L.A. could look to Denver for its transit template

In November 2004, voters in the Denver metro region went to the polls and, much to the surprise of some political observers, decided to tax themselves to begin the nation’s largest ongoing expansion of mass transit.

If all goes as planned, the Denver region is expected to build 119 miles of light rail and commuter rail by 2016. Among the projects are six new lines from Denver to the suburbs, including one to the airport, the extension of two other light-rail lines and a new rapid transit bus line.

It’s a relatively unusual approach. Constrained by a lack of money, most cities build one or maybe two lines at a time. In Denver, they’re betting the entire system can be built at once.

As with any massive public works project, there are reasons for skepticism. The projected cost of the program -- called FasTracks -- has grown from $4.7 billion to $6.2 billion because of rising construction costs, before construction has started. Transit officials and politicians continue to insist that each of the new lines will be built, but cuts will have to be made, perhaps in the form of smaller stations or lines that have only one track.

Denver’s willingness to invest in itself is not surprising. In the past three decades, the city has built three new downtown sports venues, a stunning art museum, a 1.5-mile downtown promenade with free shuttles and a sprawling international airport.

A new mini-city is being built on the site of the old airport. And two rivers that slice through town have been restored.

We’re going to jettison the usual Q & A format this week and instead focus on a single question:

Question: Can the Southland learn something about transit from Denver?

Answer: Yes.

In 2003, John Hickenlooper was elected mayor of Denver. A longtime civic activist and owner of a downtown microbrewery, Hickenlooper had never held or sought elected office.

He ran on his vision for Denver’s future: a vibrant business-friendly city with more parks and more mass transit.

The FasTracks plan qualified for the ballot during Hickenlooper’s first year in office.

Although it wasn’t his idea, Hickenlooper seized on the program and, using his mayoral bully pulpit, began rounding up support from the suburbs.

“We had 32 different mayors in an eight-county area -- that’s small by metro L.A. standards, but it’s still an area the size of Connecticut,” Hickenlooper said. “We got all of them to support this. Republicans, Democrats, big and small cities. That took a lot of talk. That’s where my years in the restaurant business came in.”

It was not an easy campaign. Colorado’s governor came out against the plan, saying it wasn’t a sensible way to get the region moving. The Rocky Mountain News, one of Denver’s two major newspapers, editorialized against FasTracks a full two months before election day, making a similar argument.

“For its staggering cost,” said the newspaper, FasTracks “will do surprisingly little to actually ease congestion.”

In the end, however, FasTracks won with 58% of voters agreeing to a four-tenths of a penny sales tax increase, bringing Denver’s sales tax to 7.6 cents on the dollar. (It’s 8.25 cents in Los Angeles County.) Unlike California, where a two-thirds majority would have been necessary for passage, Colorado requires a simple majority.

One question left lingering from the campaign three years ago is what, if anything, FasTracks will do about traffic, which has worsened considerably as prosperous suburbs have risen in the prairie surrounding Denver. Of the metro region’s 2.6 million residents, about 566,000 live in the city’s limits.

Proponents of FasTracks concede that rail service may not take many cars off the road, but they argue that it will remove just enough vehicles to keep traffic from becoming gridlocked.

Cal Marsella, the general manager of the Regional Transportation District, which is building FasTracks, can readily tick off travel times he uses to sell people on the program.

In 2025, for example, he says the drive from the airport to downtown will take 48 minutes by car and 39 minutes on the train, and the drive from Longmont -- a far northern suburb -- to Denver will take 133 minutes by car versus 61 minutes by train.

Politicians make much the same arguments.

“We frame this as giving people a choice,” said Steve Burkholder, the mayor of suburban Lakewood, which will get rail service as part of FasTracks. “Will this take cars off the road? I doubt it. As you grow as an area, congestion will grow.”

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of FasTracks is that area politicians such as Hickenlooper and Burkholder make no bones about the fact they believe the rail program will encourage more growth.

The new rail lines follow existing freight rail corridors and therefore bypass a lot of neighborhoods where people already live. The downside: Most people will live some distance from the stations. The upside: It’s a chance to build new “smart growth” or “transit-oriented developments” near the stations.

The city of Denver is aggressively drawing up new zoning codes to encourage residential and job growth near future stations, and many of the surrounding cities are doing the same.

Boulder, for example, is taking under-used industrial land near its rail and bus stations and planning to build an 11-acre transit village.

In the meantime, the FasTracks program is putting a heavy emphasis on parking and is calling for 21,000 parking spots at the new stations.

“A lot of the money for this is coming from suburban areas, and I can’t run enough buses to get all those people to the stations,” Marsella said. “My attitude is if I can get enough people to drive two miles to a park-and-ride, I’m declaring victory and going home.”

To find another region that built a lot of mass transit at one time, you need look no further than -- Los Angeles County.

In 1980 and again in 1990, voters here approved half-cent sales tax increases to build mass transit. In turn, since 1990 that money has helped produce about 73 miles of light rail and subway in the county and fostered creation of the Metrolink commuter rail system that spans the Southland.

The Orange Line busway also opened in 2005 in the San Fernando Valley, and two more light-rail lines are under construction.

The problem in Los Angeles County, at least, is that the expansive rail system promised to voters in 1980 was never fully built.

With most of the sales tax money -- about $1.4 billion a year -- committed, significant holes remain in the rail system, such as the lack of a line connecting downtown to the Westside.

The public policy question for Los Angeles is whether the region should follow Denver’s lead and try to finish the entire system at once.

If so, would voters here commit to another tax hike?

Not everyone believes rail is the answer. Ryan Snyder, a private transportation consultant who lives on the Westside, argues that more frequent and widespread bus service would serve the most people, better mimic the door-to-door convenience of private vehicles and be more cost-effective.

“But it’s not sexy,” Snyder said.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, meanwhile, continues to push for more rail lines. He said in late July that if federal or state money cannot be found for transit, he may bring some type of financing measure to voters.

In Denver, Mayor Hickenlooper said he has no doubt that a greatly expanded rail system would benefit his region for the next 100 years by curbing gridlock and creating communities near transit stations.

He also believes that such a system would work in Southern California and thinks “tens of thousands” of people in the L.A. area want to live in denser developments around transit.

“L.A.,” Hickenlooper said, “just hasn’t gotten to the tipping point.”

steve.hymon@latimes.com