More than 50 business and government leaders gathered at Thornton City Hall on Thursday night in an effort to guarantee that the north metro area is treated fairly within RTD’s financially distressed FasTracks plan.
Since August, the Regional Transportation District has said it plans to complete train lines to Denver International Airport, Arvada/Wheat Ridge and Golden.
It expects to have enough money left over to construct only three other truncated lines, one in the U.S. 36 corridor, another north from central Denver to Thornton/ Northglenn and a third in the Interstate 225 corridor.
RTD says it is short about $2 billion to complete all FasTracks lines as originally planned.
Westminster Mayor Nancy McNally bluntly said it was not right for some FasTracks lines — those targeted for completion by 2017 — to be “sucking the money from our corridors.”
Thornton Mayor Erik Han sen, who helped organize the meeting under a newly formed North Area Transportation Alliance, said RTD should aggressively pursue efforts to get more money for the north train lines from the federal government or by taking advantage of public-private partnerships.
To frame the debate over equity within the FasTracks program, Thornton prepared a report titled “Should FasTracks be allowed to create winners and losers among metro area communities?”
The Metro Mayors Caucus, a group of more than 30 Denver- area mayors, is expected next year to recommend measures aimed at achieving equity for FasTracks construction.
