Should Denver Finish FasTracks?
20th October 2025
In 2004, Denver’s Regional Transit District promised voters that by 2015 it could build six new rail transit lines and complete three extensions to existing lines for $4.7 billion. Today, it has spent $5.5 billion to complete five of the six lines and still has three extensions to build. Now a new report from RTD estimates it will cost at least another $1.2 billion to “complete the system.”
The report estimates the cost of finishing these lines to be $1.6 billion and says the agency only has $0.4 billion available to do it. Amazingly, the report admits that both of these numbers are optimistic: the actual cost of construction, it says, “will be much higher” while the funding estimate “assumes a larger share of statewide funds will be allocated to FasTracks than is likely.” Back in 2004, when RTD was thumping for voter approval of FasTracks, it steadfastly refused to admit that either its cost estimates were low or its revenue estimates were high, both of which proved to be the case.
Soon after voters approved FasTracks, RTD realized that its costs would be higher and tax revenues lower than it had projected. An analysis of the six major rail lines found that the line to Longmont would cost more than $60 per rider, while most of the other lines would cost less than $10 per rider. As a result, RTD decided that the Longmont line was “no longer viable” and dropped it so it could afford to complete the other lines.