At Monday night’s Council meeting, Judy introduced a proclamation urging the full realization of the Strategic Transportation Plan. The measure passed 11-1. Her comments in full:
Denver has worked hard over the last five years to develop the Strategic Transportation Plan. This document is important not only because it addresses the technical ways in which we will move people through our city, but because it will be the life blood of our communities. The travel shed concept threads transportation into the fabric of our communities in order to provide safe, healthy and vital connections to our jobs, to the services we use, to our homes, and most importantly, to one another. As the plan notes, a travel shed is an idea that “was derived from the theory of a watershed,” which is “a broad look at the inter connection of streams and tributaries that drain into a larger river basin. A travel shed takes a broad look at the collection of streets and mobility routes that feed into the larger, connected transportation system.”
The Strategic Transportation plan is reflective of the Mayor, and our various City departments, honoring the public’s commitment to a world class transportation system in the region. Each of the travel sheds featured in the plan are counting on the planned FasTracks enhancements as integral to the travel improvements promised in their neighborhoods. This is why Denver voters supported FasTracks and why, as Manager of Public Works Bill Vidal noted on September 16 during the Public Works Committee, that an underlying assumption of the Strategic Transportation Plan is that FasTracks will be completed to its originally planned extent by 2017. Manager Vidal reported that the Strategic Transportation Plan can only be fully realized if the FasTracks corridors are completely built out.
This is why I wish to commend Mayor Hickenlooper and the Metro Mayors’ Caucus, for taking the lead in supporting the full promised build out of FasTracks. As many of you are already aware, the Metro Mayor’s have formed a taskforce to study how the current economic situation may impact the build out of FasTracks. I endorse their goal that we do not sever a single community in a rush to cut costs. As noted on the Metro Mayors’ Caucus website, they “understand[] that a number of factors, including lagging sales tax revenues, may affect the implementation of FasTracks” and they further acknowledge “that the FasTracks plan may need to be modified to remain economically feasible.” However, the Caucus “urges RTD to select an implementation scenario that ensures that all of the corridors remain in the plan” and that “any further prioritization of these corridors should be made in a collaborative, regional process that incorporates input from local governments throughout the region.”
It is with this approach that we have a solid basis to fully realize the implementation of the Strategic Transportation Plan, which was developed after FasTracks was approved and is connected to every FasTracks corridor. For example, the Downtown Travel Shed in the STP “employment and attraction epicenter of the Denver Metro region.” The analysis of this travel shed points out that there are a several travel barriers that “that limit mobility within the shed” because of waterways, the interstate, connectivity challenges at intersections and more. The Strategic Transportation Plan recognizes that this shed is anticipating a drastic increase of 94% in transit trips by the year 2030. The recommendations for this shed note that:
Due to the drastic increase in transit trips forecast for this travel shed, major improvements in transit are recommended and are already underway. Travel routes in the FasTracks plan will converge at Denver Union Station, which is within the Downtown Travel Shed’s boundaries. Construction of the West, Gold, North Metro, I-70 East and U.S. 36 transit improvements will significantly increase transit capacity in the downtown area.
And while Denver Union Station in the Downtown Travel Shed can be thought of as the heart of our regional world class transportation hub, we need to embrace the Metro Mayors’ approach and make sure we do not sever connections to the outlying communities which may thrive, or wither, depending on the implementation of the Strategic Transportation Plan. For example, the plan recognizes that the River North Travel Shed features a number of neighborhoods, such as Globeville, that are isolated because of severe transportation barriers. This travel shed emphasizes the importance of connections to the proposed FasTracks commuter rail in the area to continue the redevelopment and rejuvenation we are finally experiencing in this previously neglected part of Denver .
So I’d like to encourage my colleagues to work hard with the Metro Mayors, the Administration and RTD so that we can fully implement the Strategic Transportation Plan we’ve worked so hard on over the last few years to create. It is with this plan that I believe Denver will be viewed as a world-class transportation hub in the heart of our country, and as a transit center which encourages all of our communities to thrive.
