City Council Minutes 1992 07 08 - Laserfiche WebLink

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DORIS CLEMENTS - LOUISVILLE ARTS & HUMANITIES COUNCIL Davidson read and presented Resolution No. 47 to Doris Clements. RESOLUTION NO. 48, SERIES 1992 - SUPPORTING THE METRO AREA CONNECTION "MAC" LIGHT RAIL PROJECT PROPOSED BY THE REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION DISTRICT - UPDATE ON PROJECT BY FAY LEWIS, RTD REPRESENTATIVE Dave Baskett, Director of Planning and Development for RTD, spoke as Fay Lewis was unable to attend. Baskett explained that last year RTD came and asked for Louisville's approval in support for the "MAC" Light Rail Demonstration Project, a 2.1 mile light rail demonstration in downtown Denver. They received approval for that project and construction began with the relocation of utilities earlier this week. During that process, there were a number of questions that came up from the various Councils and Commissioners in RTD's District, such as: Is this really long enough of a project to be able to demonstrate the things that you're talking about?; Since it's all running on street, it's going to be very slow. Will it give people the wrong idea?; and, is it really going to carry enough riders? They looked at those questions, while still holding on to their goal of not raising any taxes and not reducing any bus service to be able to provide this demonstration. They think they have been successful in that. Baskett explained that, and gave a brief update about what was happening in other Rapid Transit Corridors throughout the region using maps and charts. He also showed slides indicating how the line will look once it's built. They came to tonight's Council meeting asking for Council's support, as they make their appeal to the Denver Regional Council of Governments for approval of an extension of the project to take it 3 miles south to 1-25 and Broadway. The question is, what does the southern extension of the "MAC" Project do for us? It addresses the length question. It more than doubles the length of the line from 2.1 to 5.3 miles. It almost triples the ridership, because they've introduced a major bus transfer capacity at the Broadway/I-25 intersection, where they can intercept a number of their Express buses that currently go through mixed traffic all the way to the Civil Center Station by the Capitol. The key to this project is in the bus savings. Because they're introducing the bus transfer facility at 1-25 and Broadway, they're able to remove over 500 bus trips per day from the city streets going up the Lincoln and Broadway corridor, almost four miles to Civic Center Station. That's an extremely congested corridor. By being able to transfer people through high capacity light rail vehicles, they're able to eliminate a number of trips and the tremendous cost savings per hour of operation, per mile of operation, and they used that savings to come up with about $2.25 million per year by being able to take those buses off the street. By keeping diesel buses off of the most congested streets and replacing them with electric trains, they will be making some contribution to the air quality. Street repair work from our buses