The $6 Billion Transit Project with No Ridership
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- Опубликовано: 23 ноя 2024
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Denver spent $6 billion dollars on a transit project that should've transformed the city, but has since gotten little to no ridership at all. Why did this project fail, and what can we learn from it?
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I live in Denver, in one of the densest residential areas, not particularly near a highway. I work within easy walking distance of a light rail station. It would still take me about twice the time to commute by public transit than it does by car.
The buses take the same roads to the highway, where they transfer to the light rail. The lightrail runs along the highway, where it’s slower than all but the worst commuting traffic. The buses run every half hour. The light rail line I need runs every half hour. Those times don’t always line up.
Frequency is the only reason it doesn’t make sense.
Your comment highlights what I would say is my thesis, land use (while absolutely not good enough) is a secondary problem to frequency and speed (which is hurt by low frequency!)
transit should not be faster than cars. its good to have taxis in a soft emergency or for ultra high priority traffic. the trade off in every other continent is cheap slow transit or prohibitively expensive but fast car. only here where cars must never "overpay" for parking or tolls or gas tax or congestion tax can we possibly suggest that a train that has multiple stops should have speed parity with a car travelling non stop.
@@FullLengthInterstates Transit shouldn't also take double the time it takes cars to travel the same distance...
See pretty much every damn successful public transit system, which are pretty much all subways that can travel as fast or faster than cars covering the same distance above ground...
In order to be successful, public transit needs to have their own dedicated priority access lanes.
@@FullLengthInterstates Why shouldn't public transit compete with cars on speed? That's a silly thing to say.
Denver and other mid cities need more density. I’m from one of the most populated cities in the world but a relative lives in Downtown Denver. It surprises me how infrastructure is wasted on projects that could be good but density doesn’t serve anyone whatsoever. That needs to change . For the better of the world and urban development
This is so typically US: begrudgingly fumble into the current century with modern-ish infrastructure. Do it so piss-poorly and design it so unbelievably terribly that it doesn't work well, then when it's not immensely popular complain that it doesn't work and people don't want it, use that as a justification to not develop anything anymore. This is the government equivalent of a child doing the dishes so poorly that their parents stop asking them to do the dishes.
This is not uncommon even in places with OK transit. Here in Melbourne, AU, we run great services at peak hour, but outside of that service levels drop off a cliff down to 20, 30 minute levels, or even longer later at night. It really feels like the people making the decisions just have no idea how transit services work - I have to wonder if planners/designers just aren't advocating enough, or if government really is so cynical as to not care because it doesn't seem as flashy as new construction...
@@lalakerspro The issue is many, many ppl are ok living like that, or at least living in a denser suburb. However, the options are so limited that the supply fo such places is less than demand, hence housing in the very few car based places is insanely expensive. Ppl do indeed want it, it’s a choice whether the US will meet the demand.
@@bobsteve4812 In any major city, there is plenty of dense living. I walked around union station and saw plenty of apartments, retail, etc. Youre not gonna get that in the suburbs. Suburbs are not meant to be dense, otherwise they would just be urban cities
I‘ll say that every 20 minutes for an outer-suburban service like the Melbourne Metro is fine late in the evening. Wanting to have fewer operators on the night shift is understandable and if you can‘t plan around a 20-minute frequency then maybe you really are better off driving.
More generally though, something I've seen again and again in North American transit projects and existing services is a seemingly fundamental lack of understanding of what a well-developed transit service looks like. Corners are being cut left and right, basic technologies aren't being implemented, important measures aren't being taken and things are needlessly overcomplicated.
Several examples:
Basically every modern US streetcar line: slow, poor alignments, unnecessary use of wireless sections further complicating and slowing operations, bad frequencies. It's no wonder few people ride these lines when any bus could a similar or better job. Most of them are just beautification tools but have very little actual merit.
Brightline and Caltrain Electrification: Both systems have failed to improve grade crossings along their alignments to a degree that stops people accidentally wandering onto the tracks or stops cars from swerving around lowered barriers. A barrier system that makes both of those things basically impossible exists and is in use every day in countries like the UK or Germany. Why not muster up the funds to install it? With these safer barriers the noise pollution from constant horns and bells could also be mitigated, because quiet zones could be implemented safely.
OTrain Lines 2 and 4: In a recent video by Railfans Canada it was shown just how needlessly slow operations on those lines will be, with station approaches being crawls and the line speed limits being unnecessarily low. Additionally, the fact that one has to transfer twice to get from downtown to the airport is kind of ridiculous and I assume will lead to a lot people choosing taxis/ubers if they can afford to.
And finally a failure to understand the roles of regional and intercity rail: There is almost no truly regional rail system in the US, because almost everything is centered on a single urban area and effectively acts as a commuter feeder to that core area, even if frequencies allow journeys in both directions equally. Much of the Northeastern US could support a complex regional rail network connecting all of the more important towns and cities without always having to travel through the few major metropolises. On top of that, many corridors that currently only see intercity service (like in the Midwest or potentially the PNW) should be studied for an additional regional rail layer to be added. Far too often it's either regional rail or intercity rail, but in basically every country with a successful rail system they both run on the same routes, just one as a local and the other as an express. This needs to be taken seriously so that smaller places can also receive a rail connection without slowing longer-distance trains down.
"Home of a hockey team that never wins" was so unnecessary hahaha
He forgot the Vancouver Millionnaires who won the Stanley Cup in 1914-1915. Maybe if the team (Canucks) had an original names like the Vancouver Orcas instead of trying to copy the Montréal Canadiens without copyright infringements.
I live near to Toronto, I know how much it hurts lol
Agreed! It was an attempt at humor. A sad one at that.
That’s such a Canadian burn
Canucks win at choking.
great video! As a Denverite, it's disappointing how much was built only to squander it by having poor land use. The A line to airport is quite phenomenal, but the rest of the lines for the most part just don't go anywhere useful. Particularly frustrating are the G and W lines that stop just short of the actual downtown of Golden which would be a great connection.
Thankfully, the state just passed a law requiring upzoning around transit stops (trains and frequent buses). I don't foresee us building towers to the degree of Vancouver, but it's a big step in the right direction. Shame that the state has to force it rather than cities doing what's right.
Also, Ghost Train was an excellent podcast!
I'm sure the residents of Golden (read, suburbs of Golden) didn't want it to come all the way downtown because it would attract "those kinds" of people.
Exclusion is part of the point.
The state TOD bill is great! I hope Colorado keeps its pro-transit/YIMBY politics 🎉
The slate of bills has lots of additional good features (like getting rid of parking minimums!)
We keep waiting for these magical people who live near a transit system and do not maintain a personal motor vehicle to exist. For whatever reason or benefit, individual mobility persists in US. It seems to get baked into the DNA somehow.
one "fun" thing that frustrates me to no end is that RTD _literally_ owns the rail tracks between the current end of the G line and downtown Golden (they run all the way to Ford street behind the brewery). They bought them from BNSF as part of the fastracks project, lease them back to BNSF for freight, and as far as I'm aware have zero current plans to actually use them for passenger service. It's so goddamn annoying.
I tried taking the R line to work in Denver. It's important to note, in addition to the service being infrequent, we're talking about Colorado. The stops/stations are just open to the elements. Standing outside in the freezing cold and snow for 20 minutes is a brutal start to the day. Then I get to watch traffic on the highway going faster than the train, and to add insult to injury I was paying for the experience. It made no sense to do all this when I had a perfect alternative on hand: my warm, fast, ready-when-I-am car.
Every 20 mins for "rapid" transit is a joke
Same in Ottawa, Canada (the world's second-coldest national capital, after Ulan Bataar in Mongolia) where our new LRT's stations are largely open, inadequately-heated and often in empty, windswept fields or the middle of a highway. 🙄
@@michaelvickers4437 And the O-train also has an unusual tendency to break. (also it's Ulaanbaatar)
The lack of better protection from the elements is a total own goal, almost as big as forcing people to wait so long in the first place! Fortunately both are fixable!
Also, having stations next to the Interstate is painfully loud.
As a Denverite, it's so much worse than this... central downtown stations were closed all summer, rail burn is forcing trains to go 10mph, vandalism and substance abuse are super common. Fastracks projects took forever to complete but the new infrastructure has low usage because of unreliability and low service frequency worsened by operator shortages. When some of these lines opened they had fatal accidents at road crossings because the gates didn't work. Nowadays I mostly ride an ebike to commute, suffer through riding the train during poor weather, and only drive when I have to.
I visited Denver twice this summer from London. I think your points are fair. I wanted to ride the transit but it wasn't operating in the city centre for some reason. Strangely the city centre generally did not seem busy enough to justify a high frequency transit system compared to a crowded European city and sadly the number of zombie druggies and vagrants seemed a major reason not to visit downtown at all. 🙁 I did though have a great train ride into the city from Grand Junction to Union station but that was not transit.
you would be very happy in Parker.
@@Pesmog YOu cant compare denver to london lol, london is a world famous city. You can compare london to SF or New York, but not denver
@@lalakerspro Yes, you are absolutely right. I just wonder though if Denver did enough research into Transit systems around the world before they committed to building their network the way that they did. From what others are saying here it seems to need some improvements. I am hoping to visit again in 2025 so hopefully more of the network will be active then. 👍
@@Pesmog No, RTD is it's own worst enemy, it has an elected board and they just play turf wars with each other trying to get all the funding for their district at the expense of other districts. That's the reason for the idiotic routing of the R line, the G line getting NIMBYd and the B line never being completed.
I was watching a cabride of a light rail near San Jose, and the tracks ran along a highway, and cars were going faster than the train. That's an issue in my opinion. How do you want to make people leave their cars if the train running next to the freeway is visibly slower?!?
To come back to the video, yes, frequent service is absolutely crucial and a must have for any rapid transit. I'll take Paris' example, 30min-1hr frequency is more of a suburban train frequency, in off-peak hours.
30 minute frequency? the train in denver runs through single family suburbs all right
This is a bit of a light rail / alignment problem, if you are running down the middle of a highway and winding around its going to be much harder for a rail vehicle which needs to stop for stations to hit highway speeds. Rail can be fast - much faster than cars - but only with the right design.
@@PM_ME_MESSIAEN_PICS And suburban trains of Paris run through wheat fields in between suburban towns.
@@RMTransit It feel like even fast subways like BART are still slightly slower than the cars on the freeway, even when hitting top speed in between wide spaced stops.
@@AdiposeExpress The whole idea of BART is to beat freeway traffic. During rush hour traffic, BART is truly a miracle
Denver (ok wheat ridge) resident and CDOT employee here! You hit the nail on the head with land use. The problem though largely comes back to RTD. RTD is actually one of the biggest land holders in the city and the current director and many board members have repeatedly expressed a lack of interest or desire in developing it. The upper management has abandoned he trains and the mantra is "the future is the bus" (I've heard that from important people multiple times). RTD has minimal interest in converting their parking lots into housing.
Likewise CDOT, which is currently overseeing turning Federal Blvd into their own definition of BRT, is obsessed with busses in urban Denver. Despite the fact that there is near universal consensus that improved mixed traffic buses won't introduce significant mode shift.
I'm a regular RTD commuter and because the scheduling and PTC on the G line (holy crap that is a cluster) leads to me missing my W line connection I end up taking a lime scooter to the office which most of my coworkers have said they wouldn't do. It takes effort to take transit.
Thankfully the local transit advocacy agency, Greater Denver Transit, has had a mildly hostile takeover of the RTD board and change might actually happen soon.
In my experience with RTD, they do not believe that induced demand works with transit so they just run whatever service level they want while trying to gaslight us into forgetting what RTD was like before Covid. Reliability has gone to trash in addition to safety. Trains and busses regularly get canceled without notice. Trains don't adhere to schedules. In the winter the trains can turn into rolling homeless shelters
TLDR, the land development is a major issue for sure but most of the issues with RTD stem from the board and management
On the bright side, most of the incumbent board members seem to have been thrown out in the latest election and replaced with some younger folks who are active advocates for transit (and actually ride it lol). Idk when the actual transition occurs there but hopefully it'll lead to improvements.
I swear the only part of RTD that works well is the A line. The B line never being completed was just ridiculous, especially when they had a perfect opportunity to run it in the US36 median when 36 was rebuilt in 2016. Then of course the G line got NIMBYd by Golden, the light rail is just a mess, the R, W, E and H lines should've all been built as heavy commuter rail and can't be converted due to steep grades and tight curves on the expansion tracks. And then not even considering things like shuttle bus services in Golden/Morrison to reach all the open space parks which all have parking problems on the weekends.
I live in SW KS and visit Denver a few times a year and try to use their rail system, but the fact that the commute times are about double what it would take if we drove makes it hard to justify 😅 They really have great rail infrastructure but it’s just really limited by the speed and frequency of service
You've hit the nail on the head! The lack of TOD also makes trips you could make on the system less attractive because the car almost always gets you closer to your destination
That makes me sad
i want to say also, and you already sort of mentioned this, but rtd's rail is extremely commuter focused. it only really goes to low density suburbs, while all the high traffic transit corridors like east colfax are stuck with just buses
Colfax should have had a subway under it since the 70's. it's wide and perfect for a cut & cover, Broad Street Line style heavy rail metro.
Yeah . . . thats where rail should have gone!
Yes, they put the trains in the worst places. Historically dense neighborhoods like Capitol Hill, City Park, and the Highlands have no rail while the existing rail parallels highways and freight lines that make reaching many stations take way longer.
They're lucky Colfax got a BRT, and even then I don't think it goes into Aurora. East Colfax is the worst area of Denver so never gets priority for anything because "those people" live there.
I went to one of the public meetings for East Colfax BRT over 10 years ago, and construction is just now starting. For bus service! I still struggle to understand how it’s going to serve the needs of the users of the 15 bus. That is a super busy line because it’s very local. It’s mass transit, not rapid transit. Stops need to be frequent. The FAQ talks about riders saving 30 minutes Broadway to Yosemite by 2040 and an average 3 mile trip savings of 10 minutes. But they are only estimating 7500 additional transit riders per day in 2040 over 2019 ridership. Local businesses will suffer during construction. These projects always lead to closures of low margin enterprises that can survive the loss of foot traffic and street parking. Welton Street has never really recovered as was hoped after the installation of light rail 30 years ago.
“A reduced frequency after 8pm. As if people don’t need to travel around in the evening.” Shots fired at YRT LMAO.
I took the viva blue last night around 9pm when frequency drops to every 20 minutes and the bus was packed, standing room only. All I could think the entire time was “YRT run ONE more bus per hour, you have the ridership ahhhhhhhh”
I used to take the train from South Metro to Downtown. I loved it but it was annoying that in afternoons it was faster to drive. But in the evenings the train was perfect to bypass all the traffic to the South Metro area.
Whenever I’m in Denver I try to take the trains as much as practical. But sometimes the headways are not convenient or the location service area is not where I want to go.
So much of the RTD trains operate in NIMBY areas… but they’re slowly trying to up-zone and create TODs.
Maybe on my deathbed Denver (and Colorado) will have amazing train service.
I’m hopeful for the future as well for Denver. I’m from the Southwestern side of the Denver Metro, and the bus route that I can easily walk to only has hourly frequencies. The train line it connects to has 15 minute frequencies, which is quite sad.
Nibmyism is valid in denver (ride the light rail and youll see). Compare it with the SF peninsulla where most people dont mind trains because they actually have safety measures
@@lalakerspro
What’s the problem with the light rail there ?
@@IsseKonja Unsafe, there's little fare enforcement and a lack of police presence on the light rail and the trains, especially the W line often turn into rolling homeless camps. The commuter rail has less issues because it's run by a contractor (Denver Transit Partners) and I believe they provide their own security and have much stricter fare enforcement (I've had my ticket checked every time I've ridden the A line)
I think you are missing the biggest issue. It's not the origin, it's the destination. Even with poor headways, people will still take transit if it goes where they want to go. In the US, far too many places of interest are located where land was cheap at the time, in other words anywhere but where transit runs.
I don't agree that large numbers of people WILL take transit with poor headways, especially given in a city like Denver driving is easy and fast. But of course the lack of TOD is a problem.
In some parts of the US. Do not generalise. It's ignorant.
Really enjoyed hearing you pop up on CBC's Front Burner podcast, Reece! The episode was Nov 12th: "Why can't Canada have fast trains?" if others want to listen.
Happy to hear you enjoyed it!
A so called metro line that has only 30 minutes service frequency is a waste of money. Even 10 minutes in rush hours would be too low unless it is a branch of a branch...
30 minutes should be the milestone for middle of the night service assuming the line operates 24/7.
Add to that building it in the middle of nowhere useful...
Exactly, the Vancouver SkyTrain which is used as a comparison throughout the video has 3-5 minute frequency on peak and 6-12 minute frequency off peak, even late at night and on the weekend. Automated trains that require exactly zero on-board staff are a large part of the secret sauce.
Its not a metro though. Denver does not have a metro. BART and NYC subway are high frequency metros, denver is only comm/light rail
@@lalakersproexactly. Denver doesn’t have density anywhere to support a subway/metro style system. We aren’t Taipei! (I’ve ridden the metro there and it’s fabulous)
Important lesson for Calgary/Alberta as it begins developing a regional passenger rail network.
Calgary has one of the highest riderships in North America. If course there's still room for improvement with its light rail, but Calgary isn't the the one in charge of developing the regional rail, the provincial government is, as we've seen with the Alberta government messing with the Greenline they're the ones we have to worry about getting the regional rail correct.
It really worries me. I can 100% see the UCP going cheap instead of good and building stations without transit connections at the edge cities or on the side of the highway. Green Line is a great example. It would be utterly asinine to try and go at street level through downtown, and yet I bet that's what they'll try because it costs the least up front. We should have buried the other lines years ago. Would have greatly improved the speed, frequency, and reduced all the collisions at this time of year.
On the land use side of things, Denver is actually improving! They have plans to develop multiple parking lots, and the state legislature has passed bills banning parking minimums near transit and setting TOD requirements.
he forgot to google it
Colfax BRT is also moving forward and the concept for a Colorado Blvd BRT are being floated.
@@dkd123Colorado BRT is definitely happening! It's in the design phase right now. Same with Federal! A new Flatiron Flyer-like line on the Diagonal Highway is also being built. Colfax BRT has started construction.
@@maitrilazaroff138so what is the use case for Colorado Blvd BRT? Who will it serve? Right now, it’s a cluster *** of traffic. I assume that’s people coming from multiple directions to patronize the businesses with expansive parking lots that line the road. How will people get to the BRT from their homes?
8:57 that's super bizarre, and awfully frequent as an occurrence...
Route planners put painfully slow turns in track, of course citing cost reasons... but reality proves their understanding of cost vs benefit is bogus... a crooked section slashes the entire return on investment.
@@u1zha exacly. If you're going to spend $10bn for a severely compromised system, just spend $15bn for a great one
@@loganwenzel1615 100%. The whole idea behind 'value engineering' is that you ultimately end up with the same result, just for a bit less money. Saving money for a worse end result defeats the purpose! So frustrating!!
Speaking of 30 minutes. TTC just switched nighttime 49 route to 15 minutes, and that makes for a big difference. Now if only Miway did the same for the 3 route...
As a Denverite, frequency is absolutely the answer for a lot of people like you mention. At best, the trains come every 15 minutes. That isn’t too bad for the length some of these routes go, but many other cities in North America double the frequency. There are so many places I’d visit around the metro if I didn’t have to wait 30 minutes for the train, especially since the drive there is like 30 minutes haha.
Also sometimes there is good land use around the station as far as housing, but the thousands of housing units have no 1st floor entertainment. Like there are literally these townhome complexes that span multiple blocks and house a couple thousand people and they still all need to get in their car and drive to the grocery store.
@@MrFolton17 I miss before CoViD when the trains ran way later and more frequently.
The Aurora Metro Center station is finally getting more development on the east side! 4 story apartments and some retail where grass used to be. But yeah made great points in this video .
As someone who lives in the northern suburbs of Denver, I utilize the N line to downtown for Rockies games or other events in the area. It sure beats finding and paying for parking, as well as the traffic jam after the game is over. That said, I only ride it a handful of times per year...but I am greatful for it. Public transit is rarely a profitable endeavor, though I do hope they continue to expand service into suburban metro areas. It would be super to take the train to Fort Collins, Longmont and Loveland to avoid the 1-25 traffic.
And I live in SE Denver, 1 block west of Aurora. Takes me 15min to drive to RiNo and probably 20min to reach LoDo by car, and 25-30min to drive to Golden depending on traffic. It would take over an hour to take the train to RiNo (R line to Peoira then A line to 38th and Blake) or LoDo (R line to Peoria, A line to Union) and 90mins to reach Golden (H line to Auraria, W line to south of Golden)
The layout of Denver's rail system is unfortunate, too, with lines terminating both at Union Station on the west side of downtown and along various streets to the east. Instead of a single transfer station at the heart of the network, there's the mile-long 16th Street Mall with its bus shuttle and the Union Station complex with its brutally long walking distances through an underground bus port. So, to slow trains and infrequent service, add onerous transfers that ought not be necessary.
Also, when the full light rail system opened, the most frequent service wasn't downtown, but on the line south of Colfax that now carries the D, E, and H trains and which used to carry the now-defunct C and F trains as well. Now, the California-Stout loop east of downtown also carries three trains instead of the original four.
To quote the man Jay Foreman himself: "You have to encourage them out of their cars."(From that one Unfinished London episode I forgot :3)
I would be interested in a video about Kansas City's Streetcar. In the past, you included that in the list of unimpressive downtown street cars in the US, but in terms of ridership, it was actually a huge success, and it's now getting extensions that should turn it into something worthwhile by your standards as well. I'm wondering what they did different to all the others.
Denver’s Southeast Light Rail corridor has been hit with both slow zones and reduced service for planned infrastructure. Ridership was lower than at the pandemic. I do think it crazy that they planned to reduce frequency down to once an hour for a light rail line. Insanity.
Areas with the most public transit infrastructure in the United States also tend to be hotbeds of NIMBYism. The local government structure in the United States gives NIMBYs a lot more ways to stop housing. Most American politicians believe, rightly, that anything that can be seen as punishing people out of their cars will cost them in elections. Expensive gas is a political crisis.
Way back whenever, the transit powers in NYC built transit lines out to Queens, at the time this was most swamp land (mostly owned by the transit powers[private in those days]). In subsequent years this area was filled in and the real estate sold and the transit system got a lot of riders, good transit planning. Too often today I hear of scenarios where a community has an abandoned rail line and suggest that this could be converted into a transit corridor, yea, maybe. Sometimes this works, say San Diego, other times not so well, fortunately these often are clipped in the bud and little money wasted. Some transit system simply could not work without vast parking lots, in the good olde days housing was clustered near the RR station but the auto allowed the market area of that station to expand greatly limited by the ability to park somewhere near the station. I don't know the percentage of riders who drive to the station for the DC metro or the LIRR but I'll bet it's more than half of those living outside the district or the city. Transit folks always talk about having 'feeder bus' services but this is a loser, I've suffered with this. Running bus services costs money and you are adding an extra fare to the trip while giving lousy service because they are inevitably late and overcrowded. What killed bus service in general is this problem of peaking, many passengers morning and evening, with few or none at other times. The worse problem for me is when I had to work late and there was no service leaving me to walk the three miles from the station to my apartment, seems it always rained on those occasions. Moving zoning powers to the state or say county level and away from the community affected is probably a good way to start a war. Much of south Brooklyn (NYC) is single family housing, some of it really nice others less so but still nice. forcing such a community to sudden house a large apartment complex will completely change the character of the area, often not in a good way. This is why much of the middle class exited Brooklyn and the Bronx during the 50's and 60's.
Can you do a Video about transit in Ho Chi Minh city? (or Vietnam, because soooo little projects here)
Line 1 : Finished construction and currently on test driving, will open in December 20th this year
train will stop every 4.5 min in rush hour and 10 min in normal hour
Line 2 : Currently on construction, will open in 2030
Long Thanh Airport Line : Proposed by Ministry of Transport in Veitnam, plan to open in 2030
Lone Tree City Center station on Denver's light rail is literally in the middle of nowhere (the nearest man-made structure is right next to another light rail station on the same line). Fortunately they're building a lot of TOD around the station, and I hope that this will be the norm for all stations currently with terrible land use.
Lone Tree is very odd. The only access road passes right by the previous station at Sky Ridge. There is a rhyme behind Lone Trees madness as it is supposed to be the center of a large mixed use development. The development though has yet to break ground. This is one place where I feel RTD was pragmatic with its development.
That was some wishful thinking in regards to the tech center expanding south. There is a massive TOD going in at Bellview though. Then only the E line even goes out that far, the R line stops at Lincoln. If plans to convert abandoned DTC office blocks into residential actually works it could be a good thing for ridership down there, the DTC is almost as dead as downtown denver right now due to WFH.
As a guy who lives here a 10 minute walking distance from the rail I only use it for the airport. It's too slow to use it to get to downtown for work. I have driven in parked for free and even biked in faster than the rail. I'm hoping that in a decade the density will help fix it....🙃
as a denver suburban resident myself, my perception of the rtd rails is that they are just expensive ways for the city to shuffle homeless people around.
Almost every station on the system has fantastic TOD development. But the cities don't follow up and build anything. Now nearly 20years later, development is Barely starting to take off. There are plans for today at Colorado and Country line, but construction hasn't happened yet. Englewood is great, but all of the storefronts are empty
I disagree with most of what you've said.
Fundamentally, i think a good bus rapid transit system would work better and be less expensive. The key to BR transit working is the one item i agree with you about: frequency. It also requires a smart mixture of express and local buses. I think the train system in Denver was built because the transit authority wanted something sexier than buses. Obviously, that's not a good reason.
But if you are going to build a train system, it needs to be linked to a good bus system that allows you to take a bus to get to the train station. We don’t have that in Denver. So, you have to drive to the train station. And what does that mean that you need? Parking lots. But the parking lots in Denver were built too small, not too big. I tried and tried to take light rail when it was first built, only to end up driving because when i got to the station the parking lot was full. (I would actually drive along the train route, trying each station, only to find that none of them had available parking. I think this has been "fixed" by ridership dropping off so much that parking is now more available.)
Building residential towers next to the train line works for the few people who live in those towers, but it's not a solution for an already-sprawling city. Those of us who don't live in the towers need transit too.
Exactly, we always talk about density near stations, how does that help people who dont live near stations? You still need parking so people only have to take their car a short way to the station, then take the train into the city
I realize a lot of the tips you're giving are general, but about Denver specifically: I think as a commuter rail system, which is what it mostly is, it is fine, if a little underwhelming. The big problem is that there is just not a lot of service in the downtown higher density areas where most people who want to take transit actually live.
a video about Denver that barely focuses on Denver. There’s only a cursory mention of Ghost Train, it doesn’t delve into what FasTracks promised, ie train to Boulder, or political decision making behind light rail routing, it doesn’t speak to actual successes of the program (A line, union station redevelopment), or talk about long term outlook for the region, ie front range rail, increased trains to the Rockies etc. But the content machine must be served
You are missing his point.......its not about Denver, its about mass transit being built without taking into consideration the needs of the population and how that is evolving in several places......skytrain in Vancouver has a train almost every few minutes, most of the day. If Denver or for that matter any other place has less than frequent service, the public will not use it......
@@derrickharvey295 who is missing Potato's point is you.
@@derrickharvey295 Vancouver is almosy 4x as dense as denver. The density of denver isnt gonna get you a nyc subway or vancouver system
You know RUclips has become full of clickbait recently. This video is clickbait.
Front Range Rail isn't happening anymore, Trump will cancel that REAL quick. It was only really going to be another case of "there we did a transit" anyway, the plan was to run Amtrak hand-me-downs on the existing single track freight corridor, which would mean 90 minutes to Boulder from Denver and having to wait for freight trains since BNSF still owns the ROW. The idea of Chargers pulling Airo sets at 110mph up and down the front range was always a pipe dream.
As a Denverite... To my last in-city (next to Union Station) office job, I could take an 18-minute car ride, or commute, using two trains with horribly interwoven schedules, taking over 90 minutes oneway.
I tried it for a few weeks, the delays, the unreliable schedule, and the long wait when switching just made it completely pointless.
I have spent too many hours sitting at Union Station for yet-another delayed Lightrail, for yet-another missed connection, and it was just too exhausting.
I am not sure if I have just never lived in the right area of Denver, but even after four moves within Denver county, the LightRail was never a viable option... It saddens me.
Thinking on my Denver trip. When i sayed "near" a station, we took a uber to get to the station since it wasn't so near
FasTracks has had mixed success and the critiques re: land use and frequency are valid but I wouldn’t call the busiest commuter rail network outside of the northeast and Chicago as “little to no ridership” - especially since it was built from scratch in the mid-2010s. Would have liked to see a deeper dive into the RTD system here as well as the potential impact new state legislation around transit and housing density could have on ridership.
Comparing against other US systems is a low bar though. There are single subway lines which move many times more people than the entire Denver rail system.
And I think the focus on land use as opposed to service quality is a big part of the problem.
The entirety of RTD commuter rail traffic is basically the A line. The G, B and N lines combined are probably less than 1/10th of A line traffic.
I live in the Denver metro area. To get to where the light rails are, you have to drive or take a bus to or from a station anyway. The trains run twice an hour usually, if they're on time. If one leg is late, you stand a good chance of missing your connection and end up sitting around for half an hour waiting. If you're trying to do it for work, you end up getting screwed a lot. The newest line they built in the Aurora area moves through the area super slow because of the way they built it (this line even has to stop for car traffic for half of it's route). It's just easier and faster to drive.
One thing that would really help would be high-speed rail along the front range from Cheyanne, WO, to Pueblo. There's a great intermodal connection at the airport and at Union Station. There just needs to be more frequency and more destinations to get people out of their cars, in addition to actual density at the stations.
5:34 Also "STOP PUTTING ADS ON THE WINDOWS!" Everyone hates it and I'm sure it has a real effect on ridership.
Haha yeah I hate that. I visited Denver and wanted to ride the light rail around to see it, but there's only like 2 seats in each car that you can see out of. Thankfully there was also nobody on the train...
I live in a city with wonderful natural views. The city bought a whole load of new buses and proceeded to put wraps on the windows. So I'm really happy to see an old unwrapped bus arrive at my stop, which is undoubtedly not the feeling the city wanted to engender. One of these routes even goes through a state park and it's infuriating to ride a new bus on that route.
It doesn't help that Union Station isn't completely in the center, it's a nice walk to go shopping but not to go to work.
Guy who lives in Golden here (a town west of Denver on the front range) I think of the main issues with transit in Colorado is you can’t actually get anywhere. All these other major issues notwithstanding, often times I can’t even get where I want to go via transit. RTD, Colorados state funded transit service, seems to forget people in Golden would like to go places. The College here actually runs their own free transit around town cause there’s like two total busses that sometimes come through town. Neither of which stop at the light rail station kinda on the edge of town
That's deliberate by the rich NIMBYs of Golden. They could fix a lot of the parking issues around the Golden area by just running a bus service to all the open space parks that starts/ends at the W line station. I can kinda understand a bit, because the W line is typically the worst for security incidents and crime, and terminating it south of Golden with intentional no bus service to it keeps "those people" out of Golden proper.
I live in a close in suburban town with bus service that stops right at the corner of my street. However what you mentioned is most likely why it is not used more. At rush hour it is about every 20 min. However off peak it runs at best every half hour and on Saturday once an hour. There is no Sunday or holiday service. There also is no later night service either. The last outbound bus is around 10 PM. It connects with our city transit rail line to center city which runs much more frequently. But if you just miss your suburban bus and have to wait an hour it really makes you not want to ride. I do disagree that large parking lots or garages do not work. One of our most sucessful rapid transit lines is in New Jersey. The Lindenwald high speed line was built mostly with large parking lots but with good frequent service 24 hours a day. The parking lots are mostly full weekdays and even get used reasonably well on weekends. The stations also usually have connecting bus service to surrounding areas also as well as a connection to the Atlantic City train line at Lindenwald and SEPTA transit service in downtown Philadelphia.
It is nice to see the greater Vancouver area and its Skytrain being used as a good example for Transit Related Development. We consider it a "Duh". While we have a few isolated stations like the Sperling station in Burnaby, the lines have other stations with massive developments. As well we have been reducing minimum parking space requirements, especially in the central core.
Honestly, I feel that the best thing to come out of the FasTracks plan is the Flatiron Flyer. It's a bus that goes along a highway from downtown Denver to the city of Boulder, a college town and large job hub in the region. The frequency is okay, usually every 15 minutes with a couple express buses. For some reason there are these massive parking structures at the stops which always have like four cars in them. Despite all this, the bus is usually packed. The line has also inspired largely suburban towns on route to build up around the stops, to varying degrees of quality.
I looked at the Denver network.....LRT (tramway) with very long and slow lines because of level crossings and very sharp turns. Some train lines.
The airport line (A) must be quite interesting, but the rest of the network is not busy enough to make it fully effective. There is a single-track section which hinders the implementation of tight frequencies.
The others, B G and N, take over the rights-of-way of the existing Amtrak tracks, freight lines, which does not allow serving the inhabited areas, right in their center. We go along the inhabited areas!
To have a network that is more interesting than the car, it is to serve the hyper centers, the residential areas in their middle (with feeder bus lines and the sites that are used by people who do not have cars.
Universities, high schools and colleges are areas with strong attractiveness 5 days out of 7, the hyper centers, and the employment areas are others.
And to serve all that, no LRT, but METROS, heavy metros like the RER network in Paris or the equivalent in Asia.
So yes it costs, because it would be underground (and on a viaduct) ... but if we tell you that to do Golden-Denver in less than 20 minutes, there, the car is less interesting.Being in an underground station has advantages in terms of weather-related comfort.
And it will be necessary to build several simultaneously because making only one to see, will bring only relatively few people because no network. Even if the university and high school service should help.
The G line is to be extended to downtown Golden, above ground on a viaduct to Duke Lake, then underground under the city.
For the development of the land around the stations, it is necessary to do something mixed that is often found in Japan. Stations near residential and commercial centers, or sometimes completely new areas must have around them, commercial developments (large shopping centers, employment zones, offices,high density habitation building /condominiums,etc.) ... and some stations must have park and ride facilities (preferably in the form of a building). Park and ride means, free parking or reduced rate, if you have a transport ticket.
As someone that lives in Denver I do agree with some of what was said, but at least for Denver the larger issues are understaffing, not enough maintenance, and cutting lines.
The rolling stock has to be kept under 10mph(16kph) in some areas due to track damage, and is expected to stay that way for at least another year. Also the L-line had to suppend service due to the track being so bad rolling stock was limited to 3mpr(5kpr) in the majority of the track. Last month they partial reopened the line, but that was only fixing the "condemned" areas.
Then there's the issue with funding. Thanks to a state constitutional amendment called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights(TABOR) that was passed in 1992, the city is less funded now then in 1994 when the lightrail 1st opened. We recently even "celebrated" having the same funding that the city had in 1980 if we ignored inflation. Look it up if you’re curious, but the guy behind it hoped it would collapse the government.
Plus thanks to funding and staffing shortage RTD has been removing bus stops and shut down 2 rail service lines.
I guess my point is that RTD has issues it needs to address before any actual improvements can be made.
Maybe the RTD needs to do a door-to-door introduction informing the neighborhoods and municipalities about the commuter rail service and creating TOD around the lines to encourage citizens to use the service to go shopping, out for the evening, and to work.
Jitneys!
I live in Denver, North Park Hill to be exact. I stopped riding RTD about when the train to the airport was created. I'll have to find an archived webpage but basically my neighborhood was serviced by 8 different buses that made an easy transfer to various light rail lines. Especially the D line, now called the L line. When the airport train was created though, many bus lines in NE Denver were reduced in service or cut altogether. My normal commute to downtown Denver which required me walking 3 blocks, to one bus that ran every 10-15 minutes, became me taking a bus out of my way to the airport train that runs less frequently than the bus I used to take.
Using RTD is just really inconvenient now unless I'm going to the airport. Even the mall ride is now broken.
Not to mention how RTD has not maintained their tracks so much that they’ve gotten unsafe to go on at high speeds. So while cars are zooming by at 100 kph you’ll be going 20. When I visited Denver I was so excited to see so much rail infrastructure just to realize that RTD promoted themselves having 90 park and rides. I love their regional rail system (especially the A Line) but almost every station on the regional rail and light rail is either in the middle of nowhere or along a highway. I think until RTD maintain their tracks they have the worst light rail system in the U.S.
No, the worst light rail system in the nation is Norfolk, VA.
I made an intentional choice to live near public transit. For 3 months, I did not use my personal vehicle and rode public transit. Unfortunately, the bus systems do not run early or frequent enough to take me to where I need to go- job, grocery shopping, entertainment. The unreliability of the schedule-- bus arriving too early or later than the schedule posted and then the transfers alone... A 15 min car drive turns into over an hour of just riding either the train or the bus. The schedule of every 30 minutes or 1x an hour does not make public transit reliable enough. I've also stopped using at grade rail system because of the frequent delays due to a variety of reasons (people on rail tracks, cars hitting trains...) I did Ride Share but at $20-$25 a ride made it a luxury and in case of an emergency use. When public transit is designed and executed properly, it will be used more. I've seen it work as I lived in cities and small towns with reliable and frequent public transits so I'm certain its possible.
I honestly wonder what we should consider successful ridership for networks given the cost of making them. While I don't think we should use profitability as a metric for success, we do need some way to tell if a project is successful for not given you have things like the Montreal REM and the Blue Line expansion where both cost the same but one is likely to have much more success then the other for promoting transit use and cross connectivity but at the same time that doesn't mean the Blue Line expansion won't be a success but how can we tell given beyond a comparison between the two there aren't really any metrics people can casually use to brand it a success or failure beyond if it promoted a similar amount of use for the Metro as the REM gets usage which simply isn't going to happen even if it is an outstanding success because that's not how transit works.
The W line stopping 3 miles short of downtown Golden is the comical poster child of how Denver builds transit: where it's easy, not where it's useful.
Golden will never allow RTD to run a train into Golden itself.
Denver needs to have every line run 4-6tph, as well as reactivate the F and C lines, which, when cut, almost halved service on some corridors. Before they shut those routes down, most of the light rail corridors already had trains every 5 or 7.5 minutes, its a shame.
Denver also needs to plan on express trains on all its corridors to fix its speed issue, and thankfully there seems to be enough space to build 3 or 4 track overtake tracks. For rolling stock, I would recommend multilevels + modern electric locos for these express trains! The catenary should be modified to be slightly higher to accommodate bilevels as well as the rails being strengthened and straightened for the bigger mainline trains. Whats great is the entire Denver rail system is already electric, so electric locomotives can be easily implemented! The current light rail rolling stock could and should also be rebuilt/replaced with/into proper high floor LRVs like in Calgary or Edmonton.
I have lived and worked in Denver and love the city. I also have lived and worked in other American cities, and also London (commuting on multiple lines) and globally. Every year, usually in November, New York - still one of the world's largest cities - celebrates its billionth subway fare of the year. This is the kind of city that needs big rail transit spend. Boston is smaller, but is extremely dense and congested and also is the center of a congested region. Boston also needs big rail transit spend. Seattle, though smaller than Boston, is fairly big, congested, and terrain challenged. Seattle needs big rail transit spend. Big rail transit spend in Denver on a city of its size, paper flatness (unfamiliar viewers who think it is "in the mountains" are wrong) and low density was senseless. At most, there maybe as a starter should have been only one train line connecting the western foothills through downtown to the faraway airport. Had it met projections, maybe a second could have been considered. Think of the transit needs in other cities that went unmet because of this waste!
Yeah, Boston has a disjointed metro system and an amazing commuter rail system that desperately needs to be electrified, they've been running diesels under wires for 25 years on their busiest line, and not taking advantage of what is literally the single fastest rail corridor in the US (line speeds for almost the entire way from Back Bay to Providence are 125+ with a decent section of 150mph track). I'm not sure how much the T metro can be helped at this point.
30 minute service seems to work around Toronto because the driving commute has gotten much longer in the past 10 to 15 years. But I’ve also been lucky that the Go Train gets me to where I need to be (about a 10 minute walk from Union Station). If I had to go to say Bloor West Village or mount Pleasant it wouldn’t even cross my mind to use transit
DART is doing this with TOD at stations
Another area where Denver could step up its transit game is weekend service. Outdoor recreation is the primary pastime of Colorado, and the west side of the Denver metro area has a huge number of open space parks ... zero of these open space parks are served by transit, and parking shortages are a huge problem at these parks on the weekends. RTD has a solution staring them in the face, they could run a bus service that makes the rounds of all the parks and have it start/end at the western terminus of the W line light rail in Golden. They could've also done this with the G line commuter rail, but it got NIMBYd and terminates at Wheat Ridge instead of Golden. And don't even get me started on the B line which was supposed to go to Boulder.
I used to take the e line in Denver every day, over the summer the rail burn caused such bad delays on trains that I moved to Congress park and bought i bike. Now I can take busses or bike most places.
What helps is:
limit the number of parking spaces for shops, cinemas and houses or just by the street. A,success story in Switzerland.
city toll for the city center
use public transport for school trips (CH does)
make gasoline less cheap
We have cities with excess road capacity building transit, and those with constant gridlock adding roads (Toronto the dumb).
Most places could cut at least a third of the parking for infill (if you only have one garage, it’s difficult. If you have more like some DC Silver Line stations, you can keep one for metro only and you’ll be fine)
Many DC Silver Line station parking lots have very few cars parked in them.
As someone who has ridden the LA Metro, Denver RTD and Portland MAX the biggest reasons why people don't use the systems is the lack of frequency (sometimes 15-20 minutes) and lack of security on these trains to remove the druggies/homeless and people who are not paying for their fares. Besides that if you cannot catch a bus in a relatively short time to finish your journey it would take sometimes 2x or 3x vs driving a car.
Denver resident here. Nobody rides it because it only goes in and out of downtown - you have to go downtown to get to another "spoke" of the wheel. It also has terrible headway and is often very late. On top of that there are no turnstiles enforcing payment, so the trains are generally a lot less safe to ride on than they used to be.
Carmel, Indiana
What do we need?
1. High quality dense housing
2. Alternatives to car-centric living
How are we going to pay for it?
1. Build parking garages
2. Encourage people to drive
Lived in Melbourne Australia for a couple of years and worked just out of downtown, but lived way out in the burbs......my train station was smack in the middle of the housing areas and service was every 8 minutes or so.....but in between those times, an express train would roll through my station without stopping....it was to get the mass of people from the further ends of the line into the city faster than a train that stopped at every station......I was lucky, my destination station was across the street from my work place.....but if you want an urban service that works.....take a ride in Melbourne.....brilliant...
RM Transit merch idea: scale S-bahn TOD kit!
The video clip at 6:25 that is labelled Denver is not in Denver. I think that's Colorado Springs
Today in Paris I rode the line 14 metro and T3b tram. Line 14 had amazing speed with 8 car trains every 3 minutes, on a Saturday afternoon. Quite busy. T3b tram was a bit disappointing, altho well used. Av speed only 8 Mph, peak was 23 mph. Trams were spaced every 5-6 min.
I am looking forward to Transit Costs Project study on potential use of IBX line in NYC, which will address issues like housing along the line.
So true great video Reece!
Hey @Reece, kind of cheap shot on my system (Skyline HNL) right in the opening -- this is our first opening segment, and it hasn't reached any major job centers and the first three stations out of nine are greenfield former agriculture fields where dense communities are being built. Within a year, we're going to connect the mostly residential nine mile segment to an extra five mile segment and four stations, including two of the top three job destinations on-island. Give us a moment, huh? We only opened in June of 2023 but don't count us out yet!
The destinations are often more important. You put focus on reducing parking in residential areas, but where more impact could happen faster is in the commercial areas that serve as destinations for the system. Take that mall with a train station in the middle of a parking lot. All that parking is space that is more valuable with transit there, and underutilized. Converting that to mixed used development puts destinations and users closer to transit. Eliminating surface parking, even if some is converted to paid garages, makes driving to the destination no longer always the most convenient option. Transit systems are often built to connect to downtown areas which are already somewhat difficult places to drive to and park in. Most American cities are pretty decentralized, so creating more well connected areas that have the density features of downtown give people more places to go and get the whole network working harder. That may be easier to accomplish in some of these existing commercial areas, where you already have a large single land owner with a clear economic interest in getting more out of their property.
I owned a car, and had a private parking spot, in Brooklyn for several years. Like many who have cars in New York City, I would only use it for certain kinds of trips which transit didn't serve well. If I wanted to go around my neighborhood or to nearby neighborhoods, or go into Manhattan, I would walk to take the subway, as that was the far more convenient and cheaper option. NYC is a place with tons of destinations that are better get to by transit even if you have a car. More places can become like that.
OMG RTD. I live by Union Station. I have to pay like $175 + $190 to insure and park my car so I'm thinking of getting rid of my car. But I generally don't use transit to get places on a day to day basis, even with EcoPass. The Free MallRide is pretty great since it's frequent and convenient (kinda slow since it stops every block by design), and the 16th street mall is gradually finishing construction updates. I can work and shop for food and dine by foot, but anything else pretty much requires driving. The busses REALLY rattle on our streets, it's almost painful, omg. However, there is car share available so I'm going to try that out. If it seems good, I could probably sell my car, (or give it to public radio lol). I'm starting to order more and more stuff online to be shipped because taking a bus somewhere an hour there and an hour back just to find out it's not in stock is painful. And you get to listen to other people's speaker phones the whole way.
Visiting Denver a couple years ago, we went to an event by train at the Ball Arena. Before traking the train back to our suburban hotel, we stopped for a quick drink. That was a mistake, because the last evening trains departed shortly after the event at 11 pm!! We were stranded downtown and had to take a $50 cab ride back! Pathetic train system!
A building near where I live in the UK was only allowed to be built on condition that the residents didn't have cars as the site was too small to accommodate enough parking and there are dozens of bus routes and a rail station within easy walking distance. Now the residents are complaining that they get fined for parking on the street because the building agent never told them that they weren't allowed to have a car!
30 minutes is pretty good. I used to commute weekly from Geneva to Zurich and the IC1 and IC5 came every 30 minutes combined.
As a person who regularly took the RTD G-Line train 4 days a week for 2 straight years, I can say that the fact that the schedule only ran every 30 minutes was (while, again, better than nothing) rather inconvenient. Because there was no meaningful pedestrian infrastructure near it I had to drive there during the morning rush, which meant I would miss the train pretty frequently due to traffic. Don't get me wrong, after I got on the train everything was good (walking around Denver from Union Station was great and I enjoyed it a lot), but the initial placement of my station (and the fact that it was kinda out of the way and the only way to get there was via. high traffic stroads) did hamper the utility a bit. If the train ran even just 4x an hour instead of 2 it would've been exponentially more useful. Getting to the station and sitting in the freezing cold in the middle of January as I watched the train just sit on the line doing nothing was... not great.
In Seattle the Sound Transit SeaTac to Lynnwood is always packed with a train coming every few minutes. I guess the Denver or Vancouver train doesn't go to the hockey arena or the people stuck in traffic ignore that train speeding past. Well good luck finding parking unless you pay dearly for it.
Denver metro area resident here. I used the Park 'N Fly often and loved it. It was so much easier than parking at DIA. But now we are swarmed under by criminals who steal catalytic converters for the platinum catalyst. They're not getting access to my car, so no more Parking and Flying. It's Uber or dropping off at the bus station from now on.
The thing that will help transit the most in places like this (besides improving actual service) will be increased car, insurance, and gas prices. Maybe people will think twice before living in some suburb with the only amenity being "highway access" and instead live in a place that's closer to the places where they need to go.
A few month's back I took Denver's A line from the airport to downtown Denver for the SIGGRAPH convention. Overall I thought it was pretty good. Each end is really nice. At the airport, the escalator is just outside the south door of the airport. If you don't check the baggage, a shorter distance then reaching a car. The service is every 15 minutes and only $10. On the downtown end it was just over a mile walk to my hotel from Union Station. I could've picked a closer hotel.
As for rest of the A Line. I think most of the passengers came from the airport. Not many locals. I only saw one person I could identify as an airline employee. The line runs down the freight right away. Full of industrial parks and freight warehouses. The closest housing to Peoria Station is the County Jail. Not sure if they commute much.
Every 30 minutes or even every hour works if the train goes where people want to and connects to other services. But in an urban area, every hour doesn’t work at all and every 30 minutes is “ok” in suburban areas. Thats how we do it in Switzerland and Austria and Germany somehow successfully do the same.
a big problem is the system was mainly built for commuters, and a huge proportion of them are permanently gone after covid. One thing that makes the A line so successful is it's _not_ tuned for commuters; it has 15 minute frequency, 7 days a week, which makes it useful for something beyond going to work
Sometimes, you have to build the transit first and then the housing/density afterwards. As a frequent visitor to Denver, I’ve found their transit system to be pretty good (coming from Toronto, which is darn good, despite its critics). I never have to rent a car there.
Granted, I’m not commuting to/from work, so I understand the frustration. But maybe…build it (transit) and they will build (housing). The city is growing exponentially, so there is opportunity there to create transit-oriented communities.
Also, realize that some of the transit improvements that were planned had to be put off or cancelled entirely when the economy tanked and the sales tax revenue the RTD was counting on evaporated.
The RTD is one of three all electrified commuter rail lines
Whats the other 2?
While this would only solve part of the problem (some of RTD's stations have absolutely terrible land use) Colorado's HB24-1313 and HB24-1304 aim to increase density near transit and allow lower amounts of parking near transit. I've got some gripes with the state laws (they mainly apply to Denver/front range due some of the jargon; i.e. don't apply to smaller municipalities that have Amtrak or Colorado's Bustang stops).
Nice to see a different take on the "FasTracks" program after the last video you did on it years ago.
Transit also doesn't plan effectively to 'get-out of its own-way'. Now the Red Line subway in Boston has been shut down for about two weeks between almost a dozen stations. These have been replaced by shuttle buses. They take you to bus stops way out of the way and with this in mind they have the alternative trains having 5 trainloads of people and when you get outside 1 shuttle bus or perhaps two are there to pick up 5 train car's worth of people. Pushing and shoving starts right way. You would think other bus routes traveling in the same direction would also prepare and add additional buses. Nope! Bus was packed. It start raining. People shout they've been waiting an hour in the rain *and* every time the bus stops everybody in the aisle must get off the bus and then get back on anytime someone sitting down wants to get off at the designated stop.
It is quite funny that you always show Berlin as an example for how thinks are done. Sure it has the best mass transit in Germany, but honestly i still was better of by using any other form of transportation getting around. Parking is in Berlin not really a huge problem and most of the times one is a lot faster to use a car or bike in Berlin.
Tokyo is how it's done. But than again, everything there is also faster by car or bike. Getting around by car in Tokyo is just quite expensive and a lot of people are scared of riding a bike there for some unknown reason. It is flat, not really larger than Berlin (area wise) and car traffic is were slow compared to Berlin. Parking a bike in Japan can be challenging and the public transport is just so clean and more convenient in summer due to air conditioning and rain protection. Furthermore is so frequent, that one need no time tables. The only part i do not understand is, that there is no night service in any Japanese city. That is quite good in Berlin. Does not matter the time, you always can get home. It might take triple the time due to the act that some connections are just impossible to get. But you get home eventually. In Tokyo you have to wait till 5am or something stupid like that.
I've never been to Denver, but looking at it on a map it looks like the trains go literally nowhere except low density subdivisions following along highways, rail corridors, or random industrial areas. ... and that all of the dense inner city neighbourhoods where I'd actually want to live just have bus service if anything. This seems to be a pretty common pattern across the US (specifically in my hometown of Dallas) ... you build a ton of mileage of track but it doesn't really go anywhere, just follows the freeway through suburbia.
Transit like that is only ever going to be useful for commuting as moving around your own neighbourhood or city is completely not served ... and in such cities there's likely a highway exit ~ next to the train station and the point to point nature of cars means that even with intense traffic they're most likely faster.
Compare this to light rail systems in Phoenix, SLC, and even Tucson where the trams street run through the dense parts of the city and are useful both for linking dense housing to offices, but also for getting those people in the dense housing around to a bunch of different destinations.
Obviously the cities I mentioned need to significantly increase their frequency to have actually respectable transit service, but I wouldn't be surprised if even with trains every 5 minutes no one really bothered to take RTD (except maybe very specific commuters), as is the case with DART which runs decent (between 10 and 20 minutes depending on branching) peak frequency and also sees abysmal ridership.
Like, imagine how popular something like a cut and cover subway, or a viaduct, or even a tram with dedicated lanes running straight down Colfax Ave could be. It'd run through past hundreds of shops in a fairly walkable area and serve a wonderful grid of semi dense housing.
I think one problem is that some transit providers view frequency of service mainly as a tool to meet demand rather than as something to drive it.
Have really low ridership numbers and a 30 minute frequency? Well then why would you make frequency higher when there is more than enough capacity to transport everyone?
Build it between: a) where people live and b) where people want to go.
Plus: c) build it so it makes more sense to use than just taking your car.
That’s not easy in the car-centric land that is the western US.
It requires significant cultural change - both in the users (demanding better transit) and the governance (planning, design, vision, etc.).
Very well said. I would like to add that instead of planning for housing around near stops, one should really plan for housing+shopping, otherwise residents would still need and use cars. In other words, one should treat a stop as a village and plan accordingly. Sadly, the fragmented nature of land usage control and the overall low population density is why success stories are so rare in North America.
Another issue is last mile connectivity. There needs to be more offices, industry, and entertainment near transit stops. Housing is needed near transit but jobs are also needed! Too many office parks, industrial centers, and universities in Denver aren’t near transit at all!
park and rides are what solve last mile. Uber/drive to the station, or bike. Housing neat stations doesn't do anything for people who live maybe 2-3 miles from the station
this is absolutely insane, if at any stage of the planning there is any question of frequecies of AT THE VERY MOST every 5 minutes at peak the project should be instantly sent back to square one. This is a CATACLYSMIC waste of money
To me, biggest problem on RTD is safety. The commuter rails are fine, but the light rail is worse than anything ive experienced, and i ride BART.
Id rather they focus on building intercity rail to the north and south, instead of existing rail within the city
It's like UTA in Salt Lake City just wins over Denver RTD in many aspects, or they have been winning (harder) since reducing headways to every 15 minutes on Saturdays after August 2023. RTD needs to get smarter about transit, that's for sure. I haven't needed a car living in SLC.