Katz said, volunteers will seek to garner about 2,000 signatures
from community members who support completing the FasTracks project
within 10 years.
The coalition, which comprises the nonprofits
CoPIRG, the Transit Alliance, FRESC, formerly known as the Front Range
Economic Strategy Center, and the Colorado Environmental Coalition, then
hope to present the shows of support to the RTD board and, ultimately,
members of Congress.
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“We think that will go a long way in showing the RTD board,
Congress that the public is supportive of this,” Katz said. “We know
it’s not going to be a vote that’s happening this November, but we know
we need something to happen soon.”
Thursday’s stop at Anschutz
wasn’t accidental. The expansion of the light rail approved by voters in
2004 included the extension of the light rail line along Interstate
225, a stretch that was been slated to include about 10.5 miles of new
track and eight new transit stations, including a stop at the medical
campus.
In 2004, voters approved a sales tax increase of 4 cents
on every $10 to fund the project, which was then estimated to cost $4.7
billion. Since then, that estimate has risen to about $8 billion. RTD
has blamed the increase on the poor economy and the escalating costs of
raw materials.
Without additional revenue, the project could be
delayed until 2042. Earlier this year, the RTD board voted against
asking the public for an additional sales tax increase to fund the
project.
Critics of the project have blasted the possibility of a
new sales tax, questioning whether RTD would be able to meet its new
cost projections and timeframe.
“The question is, why should the
people of the Denver metro area pay three times for a rail system that
has been promised to them,” said John Caldera, president of the
Independence Institute of Colorado and former chairman of the RTD’s
board of directors.
In addition to the original FasTracks vote in 2004, Caldara
cited a sales tax approved by voters in 1973 for a rapid transit project
that was never completed.
“(RTD) lied when they promised us a
rail system in 1973, they lied to us when they promised us a rail system
in 2004, but now they’re going to tell us the truth. If anyone else
treated us like that, they would be put in jail,” Caldara said. “(The
vote) was to get us pregnant on FasTracks in hopes that we would bail it
out.”
But organizers with the Keep FasTracks on Track
organization say that approving more funding and finishing the project
within its original timeframe of about 10 years is crucial, especially
since work on federally funded lines in Denver, Golden and Lakewood has
already started.
“If we don’t complete full buildout, what we end
up with is a bunch of lines to nowhere,” said Aurita Apodaca, a
coalition member and an organizer for FRESC. “We have no preference if
that’s a tax increase or federal funding. We just want to show that
there is support.”
