The plan to extend the southwest corridor light rail into
Highlands Ranch moved a step closer to reality Nov. 18 when the
Regional Transportation District board of directors voted to accept
FasTracks, a plan to expand regional mass-transit
service.

FasTracks is RTD’s proposal to spend $4.7 billion over 12 years
to create an interconnected system of 118 miles of rail corridors
and 18 miles of rapid-transit bus lines that will join with
existing transit routes, establishing a mass transit system serving
the entire metro area.

When FasTracks is complete, people will be able to board a train
in Littleton and connect to rapid transit corridors that stretch
north as far as 144th Avenue, east as far as Denver International
Airport and west as far as Golden.

The plan approved Nov. 18 includes details about FasTracks
ranging from where the money will come from to what each corridor
is expected to cost. It is estimated that the work on the Southwest
Corridor portion of FasTracks will cost $29.2 million.

FasTracks is really 11 projects in one. Perhaps the project of
most interest to Highlands Ranch residents is the plan to enhance
and extend the southwest light rail corridor, which runs parallel
to Santa Fe Drive from Mineral Avenue to Broadway and connects with
service to downtown Denver and Union station.

The plan for this stretch includes construction of a parking
garage to consolidate the 1,027 spaces at the Mineral station into
a smaller space. The line will be extended 2 1/2 miles south to a
station at C-470 and Lucent Boulevard in Highlands Ranch, which
would have a 1,000-space park-n-ride.

Even if voters approve hiking the RTD sales tax from six-tenths
of a percent to 1 percent – a penny on the dollar – the
long-awaited southwest corridor light rail project remains years
away.

“If voters pass the sales tax request in November 2004, RTD
begins collecting taxes in January 2005,” said Jim Zavist, RTD
board representative for the area. “The early construction will be
done in areas like the west corridor, where environmental-impact
work has been completed. Unfortunately, the two- to three-year
environmental assessment process hasn’t begun for the southwest
corridor extension to Highlands Ranch. So when that is figured into
the schedule, final planning for the project isn’t scheduled to
begin until about 2011, and the planned completion date for the
extension is 2016.”

The first step of the extension project would be to complete an
environmental assessment and the environmental impact statement,
which would take at least two years. Then the railroad tracks would
have to be relocated to make room for the light-rail
tracks.

RTD board approval of FasTracks begins a six- to eight-month
administrative process. As the first step, RTD will forward the
plan to the Denver Regional Council of Governments. As the
metropolitan transit planning organization, DRCOG’s approval is
necessary before RTD can seek federal funding assistance.

The DRCOG review is expected to take about five months. If DRCOG
approves FasTracks as expected, the next step will be to ask voters
to approve the tax increase. To that end, RTD plans to hold at
least two public meetings in each of the six counties included in
RTD during the next two months. Then in April, the board will have
a special meeting to authorize a request to the secretary of state
to put the issue on the November 2004 ballot.

If the secretary of state approves the request, volunteers will
set out to collect the approximately 50,000 signatures needed to
get the issue on the ballot. The goal is to have the petitions
filed and approved by September 2004.

A sales tax increase would allow RTD to repay a planned bond
issue, which would provide about $2.4 billion for the program.
Certificates of participation would raise about $190 million and
RTD would put up about $924 million in “pay-as-you-go” cash. RTD is
seeking about $851 million in federal funds.

The remainder, about $350 million, would come from the
contributions of communities along the corridors and a
Transportation Infrastructure Financial Innovation loan.