The Mobility Plan for Denver
DRCOG’s 2025 transportation plan would increase the amount of time the average metro-area commuter wastes in traffi c from 50 hours a year in 2001 to 87 hours by 2025. Even with FasTracks, the time wasted per commuter would increase to 83 hours. As an alternative, the Center for the American Dream proposes a Mobility Plan for Denver that would reduce annual delay to less than 45 hours per commuter. Without increasing taxes, the plan would also reduce air pollution, increase transportation safety, and provide greater mobility for low-income and transit-dependent people.
MLK on RTD
What would Martin Luther King, Jr. say about RTD’s SlowTracks rail transit tax increase? Rail transit’s professed goal is to attract middle-class drivers who own one or more automobiles out of their cars and onto transit. Yet RTD’s plan is likely to reduce mobility for low-income people.
The False Panacea of Renewable Energy
Scribd file: IB-2004-B By The Center for the American Dream Renewable energy- wind, solar, hydro, and biomass – is advertised as superior to coal, gas, and other non-renewables. But renewable energy comes at a high environmental and economic cost. Moreover, government subsidies to renewables may actually stifle innovation. Market forces will do a better job […]
Why Slow Tracks Won’t Help Denver
RTD’s so-called “FasTracks” plan will cost billions and do nothing to relieve congestion or increase mobility.
Cutting Back on Catching Up: Reducing the Need for Remediation in Colorado Higher Education
A recent study by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education reveals that 26.6% of Colorado public high school graduates entering Colorado public higher education in 2002-2003 were assigned to remediation, and of those:
Bus-Rapid Transit Is Better Than Rail: The Smart Alternative to Light Rail
Bus-rapid transit is a new type of mass transit that relies on buses that operate on schedules similar to rail transit lines, with greater frequencies and fewer stops (and therefore faster service) than conventional bus transit. A recent report from the General Accounting Office (GAO) compared bus-rapid transit with light rail and found that bus-rapid transit capital costs are as little as 2 percent of those of light rail. Further, bus-rapid transit costs less to operate and goes significantly faster than light-rail service.
Train in Vain
For more than a decade, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) has been evaluating alternatives to relieve congestion and improve mobility in the 118 mile I-70 Mountain Corridor (C-470 to Eagle County Airport). During the last four years, they have been preparing a federally mandated Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) that is supposed to evaluate reasonably available and financially feasible alternatives. From day one, rail transit advocates from corridor communities, and environmental groups, and smart growth planners have steadfastly maintained, that rail transit (a passenger railroad on tracks or fixed guide way) is the only solution. This is despite the fact that practical rail transit technology hasnt advanced much in the last century and that no realistic source of funds to construct a rail system has ever been identified. In the I-70 PEIS Summary of Preliminary Findings,[1] CDOT reported that maybe $1 billion dollars could be available for corridor improvements in the next 20 years. The cost of a rail transit system is at least $4.4 billion, according to CDOT.[2]
Uncle Sam's Club
Back when I was in the Coast Guard, we had to submit to random drug screenings. One day I discovered, inadvertently, that only 25% of samples were actually sent off for analysis; it was just too expensive to do them all. Add in a high error rate to start with, stir in numerous — and […]
Light Rail Is Defeatable
Rail transit ballot measures usually lose unless proponents outspend opponents by more then one hundred to one.
Health Care Reform: Liberate Patients or Oppress Them
Though you would never know it from the news reports, the brightest hope for health care reform lies in the consumer directed health care movement. Pioneering physicians, like Heather Sowell and Jonathan Sheldon at the Sheldon Sowell Center for Health in Englewood, and Vern Cherewatenko of Washington State, have opened practices that protect patients and […]
The Simple Care Solution
With prescription drug benefits being debated in Congress, increasing concern in the state legislature over double-digit percentage increases in health care spending and health insurance premiums, and the alarming number of uninsured Americans, one wonders if increasing legislation is really the solution to our health care problems.
It’s Not Too Late: To Avoid Congestion After T-REX
By using the power of the market to help the T-REX project, congestion-free, free-flow traffic travel can be made available to both carpoolers and single occupant drivers. Further, $600 million can be pocketed by the state. By contrast, a decision to forego over a half billion dollars of desperately-needed transportation revenues will doom travelers to sit again in traffic congestion in the not-too-distant future.
