Quote:
Originally Posted by ski82
It would be a pretty big leap to say people would be better behaved on 15L if it was a streetcar and nothing else changed.
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Oh, I didn't say people would be better behaved. But you'd have more people. The number of hoodlums as a percentage of total riders would drop.
And yes, there are *plenty* of studies out there on all of this. You can do a couple PhDs on the subject.
Developers' interest in investment around transit has nothing at all to do with ridership, and everything to do with perception (and public dollars). Retail can't be supported by transit alone, and that's be the only use that would theoretically care about ridership. Again, tons of data out there.
On the "other project" issue... of course there's an opportunity cost. But that's what the election is for - to decide whether or not it's worth it.
But I'd still be curious to know what else you'd spend it on, and how you would benchmark value and success? If you assume that we're only comparing trnasportation/planning/land use projects (it's too much to compare public safety vs. mobility, and besides, it's 99% political at that point)... what else could the *city of denver* do that would get more bang for the buck? I'm not saying there isn't anything, but this has to be high on the list. I doubt there's anything fastracks-related that would match it - fastracks is a joke. Great for downtown development, but apart from that, it'll provide almost no benefit to the center city. As far as TOD on the southeast corridor... with the right combination of land use regs and public money, the development we're seeing down there could have happened anyways, without the light rail, if the city had wanted it. That's exactly why the SW corridor hasn't seen the same development. The SE corridor was already the most attractive corridor in the metro area; the light rail did create the demand. The light rail just gave the policymakers the excuse they needed to give densification the green light (a valid purpose - but only a matter of "perception" being leveraged intelligently)