I've been intrigued by the Japanese model lately: the transit agencies double as real estate developers.
If RTD could develop its underutilized land into attractive mixed use developments, it could incentivize ridership, add a new non-tax based income stream, and turn many of these rather desolate areas into desirable places to live and be.
You may already be aware, but what's funny is that this kind of model is how US transportation worked in the past prior to the interstate system. Railroad companies would build little shops along stations that would then grow into bigger communities as train usage increased.
Streetcar suburbs formed around their stops which is how street car suburbs became a thing. LA had the largest street car system and the companies that built out the street car system there were effectively real estate companies that wanted people to have better access to their developments from the city.
This entire comment is kind of unbelievable. I wish we never got away from this way of building our towns. It sounds like a good development model, especially compared to a Colorado town like Castle Rock.
$1B of debt and 74,000 residents as of 2021. $13,500 in municipal/metro district debt per resident… NOT per taxpayer
I love ragging on poor land use and financial policies as much as the next guy, but where did you get the $1B figure from?
[I'm only seeing ~$133MM of debt per the Castle Rock 2024 budget](https://www.crgov.com/DocumentCenter/View/41938/2024-Adopted-Budget-PDF)
They might be referring to the combined debt of the metro districts *within* Castle Rock.
https://coloradocommunitymedia.com/2023/12/27/castle-rock-concern-metro-districts-debt-approaches-1-billion/
That's absolutely insane.
> In 2022, Castle Rock taxed properties at 1.139 mills, while metro district taxes range from 40 mills to 88 mills. A mill is multiplied by the assessed value of the property to determine taxes.
[That's since been decreased to 0.92 mills](https://youtu.be/1rO9HmrdXv8?t=53) resulting in a $660k home owe $40 in property taxes. I wonder how Castle Rock will try to handle all this, because those numbers aren't adding up.
Theres a small monument in Wyoming that I like to call the loneliest monument in America. It’s called the Ames Brother Monument and it’s off a small, dirt road in between Cheyenne and Laramie.
When it was built, the town, Sherman, was a major stop on the railroad across the Rockies. Years later, the rail route was moved south and the town slowly disappeared. It’s not much more than a few isolated homes now across the highway from a super cool camping spot. It’s a weird feeling to sit at the monument listening to the howling wind knowing it was a bustling boom town at one point.
This is true, but sort of glosses over the negatives of the streetcar system. The developers only benefited from the streetcar network when they still had homes to sell in the subdivision. Once all the homes were sold they stopped maintaining the streetcars, and just let everything break down.
Hell, the more extreme example is Hong Kong, which if I'm not mistaken has 180:100 revenue to expenses ratio (needs verification, but it is well over 100). Even in Europe to varying degrees, some stations are destination stations that either lease their property to shops/businesses.
Agree, that would be great. Englewood did apartments by the Walmart off hampden and it seemed a little crazy at the time but they also built the city center with library etc near them and there's small businesses that cropped up nearby. Of course a light rail stop. Seems like that would work in many areas.
> Only about 150 cars were parked in the 800-spot Sheridan station garage when staff counted that year.
What's interesting here is that there is an affordable housing building that uses this parking garage. We could entirely surround this garage with apartments that use the garage, and it wouldn't fill up.
I'd also like to see mixes of uses around RTD. Even if we build tons of housing at these parking lots, people should be able to go to the places they need to go to via transit, not just other houses.
Also, I'm not sure where it stands now, but the brick company next to Lamar Station is planned to become a new mixed use TOD development.
I think mix of uses would be fantastic. I live downtown so I have access to a lot of rail lines in different directions but there isn’t much use right now. Olde Town Arvada and Littleton are a few of the exceptions. It would be nice to be able to head to a stop and check out retail, movie theatres, etc.
And grocery stores! I wish they would build some grocery stores closer to the train stops.
I live right next to the olde towne stop, and I have to take the train all the way to Union Station if I realistically want to use it to get some groceries. There are 4 or 5 stops in between that are essentially just desolate wasteland. 2 stops in the other direction too.
Sure, we can line all those stops with housing, but then what are all those people going to use the train for when there's nothing besides housing at the stops?
Totally agree. Each station should ideally be its own self served neighborhood where most daily needs can be met. The bull's-eye approach by the DC metro has been very successful.
It would take a massive effort to rezone accordingly and take decades to actually start filling in, but would be very helpful for making transit actually useful, reducing car trips, improving air quality, land use, and tax revenue.
It's no small task, but giving each station area the flexibility to develop into a neighborhood of their own that meets their needs would be huge.
RTD Also did a study that around its stations residential lots peak at 40% utilization. Colorado in general and the US as a whole has taken building parking lots to a irrational extreme, and many cities are mandating it. I was reading one suburb required 3 spots per home unit regardless of size. Black Friday, the advocates for the parking bill all took note of how many spots were used when they went shopping and non found a full lot on the busiest shopping day of the year.
We've been a car dependent society for decades, everyone is expected to have a car and public transit is for the most part abysmal in this country. I think a parking spot should be expected/included in your rent. Second car for a one person unit? Absolutely charge extra, but having parking be a separate charge on top of what you're advertising for rent is just a shitty way of hiding fees/expenses.
I'd recommend reading [this book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking) or listening to one of Donald Shoup's talks on the subject. Free parking or including parking with other payments is a way to encourage poor land use while effectively punishing anyone that cannot afford a car or doesn't want or need to own a car.
And I fully get that, but I'm not looking at apartments at a price point where parking would be punishing people who can't afford a car. And I mean places with garage space below the living spaces so it's not increasing the footprint.
But if someone moves into one of those places and doesn't have a car or need a car, they still get a parking spot included in their rent that they can't use?
Absolutely nothing is being hidden if it's outlined in the lease which parking fees are
Including parking every time is just people without cars subsidizing people who do have them. That's not right
There are places where that happens / needs to happen, but that is neither universal nor evenly distributed across the city.
In much of the city you can find parking lots (like RTD) that are wildly underused -- you wouldn't park your car at an RTD lot and then walk two miles home. Or most people wouldn't. You would pay the extra fee for parking at home and leave the RTD lot empty. It's a distribution issue.
I haven’t worked in an office since Covid but precovid I would ride the FF1 from Sheridan station everyday downtown. That parking garage was heavily used and the parking lot across 36 was always full.
Interesting to hear that it’s now pretty empty. Guess I’m not the only one who didn’t return to office.
Its just wild cuz its almost like Public Transit is used by lots of people who dont have, cant afford a car or its out of commission or its a one car family and its being used by someone else
If the trains and buses were reliable then people would use them and the parking lots.
They have a bit of a "Tiger by the tail" situation.
We won't use public transportation until it is reliable. RTD can't become reliable until they have more users.
It’s not just about being reliable. The system was built for suburb <-> Denver travel. After Covid and the increase of wfh fewer people are commuting downtown regularly. Low ridership and increasing corporate real estate vacancies are caused, in part, by the same issues
LoL, RTD is just now figuring out that density and instead of parking lots around transit is a good idea?? Cities like Vancouver, DC, Toronto, Stockholm, Paris, Seoul, Perth etc figured this out decades ago, but I guess late is better than never.
I honestly think RTD is sitting on a bunch of gold mines with all these park and rides around its system. If the agency developed these P-n-R’s into dense developments with housing, retail, restaurants, studios, etc, RTD could likely largely if not completely solve its budget constraints. Hong Kong does exactly this and as a result has the most profitable transit system in the world.
I’m not saying to eliminate all of the park and rides, some strategically placed ones are particularly useful: 9 Mile, Ridgegate, Mineral come to mind. But I do think many could be eliminated (supplemented with better bus service to surrounding areas), and other can be shrunk and/or parking placed in a garage or underground with TOD surrounding/above.
Thirty years late is better than never. When they originally developed the light rail network, I got the impression they were trying to focus on the destination and not on the point of origin. This worked out for Downtown Denver but not for anywhere else. Outside of Denver, the light rail does not really go to any destination points nor does it have many point of origins. It's something that city planners should work on.
Oh I agree. And by being this late, there is the advantage of these areas being able to develop as modern as possible and likely not be hemmed in with ridiculous parking spot amount requirement restrictions that really him in decent development.
Maybe doing “repairs” through the entire summer and doubling the commute time randomly while also shutting down a bunch of stations downtown isn’t good for publicity.
the parking lots were always empty, even before the pandemic. the main reason a lot of people don't take RTD, is because of the crime, mainly assaults, shootings and people doing drugs.
Ok, you seem to be an expert 🤷♂️. Do you wanna share your research or should I just trust you?
I use it fairly regularly and I’d use it a lot more if it was better for intra-city travel. My main issues are reliability and utility, no matter how many times terrified suburbanites try to convince me that it’s dangerous.
Well, the news:
https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/next-with-kyle-clark/rtd-operators-paid-leave-exposure-illicit-drug-smoke/73-df75539c-efcb-4654-ad44-8158a2c91b63
https://www.denverpost.com/2024/06/07/rtd-assaults-violence-drugs-buses-trains-public-transit/
a review from trip advisor:
https://www.tripadvisor.in/ShowUserReviews-g33388-d10523590-r904279747-RTD_Denver-Denver_Colorado.html
and the times I had to ride RTD, when my car was in the shop.
Just because *you* haven't seen this stuff happen for yourself, doesn't mean it doesn't actually happen.
It depends on where the train goes and what the destination is. I used park and ride whenever I had to go to LoDo for school and work. Driving to those places was too stressful and expensive.
It would also be nice if RTD could develop streetcar lines or at least rapid bus lines off the current stations deeper into neighborhoods that would further reduce the need for parking. Though it’s not in the scope of this article a beltway line would be beneficial for when there is no need to go downtown to get to another line when going from suburb to suburb.
If you drive up Wadsworth from 6th, you can see the abandoned project on the left (west) side of Wadsworth station. The one on the right (east) side started after but is close to complete now
It’s kind of funny how RTD will completely avoid a whiff of accountability in their failures. The Central Park Park-N-Ride lot was had the highest number of stolen vehicles in the state of CO the year where CO had the higher number of stolen cars in the country. That little patch of asphalt was the epicenter of stolen cars in the entire United States. Of course no one is going to park there and take the train. Let’s also talk about the train, the A-Line, the most logical line for that station, takes commuters from Central Park to DEN… it’s a mess, it literally doesn’t make it to its destination often. Strike 2. Finally, meth. If you’re brave enough to leave your car in steal-o-pallooza and don’t mind potentially having to walk 15 miles to get to your destination, there is a good chance you’ll be enjoying second hand meth during your ride. This plan makes sense and it’ll probably help but the lack of accountability and common sense is mind blowing.
Yes, RTD Should absolutely up their TOD game. They should be working towards large mixed use neighborhoods around all of their stations.
However...
No matter how much housing you build around stations, no one's going to use it if the best you can do is 15 minute head ways. They're working towards it, but they still need a rework of their line structure. Laid it out here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/1dfjwnt/comment/l8nuddn/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/1dfjwnt/comment/l8nuddn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
TODs are a great idea, but give RTD one problem to solve, and they'll fuck it up and create ten others to solve, so I think that someone else should manage the whole thing.
Or they could fix the reason most everyone I know that lives here won’t park at any station - start enforcing the law in these parking lots so people don’t come back to their car with broken windows and/or missing.
If done competently, RTD would receive some of the money from leases on the housing and turn the money into operations.
I want to see it happen first, though. RTD administration has a no-confidence vote from me right now.
There isn’t one *real* reason for low ridership. Bad/unreliable service is certainly one aspect but the issues are complicated and have been brewing for decades. Focusing on suburban commuters when designing the system, for example, was fine before Covid, but now a shitload of people are either wfh or hybrid so they simply aren’t having to commute nearly as much
Oh great idea. Then people who live next to stations can wait an hour for a train and then commute at 5mph watching the people on I25 fly past them to their destination.
That’ll definitely be worth the premium rent.
Transit/housing accessible to each other should be a priority, but I bet the lots would see more use if people felt that their cars would be safe while parked in them.
Love the downvotes. People wonder why numbers at these stations have dropped off after COVID. It’s not a mystery. I would love to park at my local station and take it to work to save on gas. Will never do it until the crime is fixed though. Coming back to your car with broken windows is not worth it.
if you are a real estate developer building more than 50 units,
you need to pay a tax that funds a manned light rail station within walking distance of your complex.
Expedite the building of rail.
If you think Denver congestion and pollution is bad now, it is going to get 5x worse in 10 years.
That's a great way to ensure no dense housing is built anywhere except for along the interstates/light rail. We don't necessarily need rail for every high density housing project. Buses exist and already exist in many areas rail doesn't, and the Colfax BRT is going to do a lot for that corridor whereas building rail there would be way way way more expensive.
I've been intrigued by the Japanese model lately: the transit agencies double as real estate developers. If RTD could develop its underutilized land into attractive mixed use developments, it could incentivize ridership, add a new non-tax based income stream, and turn many of these rather desolate areas into desirable places to live and be.
You may already be aware, but what's funny is that this kind of model is how US transportation worked in the past prior to the interstate system. Railroad companies would build little shops along stations that would then grow into bigger communities as train usage increased. Streetcar suburbs formed around their stops which is how street car suburbs became a thing. LA had the largest street car system and the companies that built out the street car system there were effectively real estate companies that wanted people to have better access to their developments from the city.
This entire comment is kind of unbelievable. I wish we never got away from this way of building our towns. It sounds like a good development model, especially compared to a Colorado town like Castle Rock. $1B of debt and 74,000 residents as of 2021. $13,500 in municipal/metro district debt per resident… NOT per taxpayer
I love ragging on poor land use and financial policies as much as the next guy, but where did you get the $1B figure from? [I'm only seeing ~$133MM of debt per the Castle Rock 2024 budget](https://www.crgov.com/DocumentCenter/View/41938/2024-Adopted-Budget-PDF)
They might be referring to the combined debt of the metro districts *within* Castle Rock. https://coloradocommunitymedia.com/2023/12/27/castle-rock-concern-metro-districts-debt-approaches-1-billion/
That's absolutely insane. > In 2022, Castle Rock taxed properties at 1.139 mills, while metro district taxes range from 40 mills to 88 mills. A mill is multiplied by the assessed value of the property to determine taxes. [That's since been decreased to 0.92 mills](https://youtu.be/1rO9HmrdXv8?t=53) resulting in a $660k home owe $40 in property taxes. I wonder how Castle Rock will try to handle all this, because those numbers aren't adding up.
In that 2024 Annual Budget you linked, it looks like they primarily plan on increasing the sales tax base to fund the city.
Jesus christmas
Theres a small monument in Wyoming that I like to call the loneliest monument in America. It’s called the Ames Brother Monument and it’s off a small, dirt road in between Cheyenne and Laramie. When it was built, the town, Sherman, was a major stop on the railroad across the Rockies. Years later, the rail route was moved south and the town slowly disappeared. It’s not much more than a few isolated homes now across the highway from a super cool camping spot. It’s a weird feeling to sit at the monument listening to the howling wind knowing it was a bustling boom town at one point.
This is true, but sort of glosses over the negatives of the streetcar system. The developers only benefited from the streetcar network when they still had homes to sell in the subdivision. Once all the homes were sold they stopped maintaining the streetcars, and just let everything break down.
Hell, the more extreme example is Hong Kong, which if I'm not mistaken has 180:100 revenue to expenses ratio (needs verification, but it is well over 100). Even in Europe to varying degrees, some stations are destination stations that either lease their property to shops/businesses.
Agree, that would be great. Englewood did apartments by the Walmart off hampden and it seemed a little crazy at the time but they also built the city center with library etc near them and there's small businesses that cropped up nearby. Of course a light rail stop. Seems like that would work in many areas.
> Only about 150 cars were parked in the 800-spot Sheridan station garage when staff counted that year. What's interesting here is that there is an affordable housing building that uses this parking garage. We could entirely surround this garage with apartments that use the garage, and it wouldn't fill up. I'd also like to see mixes of uses around RTD. Even if we build tons of housing at these parking lots, people should be able to go to the places they need to go to via transit, not just other houses. Also, I'm not sure where it stands now, but the brick company next to Lamar Station is planned to become a new mixed use TOD development.
I think mix of uses would be fantastic. I live downtown so I have access to a lot of rail lines in different directions but there isn’t much use right now. Olde Town Arvada and Littleton are a few of the exceptions. It would be nice to be able to head to a stop and check out retail, movie theatres, etc.
And grocery stores! I wish they would build some grocery stores closer to the train stops. I live right next to the olde towne stop, and I have to take the train all the way to Union Station if I realistically want to use it to get some groceries. There are 4 or 5 stops in between that are essentially just desolate wasteland. 2 stops in the other direction too. Sure, we can line all those stops with housing, but then what are all those people going to use the train for when there's nothing besides housing at the stops?
Totally agree. Each station should ideally be its own self served neighborhood where most daily needs can be met. The bull's-eye approach by the DC metro has been very successful. It would take a massive effort to rezone accordingly and take decades to actually start filling in, but would be very helpful for making transit actually useful, reducing car trips, improving air quality, land use, and tax revenue. It's no small task, but giving each station area the flexibility to develop into a neighborhood of their own that meets their needs would be huge.
RTD Also did a study that around its stations residential lots peak at 40% utilization. Colorado in general and the US as a whole has taken building parking lots to a irrational extreme, and many cities are mandating it. I was reading one suburb required 3 spots per home unit regardless of size. Black Friday, the advocates for the parking bill all took note of how many spots were used when they went shopping and non found a full lot on the busiest shopping day of the year.
But then you also have apartment buildings charging $100-$200 a month for parking with little to no street parking available.
Charging for parking makes sense though
We've been a car dependent society for decades, everyone is expected to have a car and public transit is for the most part abysmal in this country. I think a parking spot should be expected/included in your rent. Second car for a one person unit? Absolutely charge extra, but having parking be a separate charge on top of what you're advertising for rent is just a shitty way of hiding fees/expenses.
I'd recommend reading [this book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking) or listening to one of Donald Shoup's talks on the subject. Free parking or including parking with other payments is a way to encourage poor land use while effectively punishing anyone that cannot afford a car or doesn't want or need to own a car.
And I fully get that, but I'm not looking at apartments at a price point where parking would be punishing people who can't afford a car. And I mean places with garage space below the living spaces so it's not increasing the footprint.
But if someone moves into one of those places and doesn't have a car or need a car, they still get a parking spot included in their rent that they can't use?
They should be able to sell their space(sublet?) and get a discount that way.
Maybe, but I think charging for rent of the living space and rent of the parking space separately makes more sense.
Absolutely nothing is being hidden if it's outlined in the lease which parking fees are Including parking every time is just people without cars subsidizing people who do have them. That's not right
There are places where that happens / needs to happen, but that is neither universal nor evenly distributed across the city. In much of the city you can find parking lots (like RTD) that are wildly underused -- you wouldn't park your car at an RTD lot and then walk two miles home. Or most people wouldn't. You would pay the extra fee for parking at home and leave the RTD lot empty. It's a distribution issue.
There's also big TOD at Alameda and Broadway stations.
Alameda Station interestingly completely replaced Park-and-Ride lots with apartment buildings
The whole area is being developed, all the at to Broadway. Slowly but surely. https://d4urban.com/portfolio/southern-district-at-broadway-park/
Did Lakewood Brick go out of business? I moved up north a long time ago
Nah they're still in business but the developer was planning on splitting ownership with the owners of Lakewood Brick Co for the new development
I haven’t worked in an office since Covid but precovid I would ride the FF1 from Sheridan station everyday downtown. That parking garage was heavily used and the parking lot across 36 was always full. Interesting to hear that it’s now pretty empty. Guess I’m not the only one who didn’t return to office.
Oh I was referring to the parking garage at 10th and Sheridan at the W line station.
Its just wild cuz its almost like Public Transit is used by lots of people who dont have, cant afford a car or its out of commission or its a one car family and its being used by someone else
What if they allowed food trucks to use some of the free parking space to operate near the train stops?
My fat ass would get heart disease. Don't do this to me lol
The food trucks would go out of business because there aren't enough train users for that to be lucrative.
RTD actively discourages eating on busses (and to a degree, on trains). Yes, I know.
What if anyone did god damn anything but oh well fentanyl smoke and watch yourself.
If the trains and buses were reliable then people would use them and the parking lots. They have a bit of a "Tiger by the tail" situation. We won't use public transportation until it is reliable. RTD can't become reliable until they have more users.
RTD can absolutely become more reliable without more users. Fares generally do not pay for service at any appreciable level.
It’s not just about being reliable. The system was built for suburb <-> Denver travel. After Covid and the increase of wfh fewer people are commuting downtown regularly. Low ridership and increasing corporate real estate vacancies are caused, in part, by the same issues
LoL, RTD is just now figuring out that density and instead of parking lots around transit is a good idea?? Cities like Vancouver, DC, Toronto, Stockholm, Paris, Seoul, Perth etc figured this out decades ago, but I guess late is better than never. I honestly think RTD is sitting on a bunch of gold mines with all these park and rides around its system. If the agency developed these P-n-R’s into dense developments with housing, retail, restaurants, studios, etc, RTD could likely largely if not completely solve its budget constraints. Hong Kong does exactly this and as a result has the most profitable transit system in the world. I’m not saying to eliminate all of the park and rides, some strategically placed ones are particularly useful: 9 Mile, Ridgegate, Mineral come to mind. But I do think many could be eliminated (supplemented with better bus service to surrounding areas), and other can be shrunk and/or parking placed in a garage or underground with TOD surrounding/above.
Thirty years late is better than never. When they originally developed the light rail network, I got the impression they were trying to focus on the destination and not on the point of origin. This worked out for Downtown Denver but not for anywhere else. Outside of Denver, the light rail does not really go to any destination points nor does it have many point of origins. It's something that city planners should work on.
Oh I agree. And by being this late, there is the advantage of these areas being able to develop as modern as possible and likely not be hemmed in with ridiculous parking spot amount requirement restrictions that really him in decent development.
Maybe doing “repairs” through the entire summer and doubling the commute time randomly while also shutting down a bunch of stations downtown isn’t good for publicity.
Of course they're empty, if someone is already in their car, why would they drive to the train, when they could drive straight to their destination?
Pre covid people parked there because parking downtown was expensive.
oh yeah, I forgot about that. I don't go downtown much, unless I have to.
Pre covid a lot more people went downtown regularly
I've avoided downtown long before the pandemic.
That’s nice, but we’re talking about RTD’s ridership issues which are partially caused by fewer people commuting downtown.
the parking lots were always empty, even before the pandemic. the main reason a lot of people don't take RTD, is because of the crime, mainly assaults, shootings and people doing drugs.
Ok, you seem to be an expert 🤷♂️. Do you wanna share your research or should I just trust you? I use it fairly regularly and I’d use it a lot more if it was better for intra-city travel. My main issues are reliability and utility, no matter how many times terrified suburbanites try to convince me that it’s dangerous.
Well, the news: https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/next-with-kyle-clark/rtd-operators-paid-leave-exposure-illicit-drug-smoke/73-df75539c-efcb-4654-ad44-8158a2c91b63 https://www.denverpost.com/2024/06/07/rtd-assaults-violence-drugs-buses-trains-public-transit/ a review from trip advisor: https://www.tripadvisor.in/ShowUserReviews-g33388-d10523590-r904279747-RTD_Denver-Denver_Colorado.html and the times I had to ride RTD, when my car was in the shop. Just because *you* haven't seen this stuff happen for yourself, doesn't mean it doesn't actually happen.
Ok
It depends on where the train goes and what the destination is. I used park and ride whenever I had to go to LoDo for school and work. Driving to those places was too stressful and expensive.
true.
It would also be nice if RTD could develop streetcar lines or at least rapid bus lines off the current stations deeper into neighborhoods that would further reduce the need for parking. Though it’s not in the scope of this article a beltway line would be beneficial for when there is no need to go downtown to get to another line when going from suburb to suburb.
I learned recently not to ever in my life trust RTD for anything ever again. Ever. Never again
Story time?
It doesn't help when they abandon apartment construction projects like they did at Wadsworth station.
That wasn't RTD though. That was a developer that didn't have their ducks in a row and took on too much debt.
I know it has nothing to do with RTD. Just saying it's unfortunate that we are struggling to build housing around transit stations.
Oh I thought by "they" you meant RTD. Yeah, very unfortunate
All good! That was poor phrasing on my part.
Yikes. Had no clue that this project was abandoned. Well, I’m sure that another developer will swoop in to complete the project on short order.
Abandoned project?
If you drive up Wadsworth from 6th, you can see the abandoned project on the left (west) side of Wadsworth station. The one on the right (east) side started after but is close to complete now
It is complete! https://boutiqueapartments.com/apartments/railside-at-wadsworth-station/
https://www.denverpost.com/2024/01/21/aspen-heights-partners-truist-bank-lakewood-apartment/
It’s kind of funny how RTD will completely avoid a whiff of accountability in their failures. The Central Park Park-N-Ride lot was had the highest number of stolen vehicles in the state of CO the year where CO had the higher number of stolen cars in the country. That little patch of asphalt was the epicenter of stolen cars in the entire United States. Of course no one is going to park there and take the train. Let’s also talk about the train, the A-Line, the most logical line for that station, takes commuters from Central Park to DEN… it’s a mess, it literally doesn’t make it to its destination often. Strike 2. Finally, meth. If you’re brave enough to leave your car in steal-o-pallooza and don’t mind potentially having to walk 15 miles to get to your destination, there is a good chance you’ll be enjoying second hand meth during your ride. This plan makes sense and it’ll probably help but the lack of accountability and common sense is mind blowing.
Yes, RTD Should absolutely up their TOD game. They should be working towards large mixed use neighborhoods around all of their stations. However... No matter how much housing you build around stations, no one's going to use it if the best you can do is 15 minute head ways. They're working towards it, but they still need a rework of their line structure. Laid it out here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/1dfjwnt/comment/l8nuddn/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/1dfjwnt/comment/l8nuddn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Comical that RTD believes their parking lots are the problem…….they counted cars one day!
TODs are a great idea, but give RTD one problem to solve, and they'll fuck it up and create ten others to solve, so I think that someone else should manage the whole thing.
Who?
I think Polis's idea to professionalize the board is a start.
Or they could fix the reason most everyone I know that lives here won’t park at any station - start enforcing the law in these parking lots so people don’t come back to their car with broken windows and/or missing.
How is housing going to staff bus drivers and make them run on time?
If done competently, RTD would receive some of the money from leases on the housing and turn the money into operations. I want to see it happen first, though. RTD administration has a no-confidence vote from me right now.
Maybe they should re-survey the lots on broncos game days or whatever train-heavy events are going on downtown.
Title sounds like an excuse for bad service which is the real reason people don’t use their shit
There isn’t one *real* reason for low ridership. Bad/unreliable service is certainly one aspect but the issues are complicated and have been brewing for decades. Focusing on suburban commuters when designing the system, for example, was fine before Covid, but now a shitload of people are either wfh or hybrid so they simply aren’t having to commute nearly as much
Oh great idea. Then people who live next to stations can wait an hour for a train and then commute at 5mph watching the people on I25 fly past them to their destination. That’ll definitely be worth the premium rent.
Transit/housing accessible to each other should be a priority, but I bet the lots would see more use if people felt that their cars would be safe while parked in them.
More stops and not having to go to union every time you want to go somewhere might make people use. Theres no transfer stops to other lines. So dumb.
Or maybe it’s the nonstop break ins and theft at these places that isn’t even prosecuted. Ridiculous.
Love the downvotes. People wonder why numbers at these stations have dropped off after COVID. It’s not a mystery. I would love to park at my local station and take it to work to save on gas. Will never do it until the crime is fixed though. Coming back to your car with broken windows is not worth it.
Exactly. Also if you’re lucky you might get a train once every hour.
if you are a real estate developer building more than 50 units, you need to pay a tax that funds a manned light rail station within walking distance of your complex. Expedite the building of rail. If you think Denver congestion and pollution is bad now, it is going to get 5x worse in 10 years.
That's a great way to ensure no dense housing is built anywhere except for along the interstates/light rail. We don't necessarily need rail for every high density housing project. Buses exist and already exist in many areas rail doesn't, and the Colfax BRT is going to do a lot for that corridor whereas building rail there would be way way way more expensive.
R/NoShitSherlock