[Cirrus]

>> Auraria / Decatur-Federal connection:

What about a priority bus line from Decatur-Federal, along Colfax, and into downtown, with transfers to the various LRT & streetcar routes? You guys know more about this than I do, but I would be worried that extending the Colfax streetcar over there would either divert too many trains from the downtown spine, or not have high enough frequency to be a useful transfer. Likewise, the Larimer line is so close to Union Station already, I don't see why any W-line riders would want to transfer in order to get to LoDo (we could pull the Larimer line into upper downtown instead of Union Station, but we'd lose the DUS transfer, and the Welton streetcar already goes from 28th to upper downtown).

Like so. Thoughts on this?




>> Highlands BRT:

Is it the entire line (including the Larimer segment) people are questioning, or just the Highlands portion? Serving those neighborhoods seems important to me, since they're places we could potentially reduce car dependence, but maybe not.

Here are some options:

1. Eliminate the whole BRT line.
2. Eliminate the Highlands portion of the BRT line.
3. Downgrade the Highlands portion from BRT to priority bus (mixed-traffic but "special," and high-frequency), thus reducing the cost from $57 million to about $9 million. Keep the connection, but at much less cost.
4. Alter the Highlands route to make it more effective. If we did this, what would be best? Extending it west on 38th? Taking a different path from the 15th Street overpass through Highlands? All on the table AFAIC.

>> jimluk's route suggestions:

These are very creative. What does everyone else think of them? They might be good ideas.

1. Extend california/stout LRT corridor a couple blocks to make a loop around a future "Arapahoe Square".
2. New line along 20th from DUS to uptown.
3. Extend Colfax Streetcar to Aurora, then north into Highlands from there, bypassing downtown (except for the transfer at Civic Center)
4. Continue Broadway line up to Brighton, instead of the Larimer BRT.

Map:



>> Other issues/questions from people:

Originally Posted by Interzen

Are there more detailed maps of the proposed routes?

I just have them in a google map right now. HERE IS THE LINK. You should be able to zoom in and out.

Originally Posted by The Dirt

No one will seem to address any of my questions so, I've written you all off. Anyway, I still want to know what the reasoning behind having BRT lines included in this proposal. I'm not opposed to BRT, I just want to know the benefits/drawbacks of a larger, multi-modal proposal rather than one simpler in scale.

Sorry. I thought we addressed this on the first page, with this:

>> If we decide to do all rail, that means we'll only be able to cover a couple of corridors. If we decide to do all bus, we're arbitrarily excluding rail from the places it might really make sense. I'm very hesitant to tie our hands and not allow what works in other cities, just to keep things simple. Matching the mode to the needs of the corridor means we can maximize our efficiency, and thus stretch out dollars the farthest.

Basically, adding in a couple of high quality bus lines allows us to cover important corridors/connections that we couldn't cover with just streetcar. And it allows us to consider potentially practical suggestions like the Decatur connection for about $9 million instead of the $115 million or so it would take to do it with streetcar.

Originally Posted by The Dirt

how are you going to move a bus through this area at speeds greater than 25 MPH? ... If we're talking about a bus with frequent stops but short headways but, overall slow, then I'm fine with that, too but, that's not BRT.

Are we giving it a dedicated lane or not? If not, we'll call it priority bus and do it for $4 million/mile instead of $25M/mi.