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FasTracks Yes plays fast and loose with the facts to promote its $8.3 billion rail plan. The PowerPoint slide show that it has given before many audiences contains many errors. Here are corrections to some of the erroneous and misleading numbers they use, either in the show or in response to questions after the show.
Note: After some of these errors were pointed out in a debate with FasTracks Yes, they removed many of them from their slide show -- or at least the slide show they use when debating with Taxpayers Against Congestion. If you hear FasTracks supporters make any of these claims, please let us know using the support form or by emailing Taxpayers Against Congestion.
A longer, updated version of this paper is available for download (872 KB).
The FasTracks show briefly shows a table estimating that FasTracks ridership will range from 226,400 to 262,100 trips per day in 2025. The narrator usually says something like, "That's a lot of cars taken off the road."
The first problem with this is that the numbers include 89,000 to 104,100 trips on the existing and T-Rex light-rail lines. Those lines will be there whether FasTracks is built or not. Daily ridership on FasTracks lines is estimated to be just 137,400 to 158,000. This is clear from the footnotes in table 4 below, which is reproduced from the the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) review of FasTracks.
The second problem is that roughly half of these riders would be riding transit whether FasTracks is built or not. According to page 23 of the DRCOG review, all but 72,000 FasTracks riders in 2025 would ride transit even if no improvements were made to RTD's transit system. Not all of those 72,000 riders would otherwise drive single-occupancy vehicles, so FasTracks will take no more than about 65,000 auto trips off the road. Considering that DRCOG expects people in the metro area will drive more than 10.3 million vehicle trips per day in 2025, taking 65,000 of those trips off the road is not much of an achievement.
Also note the discussion in the next section about the difference between "cars on the road" and "vehicle trips."
The FasTracks Yes slide show says that the Southwest light-rail line took 59,000 cars off Santa Fe each day. But that can't be possible, since the slide show also says that the Southwest line carries only 35,000 people a day, and RTD has said elsewhere that more than 60 percent of those people would otherwise ride the bus.
The narration that is sometimes used for the slide show correctly says that in the year after the line opened, CDOT recorded 59,000 fewer vehicle miles per day on Santa Fe. But the recession began right after the line opened as well, so even that number might not entirely be due to light rail.
FasTracks proponents fail to distinguish between "taking a car off the road" and reducing vehicle trips. If the Southwest line carries 35,000 trips per day, that's 17,500 round trips. If 60 percent of those would have used bus transit, then no more than 7,000 cars were removed from the road for round trips. Most cars are used for several vehicle trips a day so many of those cars will still be on the road for other trips.
This isn't untrue but it is still misleading because the original projections for the line were amazingly modest. RTD expected that the line would carry only 3,000 people more than were currently riding the bus, which means it expected a total of about 24,000 daily riders. Yes, it exceeded those very low expectations, but an extra 11,000 riders doesn't do much to relieve congestion in a corridor that still has roughly a hundred thousand vehicle trips per day.
There is no rail line in the country that comes anywhere close to carrying as many people as a four-lane freeway much less a ten-lane freeway. According to Federal Transit Administration data, New York City subway lines carry as many people as one-and-three-quarter freeway lanes. No other rail line carries as many people as a single freeway lane. (Federal Transit Administration data are hard to use; a summary of these data are available for download.)
Careful FasTracks advocates usually include the word "capacity" in this claim, as in "rail transit has as much capacity as a ten-lane freeway." Do any rail lines have the capacity of a ten-lane freeway? Maybe, though they aren't light-rail or commuter-rail lines, whose capacities are far below subway lines. But if people won't ride it, it doesn't matter what the capacity is.
Some FasTracks supporters claim that building a light-rail line saves the cost of a ten-lane freeway, which is quite different from saying it has the capacity of a ten-lane freeway. While it is misleading to say that rail has the capacity of a ten-lane freeway, to say that rail will actually carry as many people as a ten-lane freeway is lying.
RTD's projections show that, with FasTracks, about 22 percent of rush-hour travel in FasTracks corridors will be by transit. But the projections also show that, without FasTracks, 11 percent will still be by transit. So FasTracks only takes 11 percent off those corridors. (See table 5 of the DRCOG review of FasTracks, which is reproduced below.)
That's not 11 percent of today's traffic. That's 11 percent of the traffic expected in 2025, which is 63 percent more than today's traffic. This means that, even with FasTracks, the corridors will have 45 percent more traffic than today.
How much of a difference will this be to people driving in the corridors? RTD data show that, without FasTracks, average speeds in those corridors will decline from 27 miles per hour today to 15.4 miles per hour in 2025. With FasTracks, they will decline to 15.9 miles per hour. Will anyone driving be able to tell the difference between 15.4 and 15.9 miles per hour? (For speeds, see table 3 of the DRCOG report, though the speeds for the I-225 line are incorrect in that table.)
The FasTracks Yes slide show has a long list of cities in which rail transit is supposed to have been a great success, including Dallas, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and San Jose. In fact, rail transit has been a miserable failure in most of these cities.
But the biggest lie was in including cities that don't even have rapid rail transit: Phoenix, Charlotte, and Little Rock.
It is possible that what the FasTracks Yes people mean is that rail supporters were successful in convincing people in Phoenix, Little Rock, and Charlotte to build an expensive rail line. But that is not much of a standard of "success."
Suppose you hired a contractor to build a house for you for $150,000. "I have always built under budget," the contractor promises. After you pay a $50,000 deposit, the contractor comes and says, "It turns out it will cost $250,000. Under our contract, you are free to stop construction, but you will lose your deposit. If you want us to continue, sign here." Reluctantly, you agree.
When the house is done, the contractor presents you with a bill for $245,000. "See? I finished it under budget -- the $250,000 budget you agreed to."
This is what RTD means when it says it always builds under budget. When RTD planned the Southeast light-rail line, it said it would cost $445 million to build. The actual cost turned out to be $879 million. Of course, it may end up costing $878 million, and RTD will say it was done under budget -- under the $879 million budget, not the original $445 million budget.
All of the FasTracks lines are in the same situation. On average, the current construction estimates are 60 percent more than the original estimates for those lines. Of course, there is no guarantee that RTD won't increase the budgets again before construction is complete.
FasTracks supporters say rail transit will lead to a more compact urban area with less sprawl. Yet there is no evidence of this. What they really mean is that they hope to use rail lines as an excuse to rezone neighborhoods near stations to much higher densities. In Portland, many neighborhoods of single-family homes near rail stations have been rezoned for apartments.
Even with rezoning, few new developments have been built in Portland without huge subsidies. The Portland area has given at least $250 million in subsidies to developers of high-density "transit-oriented developments" in the last decade.
Even with the subsidies, the so-called transit-oriented developments only work if they have lots of parking because most of the people who live in them drive for most of their trips. In other words, they are really auto-oriented developments. But because they are so dense, they add significantly to the already-bad congestion in their corridors.
The FasTracks slide show concludes by saying that, thirty years ago, San Francisco and Los Angeles had a choice over whether to build rail transit. San Francisco decided to build BART while Los Angeles decided not to build it. Which do you want Denver to be?
This little story is so filled with lies that it is hard to count them all. Start with the fact that Los Angeles did decide to build rail transit and that rail system has been an expensive failure. In fact, the NAACP sued the transit agency for cutting bus service to low-income neighborhoods in order to pay for expensive rail lines to middle-class neighborhoods.
Second, congestion studies say that the San Francisco Bay Area is nearly as congested as Los Angeles. The Texas Transportation Institute ranks Los Angeles as the nation's most congested urban area, but San Francisco is number two. BART, which carries only 2 percent of regional travel, has done little to relieve congestion.
Third, as in Los Angeles, construction of BART has threatened bus service to many areas. The newly opened BART line to the San Francisco Airport, for example, is carrying only half its expected riders, which greatly increases the needed operating subsidy. Since the local transit agency promised to cover those operating costs, the agency may be forced to cut bus routes to meet its obligation. The problem is so severe that even the Sierra Club has come out against further BART construction.
Fourth, when FasTracks advocates say they want to stop sprawl, what they mean is that they want to create a denser urban area. Guess which is the densest urban area. If you guessed New York or San Francisco, you lose; it is Los Angeles. Construction of FasTracks and implementation of their compact land-use plans will head Denver in the direction of Los Angeles, not San Francisco.
HOT lanes in California and Texas are paying for themselves. It is especially strange for FasTracks supporters to say otherwise since RTD fares only cover 20 percent of operating costs and zero percent of capital costs. For them to accuse HOT lanes of not paying for themselves is really the pot calling the white kettle black.
Contrary to what FasTracks proponents might say, CDOT has no plans to spend $25 billion on highways and no funding to do so. Nor did it do a study finding that spending $25 billion on highways would increase traffic speeds by only 0.8 miles per hour. It did, however, estimate that spending $21 billion, or about $1 billion per year, would allow the region to maintain speeds at current levels.
Maintaining speeds at current levels is far better than FasTracks is expected to do. Rush-hour speeds in FasTracks corridors currently average about 27 miles per hour. RTD calculates that, if nothing is done to relieve congestion, these speeds will decline to 15.4 miles per hour by 2025. Building FasTracks, says RTD, would cause speeds to decline to just 15.9 miles per hour. In only one of the six corridors does DRCOG say that speed will be 3 miles per hour faster with FasTracks than without; in the rest, it is less than 1 mile per hour.
So, once again, FasTracks Yes is comparing apples with oranges. Spending $25 billion on roads probably could increase speeds a little above current levels. Spending $4.7 on FasTracks will slighly increase speeds above 2025 levels -- which are expected to be more than 11 miles per hour less than current levels.
One FasTracks supporter says that the $25 billion expense comes not from CDOT but from DRCOG's Metro Vision 2025 plan. Table 9 of that plan lists transportation expenditures between now and 2025. These include $2.375 billion CDOT highway improvements, $1.160 billion in local highway improvements, $1.590 billion in local street improvements, and $7.560 billion in private street improvements. These total to $12.7 billion in 2001 dollars.
If inflated to 2025 dollars, they roughly total to $19 billion, and if you are a FasTracks Yes supporter, you might round up $19 billion to $25 billion (which is what they now admit they did). But 60 percent of these expenses are paid by private developers, not out of tax dollars. And 72 percent are for streets, not highways. Only $3.5 billion (with inflation, about $5 billion) are for highways. Calling the rest "CDOT highway expenses" is totally deceptive.