Escalating costs for the FasTracks transit expansion leave RTD with three options, planners said Tuesday: Delay completion dates of the new rail lines, cut the scope of each project to stay within budget, or raise more money from new taxes and bonds.
“We know costs are going up,” Liz Telford, project manager for the Gold Line train between Denver and Wheat Ridge, told local government officials Tuesday. RTD’s decision on which of the financial options to pursue is expected by October.
Officials have said it may be politically impossible to ask voters to increase the 0.4 percent FasTracks sales tax. But in an era of $4 a gallon gas, they add, if such a hike were linked with an increase in the 0.6 percent tax that supports RTD’s financially strapped “base” operation — its current system of trains and buses — it might be more palatable to voters.
Last year, the Regional Transportation District said steeply higher construction-material costs and other factors had raised the cost of FasTracks to $6.1 billion from the $4.7 billion estimate that was presented to metro voters in 2004. At that time, voters approved the 0.4 percent sales tax to pay for the nation’s largest transit expansion.
Telford said planners on Aug. 21 will present to RTD directors a range of possible new costs for each of the FasTracks lines and weigh possible “adjustments” the agency could make to each.
“Everything we’re doing is going to be subjected to the microscope,” RTD director Wally Pulliam said, referring to the latest scrub of FasTracks finances.
The 11.2-mile electrified Gold Line is one of six new trains and three rail extensions that are to be built as part of FasTracks. Others will operate from central Denver to Lakewood/Golden, Boulder/Longmont, north Adams County and Denver International Airport, and one will run in the Interstate 225 corridor north of Parker Road.
When the FasTracks cost estimate soared to $6.1 billion last year, RTD rejected the option of shortening rail lines and one that called for extending the schedule past the planned 2016 completion date so construction costs could “match cash flow.”
Instead, RTD settled on the solution of “revised” budgeting and financing, banking on “public-private partnerships” to bail the agency out of its financial hole.
RTD said it was counting on PPPs, as they are called, to bring at least $550 million in additional financing to FasTracks, helping offset the overall cost increase.
The agency hopes teams of private companies will compete vigorously to win the contract to finance, build and operate the Gold Line and the east corridor train to DIA, possibly for as long as 50 years.
Now, with new estimates likely to take the total cost of FasTracks toward $7 billion, or beyond, it is not clear whether RTD can wring more of this added expense out of PPPs.
The agency does not expect to have firm agreements with private partners until 2010, so planners may have to confront the options of extending the construction timetable or cutting the scope of the rail projects by roughly equal amounts.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Arvada senior planner Kevin Nichols reminded RTD officials of the agency’s “hold harmless” provision that says no rail line should suffer a disproportionate reduction in scope if changes occur to FasTracks.
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com
