8 NOVEMBER 6-12, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | The Bus Stopped Here FASTRACKS HAS BEEN SLOW TO ADD PROMISED LINES TO LONGMONT AND OTHER PARTS OF DENVER. BY BENNITO L. KELT Y Longmont and Denver transit users are frus- trated that the Regional Transportation District’s $5.5 billion FasTracks plan hasn’t delivered commuter rail for northwest metro communities or reliable bus service near the city center. More than a dozen residents chimed in after seeing the fi ndings of the 2025 Fas- Tracks report during the October 28 RTD Board of Directors meeting, with most of them wondering why they’ve been paying taxes for twenty years for rail and bus lines that still don’t serve them. Largely a bus and rail expansion plan for RTD, FasTracks is the main public transpor- tation provider for the Denver and Boulder metro region. Voters in RTD’s service area approved FasTracks in 2003, agreeing to a 0.4 percent sales and use tax to fund it. The plan has also relied on federal funding, in- cluding more than $2 billion in grants from the Federal Transit Administration. The 2025 FasTracks report came out in late September; it’s the fi rst report on the initiative’s progress since 2004. The RTD board listed discussion of the report on its October 28 meeting agenda but didn’t take action on the report itself, so it still needs to be fi nalized. The A Line commuter rail to Denver International Airport, the R Line light rail connecting the A Line to the Nine Mile Sta- tion in Aurora, the W Line to Golden, the G Line to Wheat Ridge and the FF Line to Boulder have all been completed via Fas- Tracks. However, the plan is still only about 75 percent fi nished, according to the report. FasTracks is badly behind schedule and over budget, according to projections. It was originally a twelve-year plan with a $4.7 bil- lion price tag, but RTD has already spent $5.5 billion on it and needs another few years and $1.6 billion to fi nish, according to the agency. In the FasTracks report, RTD blames a decrease in public spending since the 2008 Great Recession and increased construction costs for the lag. Public transportation of- fi cials don’t expect those trends to reverse, but RTD is hopeful the state legislature will provide for funding through from fees on oil and gas and short-term car rentals. In the meantime, bus riders feel left out. According to Denver and Longmont resi- dents who attended the meeting, they want to be better connected to the rest of the region, but they’re getting the brunt of the FasTracks failures. Longmont Left Hanging FasTrack has unfi nished projects in Den- ver, Highlands Ranch and Thornton, but the largest unfi nished project is in Longmont, where RTD promised a commuter rail con- necting it to Union Station as an extension of the B Line. “Longmont has been kind of hung out to dry,” Ross Starritt, a member of the Long- mont Transportation Advisory Board, said at the meeting. “Bring a FasTracks product to Longmont. It’ll bring Longmont much closer in to the rest of the region in a way that it really wants to be.” Mostnmembers of the seven-person Longmont board, which advises its city council on transportation, spoke at the meet- ing, but they each clarifi ed they were sharing their own views, not the board’s. Alex Kalk- hofer, the advisory board’s chair, mentioned that they had to get to the RTD meeting in downtown Denver by car. “My group did have to drive here tonight be- cause there’s no RTD bus between Longmont and Denver that could get us to this meeting and then take us home at a reasonable hour,” he said. “It’s a good illustration of the service gap.” The FasTracks report says that RTD is facing a $559 million funding gap to fi nish the Longmont commuter train. Longmont and the rest of Boulder County have been last in line for a major commuter rail con- necting them to Denver, but the county’s residents have paid about $280 million in taxes towards FasTracks. “It takes imagination. It takes courage and willingness to get this done,” Longmont resident Kay Marsh said. “Does the RTD have the chutzpah to get this done?” A call to better prioritize the Longmont commuter rail also came from the North- west Mayors & Commissioners Coalition, which represents governments in Boulder, Longmont, Broomfi eld, Louisville, Superior, Westminster, Lafayette and Erie. Not Enough Buses in Denver? A handful of Denver residents also com- plained to the RTD board, citing the system’s unreliable bus schedule and declining ser- vice hours. August Salbenblatt told the board that he sets a twenty-minute timer when he buys groceries so that he can catch the bus that will take him back to his Denver home. Sometimes, he chooses to walk 45 minutes rather than wait for the bus. “RTD buses simply are not frequent enough,” Salbenblatt told boardmembers. “A bus that comes every thirty minutes or every hour just isn’t useful, because you can’t rely on it, whether that’s for going to work or going to the grocery store.” Several other Denver residents and ac- tivists, including members of the Denver Streets Partnership, mentioned a particular data point from the FasTracks report: that the total annual RTD bus service hours in the city for 2025 are 17 percent lower than what they were in 2003. Andres Barros told the board that his son moved to Chicago because he “didn’t want to live in a place where having a car is a prerequisite.” “It’s just not possible for someone to be independent and live in Denver without a car,” the Denver resident added. “The func- tion of transit and, particularly, bus service to meet day-to-day needs, not just commuting needs, is essential.” RTD has yet to fi nish a $111 million project in downtown Denver that would create a light rail connection between A Line and L Line, from East 30th Avenue and Downing Street in Curtis Park to East 38th Avenue and Blake Street in RiNo. “Residents and the area business com- munity still strongly support having a transit connection,” said Joel Noble, a Curtis Park resident. “We pay into FasTracks just like Boulder County. We have an unfi nished corridor, the same as Boulder County, and we need RTD.” Email the author at [email protected]. NEWS KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS Residents from Boulder and Denver told the RTD board that FasTracks is overlooking their needs for bus and light rail service. RTD/FLICKR
