Bert Melcher Shares His Ideas on Highways vs. Transit

Ten years ago, a coalition of citizen's groups came together to fight the widening of I-70 in the mountains. The result of their efforts was the Collaborative Effort which brought together various stakeholders in the mountains to come to an agreement. Bert Melcher represented the Sierra Club for many years as a part of that group. They decided that rail was the best choice to solve transportation problems in the mountains and an agreement was signed that CDOT would not add any capacity to I-70 until a rail study was done.

It does not seem that CDOT is taking that agreement very seriously. Here are some comments that Bert sent to me:

Here are reasons why something must be done. 

For decades there has been no integration of highways and transit/rail with a few recent exceptions including T-Rex I-27 South, US 36 and now I-225 from Nine Mile connecting to RTD East line to DIA,  and our primary concern now, I-70 Mountain rail to DIA.  This latter has been forced on agencies by the Collaborate Efforts Panel’s decision and formal Agreement that is embodied in the Record of Decision of the Final PEIS.

 Other than that, the “Silo” phenomenon has prevailed at all levels of government: each agency is a silo not connected to others.  Some of this is due to the resistance of roadbuilders/oil/auto industrial opposition and influence regarding non-automotive mobility, of course.

The FasTracks DUS-DTA EIS was initially performed in a joint CDOT-RTD planning study, but the two agencies separated after it became evident that both planning and potential construction face different timetables.   Even though the Mountain PEIS was underway, no consideration of mountain rail east of C-470 or DIA-DUS travel.   Silos.  This prevailed even after the Mountain PEIS was revised after the 2004 Draft to include rail but citizen objections about the C-470 eastern terminus of the PEIS.  Hence, a missed opportunity for proper planning.

CDOT really violated good planning practice and compliance with NEPA law in the Final PEIS commenced in 2009-2010.  Citizens advised CDOT not to continue the “segmenting” of the project into two parts, the west [art and the east C-470 to DIA part.  Segmenting is illegal, but CDOT ignored that.   CDOT decided to defer the east part to future studies.

The future studies are now underway and are called the  “AGS” hardware/location study with C-470 as the formal eastern terminus and the InterConnection Study (“ICS”) on the Metro area linkage to the C-470 terminus.  The two studies are concurrent and somewhat tied together (they should logically been one study.)  It appears that the AGS study will pay attention to extension of rail into the metro area and to the DIA. 

The concept of getting rail passengers to the C-470 area terminus via RTD and auto connections prevailed over 15 tears ago and still is around.  I believe that the mountain agencies and people have no concept of the many and severe confronting RTD, and of RTD’s head-in-the-sand attitude about J-70 and rail.    I sent a longer discussion of this about two weeks ago.  The HUD “Sustainable Communities” study on the three RTD routes  (East, Gold and Metro North) could but probably won’t consider any joint or integrated planning.

The bottom line:  One of the possible AGS routes from DIA would be the I-270/I-76 corridor, with possible stations at the RTD Metro North and Gold lines.  Inasmuch as the Swansea route of the elevated highway should be moved to the same corridor, why not integrate highway and rail studies?  To paraphrase President Reagan: “Governor Hickenlooper, tear down those silos.”