For the sake of today’s discussion, let’s suppose you are among a group of diners who pay an up-front price for dinner at a popular restaurant.
Imagine standing inside the door and watching as nearly every other diner in the place orders and is served.
You listen as the hostess says that your dinner will be ready sometime after breakfast. Adding insult to injury, she returns a short time later to say that you may not get the meal that was advertised — and that you will need to pay more than the other diners.
Would you dig into your wallet and wait, or would you walk out?
That scenario helps explain frustration with the Regional Transportation District being felt by some elected officials in the northwest metro area.
As The Denver Post’s Monte Whaley has outlined in recent days, communities up and down the U.S. 36 corridor have contributed more than $100 million to the region’s FasTracks rail system in the form of sales taxes, but have little — if anything — to show for it.
Now, RTD is asking them to cover half the cost of a $3.5 million study of the transportation needs in the region.
The study is part of the transit agency’s attempt to address transportation needs in the region in light of cost increases and time delays that have plagued the northwest commuter rail line. The line has seen cost estimates jump from $894 million to $1.7 billion and the completion date pushed back to 2044.
Broomfield Mayor Pat Quinn said he can’t imagine his community will chip in.
We sympathize.
RTD maintains that the study is needed because the agency doesn’t know what people in the region want. We would argue that voters in the region demonstrated what they want in 2004, and have taxed themselves to prove it.
Boulder County Commissioner Will Toor might be right when he says the world has changed and a new look is order. But that doesn’t mean the communities along the Turnpike should be stuck with an additional bill.
We have long advocated the spirit of regional cooperation that has been a part of the FasTracks program from the very beginning.
In this case, RTD can live up to that by finding the money for the study in its budget, which is funded by taxpayers from throughout the metro area.
