» This week’s big news. Open thread in the comments.

Follow my Twitter account (@ttpolitic) to get news in real time. I’ll be traveling this week and next; if you’d like to meet up in New Orleans (July 29-August 1) or San Francisco (August 2-7), send me an email.

On The Transport Politic:

• Ohio Hub advances as passenger rail connections to Toledo and Pittsburgh studied
• New Haven, Stamford enter streetcar wars with proposed station-to-downtown links
• Ensuring the efficient workings of a bike-sharing system
• The U.S. emphasis on passenger rail and the future of freight

Beginnings

• Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell announces that he’ll consider “flexing” some of his state’s highway dollars for the purposes of funding transit. Despite the fact that federal law allows almost all roads money to be used for public transportation, the instances of that being done are rare.
• High-speed rail plans in Florida and Illinois are rapidly approaching reality. In the Sunshine State, surveying has begun despite the fact that not all cash has yet been appropriated to the project. Meanwhile, Illinois has announced that construction on the Chicago-St. Louis line (110 mph) will begin in September.
• Two rail projects of vastly different magnitudes are beginning to have their tracks laid. In Sonoma and Marin Counties north of San Francisco, Caltrans has been installing steel along Highway 101 for the 70-mile SMART commuter train (pictured above). In China, the 820-mile Beijing-Shanghai line has had its right-of-way cleared, and similar operations are under way.

Expansions

• A Québecois leader, affirming his desire to be closer to the U.S. than the rest of Canada, suggests that high-speed rail between Montréal and New York is a top priority, but does little to advance Montréal-Toronto link, despite that being a more realistic and probably more attractive project.
• Detroit Mayor Dave Bing argues that the U.S. Government is planning to fund the expansion of his number one goal: a light rail line from downtown to 8 Mile. The U.S. DOT has yet to demonstrate its commitment to the program outside of the initial corridor to Grand Avenue.
• The San Francisco Bay Area’s BART commuter system, advances plan to fund the Oakland Airport Connector, in face of months of protests.

Improvements

• After one year in service, Seattle’s Central Link light rail system demonstrates steadily increasing ridership, but it may not be able to reach pre-opening projections for the end of 2010. Aaron Renn of the Urbanophile says that “commuting market share is the wrong way to judge transit,” but it would be interesting to know what percentage of people along Seattle’s transit corridor are using the new line to get to work. In the U.S. capital region, overall transit commute share increased from 17% to 21% between 2001 and 2010; that’s an exciting change.
• Jarrett Walker argues that the Strasbourg model, which uses light rail to promote sustainable transportation between top destinations, isn’t necessarily applicable to many cities in the United States. Now that the U.S. Senate has reduced spending for high-speed rail, increased money for highways, and removed references to “livability” and a future infrastructure bank, that seems especially true. Nevertheless, the DOT continues its relentless pursuit of transit-oriented cities.

Image above: Proposed Petaluma SMART Station, from SMART

» This week’s big news. Open thread in the comments.

Follow my Twitter account (@ttpolitic) to get news in real time.

On The Transport Politic:

• San Juan unveils plan for “Walkable City,” hopes for light rail on Isleta
• China agrees to major investments in Argentina’s rail and metro lines
• Fort Worth wins grant for streetcar, but whether it’s ready is another question
• Miami’s long-sought plans for metro extensions dissolve as funding disappears
• For French high-speed rail, a lower cost future pondered

Fast!

• Begin: Brazil opens bidding for the construction of the Rio-Sao Paulo high-speed rail link. Planners hope to have the project completed in time for Rio’s 2016 Summer Olympics.
• Closer: Saudi Arabia receives six bids for the building and maintenance of its Haramain high-speed line, which would connect Mecca and Medina after €10 billion in investment. The Alstom/SNCF team is apparently the front-runner.
• Almost: France chooses Vinci-led consortium of companies to begin work on the Tours-Bordeaux fast train line, a €7.8 billion project that will be the biggest of its type in Europe.
• Ready: By the end of the year, Turkey plans to begin operation on its Ankara-Konya high-speed line, cutting a currently 10-hour trip to only 75 minutes.

Not so fast!

• The global light rail market is expanding at a rapid clip, expected to reach $7.5 billion annually by 2015. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean every planned project will be built.
• The Boston Green Line extension into Somerville, proposed for years and the result of a settlement to mitigate the effects of the Big Dig, is increasing in construction costs, now up to one billion dollars. Partly for that reason, it has been delayed until October 2015.

Feats

• Los Angeles celebrates the 20th birthday of its Metro Rail system, whose Blue Line began the Southern California train revolution with a link between downtown and Long Beach.
• New York finally completes initial tunneling work on the 7 train extension into the Far West Side.
• Guangzhou BRT, a one-line system, is now recording 800,000 trips a day, a world record. It is one of the heaviest-used corridors of any type in the world.

Difficulties

• BART continues its campaign to build the Oakland Airport Connector, despite significant criticism over its social utility.
• German railways simply can’t stand the heat.

Image above: Buses in Guangzhou, from Flickr user Michael Mooney

» This week’s big news. Open thread in the comments.

Slow updates this week and next — I’m on vacation. Happy Fourth! Follow my Twitter account (@ttpolitic) to get news in real time.

On The Transport Politic:

• Once assured, Dallas light rail expansion to airport now off track
• Barcelona’s Metro continues its expansion at a relatively cheap price
• Lyon’s Rhônexpress project pioneers a new way of thinking about public-private partnerships

Tension

• Charlotte prepares to receive a $25 million grant from the federal government for the first 1.5-mile section of its proposed streetcar. Nothing is assured, though: The city’s competing with a number of other big competitors for grants, including Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Washington.
• A commentator in Kansas City makes the almost laughable comparison between public transit in Stockholm, Sweden and his Missouri city. One has a fast rail link to the airport, a metro system, commuter trains. The other has… none of that.
• Portland may be orienting the route of its future Milwaukie Light Rail project in the interests of wealthy developers. Is that a good idea?
• The New York Times‘ San Francisco bureau exposes some of the conflicts between proponents of big transit-oriented developments and environmentalists.

Relief

• New York may be slow at building new subway lines, but that doesn’t mean it’s incapable of improving its system appropriately. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has produced an interesting video on the currently under construction passage linking the Lawrence Street and Jay Street stations in downtown Brooklyn. This block-long tunnel will handle 32,000 commuters everyday, allowing them a quicker route to their Manhattan destinations.
• They’ve been talking about it forever, but L.A. is finally getting its Gold Line light rail extension program under construction. The so-called Foothill expansion will run from Sierra Madre Villa to Azusa. One hopes L.A. Metro avoids the kind of revenue problems that have led to service cutbacks in cities like St. Louis, which is only now restoring operations thanks to a sales tax increase approved earlier this year.
• A month after the plan was announced, the City of London (the Greater London Authority, not the “City”) takes full control of the Underground, buying off a group of public-private partnerships. The Taiwan high-speed rail project, which was financed by private groups and had trouble last year keeping afloat, posted last month its first operating profit after three years.

Image above: Charlotte Streetcar project map, from CATS Application for Urban Circulator Grant

» This week’s big news. Open thread in the comments.

Follow my Twitter account (@ttpolitic) to get news in real time.

On The Transport Politic:

• Readying streetcar plans, Cincinnati considers reducing parking requirements
• Philadelphia may accept money to privatize station naming; Pittsburgh considers similar move
• Seattle’s North Link light rail, originally considered for highway-running, may be partially tunneled
• Alberta dedicates $2 billion to transit programs

Making existing transit work better

• Reinforcing the sense that the top priority for transit systems around the country is getting to a state of good repair, Chicago announces that it has a $24 billion backlog to get its elevated, commuter, and bus lines back in order.
• After an evaluation, Charlotte comes to the conclusion that it loses a total of $300 a day to fare beaters on its light rail system, hardly making a dent in its overall budget. In Paris, turnstile-jumpers form an informal insurance society to pay back tickets.
• Berliners, convinced that the stairs into the U-Bahn are just too boring, opt to build a slide down into the subway.

Gearing up for rail

• Kansas City, having tried repeatedly to fund a light rail line, turns increasingly towards commuter rail and hopes to get a federal commitment.
• Paresh Dave writes an intriguing article on the forces at play in the construction of Los Angeles’ Expo light rail line. Meanwhile, California voters will consider a measure this fall that will prevent the state government from removing transit funding.
• Maryland announces that it will prioritize development around transit stations through subsidies and incentives.

Fighting for speed

• The United Kingdom, whose newly conservative government is demanding massive reductions in public sector spending, plans to sell off the rights to High-Speed 1, which terminates into London’s St. Pancras International (pictured above) after a trip northwest from the Channel Tunnel.
• Texas politicians assemble to discuss the potential for implementing a “T-Bone”-shaped high-speed rail line, despite the state government’s manifest unwillingness to put any local money into the project.
• California High-Speed Rail Blog expounds on the inevitability of fast train service to Las Vegas. Meanwhile, some California legislators promote a bill that would require the state’s high-speed rail project to judge potential operators based on their involvement in the Holocaust — a policy that could affect France’s SNCF, Italy’s Trenitalia, Spain’s Renfe, Germany’s Deutsche Bahn…

Gone…

• When it was completed in 2005, the SAFETEA-LU transportation bill included billions of dollars in Congressionally approved earmarks for transportation projects around the nation. Five years later, some of that money went unused. At the top of the list: North Carolina’s Triangle, which missed out on $20 million for regional rail; Rochester, which was given $10 million for a transit center; and Michigan, which got $5 million to help build a commuter rail line between Ann Arbor and Detroit.

Image above: Eurostar trains at London’s St. Pancras International, the terminus of High-Speed 1, by Flickr user slideshow bob (cc)

» This week’s big news. Open thread in the comments.

Follow my Twitter account (@ttpolitic) to get news in real time.

On The Transport Politic:

• Searching for interest in the daily commute
• In Ann Arbor, a boomerang of transit improvements proposed
• What would it take to fully invest in the Northeast Corridor?
• As Virginia Governor demands seats on Metro board, state transit involvement in question

Trying Something New

• New York, San Francisco, and Chicago each have massive waterfront development projects in planning. But are they too far from transit to work in an urban space?
• Honolulu, which has been plotting its heavy rail transit line for some time now, had its FEIS accepted by the Federal Transit Administration. Now reluctant Governor Linda Lingle must approve it.
• Lagos announces that its first light rail line will open in 2011. The massive city is in desperate need of traffic relief.
• Connecticut’s DOT is moving increasingly towards transit and away from highways, with several major projects planned. One of them is the Hartford-New Britain Busway, which will evidently include stations outside of which men drink champagne (image above).

Trying Something Old

• Next American City: Looking Back: Urbanism in John Lindsay’s New York.
• Engineer Scotty discusses the potential for bus rapid transit in Portland.
• Madison’s mayor wants the new standard: a 1/2¢ sales tax for transportation.

High-Speed Rail

• The U.S. Conference of Mayors introduces a study in which it claims huge economic benefits for virtually every city that invests in high-speed rail. New York State wants to reduce travel times from 2h30 to one hour between New York City and Albany, claiming economic benefit. Ontario and Québec get together to ask the Canadian government to speed trains between Québec City, Montréal, Toronto, and Windsor. The problem is that no one has the money to actually make the commitment.

Image above: View of Proposed Flatbush Avenue BRT Station along Hartford-New Britain Busway, from Connecticut DOT

» This week’s big news. Open thread in the comments.

You’ll have to forgive me for a week of pure policy. I promise we’ll get back to the fun stuff next week. Follow my Twitter account (@ttpolitic) to get news in real time.

On The Transport Politic:

• The age of General Fund financing is already here, but it may not matter
• Asserting state responsibility over transportation financing
• Making corridor planning a multi-modal process
• Whose turn to lead on U.S. transport planning?
• Reversing roles: Should Washington cover operations costs?

Bike Sharing:

• Minneapolis debuts the nation’s biggest bike share system, Nice Ride Minnesota. The project features Montréal’s Bixi bikes, branded with an insurance company’s logo.
• Boston, also planning on using the Bixi bikes for its plan, postpones its project for a year. It has yet to determine how exactly financing the system will work. On the other hand, London, yet another future Bixi city, will open its bikes to users on July 30th. It will be sponsored by Barclays Bank.
• Washington, replacing its 10-station Clear Channel-run system with a 100-station Bixi plan, decides to change names. City’s bikes, formerly “SmartBike DC” will become “Capital Bikeshare.”

Fast Trains:

• Florida high-speed rail, clearly the Obama Administration’s top rail priority, will begin construction in early 2011. The $3.5 billion project, however, pales in scope compared to China’s $100 billion investment in high-speed rail planned for this year alone.
• South Africa, with its World Cup already underway (check out the US-UK game today), opened its 100 mph Gautrain intercity rail line between Johannesburg and the airport. It has further plans to link Johannesburg and Durban in the works.
• Alstom, hoping to win the Italian contract for dozens of new high-speed trains, announces new single-deck trainsets capable of 250 mph operations; yet to be named, these trains depart from Alstom’s TGV/AGV of placing bogies between railcars. Meanwhile, AnsaldoBreda and Bombardier, hoping to win the same contract, reveal V300 Zefiro train.

Budgets:

• Students in New York City, threatened with the loss of free transit to and from school because of fiscal difficulties, make a deal of it and go protest at City Hall.
• Vancouver Translink turns an expected budget deficit into a surplus. So does San Francisco’s BART, which is likely to approve 3% reduced fares on the system for a four-month period to reward customers for their patience. Why not save it up in a rainy day fund?
• D.C.’s Metro system is considering enforcing a 5-cent levy at six subway stations that would pay for capital repairs at those stops.

Mix-er-up:

• Next American City: Leveraging Existing Transit Assets for New Transit-Oriented Development.
• Stanford Undergrad Daniel Jacobson conducts an in-depth review of possibilities of a streetcar in downtown Oakland. Check out his proposal: www.oaklandstreetcarplan.com.
• Jarrett Walker at Human Transit: Treating buses like ambulances in Barcelona.
• New free downtown connector buses in Durham, NC and Baltimore.
• One of two tunnel boring machines working on New York’s 7 train extension completes its work, breaking into wall near Times Square. Benjamin Kabak on Second Avenue Sagas reports that the Real Estate Board of New York still hopes to get a threatened station on the extended line at 10th Avenue funded.

Image above: Plans for Florida High-Speed Rail at Orlando International Airport, from Florida High-Speed Rail

» This week’s big news. Open thread in the comments.

Follow my Twitter account (@ttpolitic) to get news in real time.

On The Transport Politic:

• Regional transportation authorities are not necessarily the solution to the urban-suburban divide
• Washington comes closer to bridging the gap with its new streetcar network
• The highway-transit alliance strains the Senate’s energy legislation
• Southeast High-Speed Rail releases detailed proposals for Raleigh-Richmond corridor

Fun:

• An animated version of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, set to the tune of day in New York City. (via Spacing)
• New York Subway train operator Dennis Boyd answers questions about his job in a series of questions and answers: One, Two, Three.

Not Fun:

• The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) reveals its nominees for this year’s American Transportation Awards. Despite claiming to represent “all five transportation modes: air, highways, public transportation, rail, and water,” the organization’s nominees include only one non-road project: the District of Columbia’s Union Station Bike Center. Depressing.
• Richland Hills, Texas — a suburb of Fort Worth — threatens to leave local transit district. But the transit district strikes back, threatening to charge the city for expenditures made there over the years.

Building Better Subways:

• Next American City: When you get the chance to build a new subway station, take full advantage. Paris transit agency RATP opens an exhibit on how to construct more interesting Métro stops in the future.
• The Source: Los Angeles receives authorization from the federal government to move forward with environmental reviews on its entire 9.3-mile Westside Subway project, making the extension of the Purple Line to Westwood possible by 2020. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood also endorses the city’s 30/10 plan, which would finance 30 years worth of projects in just ten years.
• Beijing plans 21 rail and subway lines by 2020. (via @theoverheadwire) This could give it the world’s largest rapid transit system, displacing recently crowned Shanghai.

Intercity Rail:

• New U.K. government, after declaring the “end to the war on the motorist,” is considering much cheaper high-speed rail project that would avoid city centers. Conservative control over the budget there also making future train car purchases more difficult.
• European Union, obsessed with competition in every sector no matter the consequences, tells French government it must remove protections for national rail company SNCF. Standard & Poor’s immediately lowers the company’s debt assessment from AAA to AA+. Meanwhile, starvation plan imposed on Greece by Germany forces that country’s sale of almost half of its national rail operator to private investors.
• Amtrak finally makes free wifi standard on all Acela trains. It will slowly add similar services to California and Northeast Regional services by the end of this year. The company’s plan to charge states for local services by 2013 could cause problems in Virginia.

Hodgepodge:

• Next American City: Summer streets gain prominence nationwide.
• Phoenix has begun construction of 100 foot-tall bridge over an airport taxiway as part of the $1.1 billion Sky Train people mover project. The 4.8-mile project will eventually connect the airport to the city’s light rail system. But extensions of local rapid transit have been delayed until the 2020s because of funding difficulties.
• The City Fix: South Africa boosts city transit in preparation for World Cup.

Image above: Los Angeles’ proposed Westside Subway, from Metro

» This week’s big news. Open thread in the comments.

Follow my Twitter account (@ttpolitic) to get news in real time.

On The Transport Politic:

• With new government settling into power, U.K.’s HS2 project could be radically reworked
• Charlotte’s Northeast Corridor light rail line underfunded, likely to be shortened
• Paris unveils four-year cycling plan with aim to reinforce Velib’ bike share
• There’s more to life than transit expansion

Fun:

• Los Angeles is building one of the nation’s large rail rapid transit systems today, but it has had a variety of ideas for solving its congestion problems over the years. In 1954, it put together a proposal for a series of downtown bus tunnels. Suffice it to say, the concept didn’t go very far.

(Unrealistic?) Plans:

• Nashville pulls together a proposal to spend $5 billion on transit expansion over the next few decades. It plans to invest in a series of dedicated rail and bus lines.
• North Carolina hopes to extend its intercity rail network from the state capital at Raleigh to the Atlantic coast at Wilmington.
• Baton Rouge and New Orleans hope to link up via new rail services, despite complete opposition from Governor Bobby Jindal.

Good ideas might win out after all:

• Caltrain becomes the first operator in the country to receive authorization from the Federal Railroad Administration to run lightweight electric multiple units on a corridor shared with diesel trains, writes Robert Cruickshank at the California High-Speed Rail Blog. It’s a major coup for the Bay Area and commuter rail systems in general, which may save on vehicle purchasing and corridor construction costs.
• The District of Columbia approves funding for streetcars, thanks to an intense social media campaign run by people like David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington. This just a day after the program’s future was up in the air.
• Elana Schor reports at Streetsblog that eight Democratic Senators have announced their support for up to two billion dollars in emergency operations funds for desperate transit operators.

Adapting to change:

• Cincinnati must work to connect intercity rail to downtown destinations and its planned streetcar line, writes Bruce McFarling at Daily Kos.
• Next American City: Are security improvements necessary for transit systems?
• Budget cuts put school children in a difficult position in Los Angeles, where the loss of lightly used bus routes is starting to take its toll.
• Vancouver plans to install turnstiles at all its SkyTrain stations by 2013 to ward off fare evaders.

Image above: Potential Caltrain electric multiple unit vehicle, from Caltrain

It is from this perspective that I disagreed so adamantly last week with Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff, who has argued that transit systems must prioritize ensuring adequate support for existing services while cutting down on major extension plans for rapid transit. Despite the great costs involved, our transportation infrastructure is so weak that we have no choice but to invest in both expanded operations and the construction of new lines — in most cities. The federal government has a responsibility to play a major role on both those fronts.

Yet my previous discussion — and most of what I write here — are unfortunately remiss in their general indifference to the needs of communities too small, too sprawling, too un-urban to ever benefit seriously from the new transit systems I extoll weekly.

I want to make clear as I write this that that neglect is primarily a consequence of the focus of this website on dense inner cities. But I am troubled by the feeling that my writing is giving off the incorrect impression that I either do not recognize the existence of places outside of urban cores or that I simply do not care to think of ways to approach their problems.

On the contrary.

While I have no intention of reframing The Transport Politic entirely towards addressing the transportation dilemmas faced by the inhabitants of suburban and rural communities, I pledge to make more of an effort to incorporate them seriously in my thinking and writing on the issues discussed here. There are, after all, far more people in the United States living outside of center cities than in them.

This means a greater recognition of the fact that transit cannot provide universal mobility any time soon, and that automobiles will continue to provide an important role in connecting disparate populations. This means a renewed focus on the neighborhood as the essential building block in constructing a more livable city. This means an intense examination of where transit works and where its usefulness falls apart.

As much as I believe I have a responsibility as someone who dissects transportation issues day in and day out to better recognize the varying needs of the broader population, however, I am equally convinced that other members of the mobility field must do the same. The heavily auto-oriented interests of state departments of transportation, AASHTO, and other industry lobbies generally intent on simply magnifying the existing status quo are collectively failing to imagine different and better ways for our society to move about.

Those who call for continued massive investment in automobile lanes simply because that’s how people get about today are refusing to recognize the possibility of an alternative future. Those who do so are ignoring the massive and negative social consequences of the dependence on private vehicles that we just can’t kick.

Their continued obsession with highway expansion may be addressing more directly the mobility needs of suburbanites today than are my repeated calls for better buses and rail, but that roads focus will do nothing to improve the nation’s environmental sustainability or aid in its distribution of the movement of as broad a segment of the population as possible. These overarching goals — applicable to all Americans — cannot be ejected out the tailpipe in favor of some populist sentiment in favor of car infrastructure.

The fact of the matter is that we ought to strive to be a multi-modal society and we should be multi-modal people. We must fulfill our collective transportation needs in the most appropriate ways in each situation, at a pace that avoids unnecessary dogmatism.

» This week’s big news. Open thread in the comments.

Follow my Twitter account (@ttpolitic) to get news in real time.

Fun

• Washington, D.C. will abandon its Clear Channel-sponsored Smartbike bike share system (with 10 stations and 100 bikes) in favor of 1,100 Montréal Bixi bikes, which are now becoming the world standard, having been sold to Ottawa, Minneapolis, Boston, London, and Toronto. The system will spread across Washington and Arlington with over 100 stations.

On The Transport Politic:

• Ottawa Closer than Ever to Replacing Bus Rapid Transit with Light Rail
• Terminus or Through-Route for Madison’s Downtown Station?
• U.S. FTA Head Rogoff Paints Grim Picture of Nation’s Transit Priorities
• Sydney Looks at Closing Downtown Streets to Traffic, Considers Light Rail Expansion
• FRA Accepts Applications for State High-Speed Rail Planning

Can we fund new transportation?

• Christopher Leinberger argues in The Atlantic that private developers could play an important role in developing new transit system, just as they did a century ago, but that the federal government has put up roadblocks preventing them from doing so. Jarrett Walker on Human Transit writes that that kind of talk ignores the fact that most of that development was built on greenfields. Alex Block suggests value capture as an effective was to leverage private investment. I argue in Next American City that for the purposes of democracy, planning for new transit should remain in public hands.
• On the California High-Speed Rail Blog, Robert Cruickshank asks President Obama to solidify his support for high-speed rail, expressing a fear that the program could die just a few years after it was announced.
• The Ford Foundation dedicates $200 million to regional planning grants.

Buses in place of rail?

• Human Transit on FTA Chief Rogoff’s arguments in favor of maintenance over capacity increases this week. And, on that matter, a piece from Jarrett Walker positing that Ottawa’s BRT program was never fully completed and that my arguments this week in favor of its transition to light rail would apply just as well to building a new downtown bus tunnel.
• Despite recent successes — Maryland’s MARC commuter rail has produced record ridership — former Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich, now running for that office again, has announced that he would scrap light rail for the proposed Red and Purple Lines if he makes it back into the people’s mansion.

New Starts!

• Denver’s East and Gold Lines, being built using a PPP management and financing structure, may include one-track sections if the two bidders get their way.
• The Source: Congressman Henry Waxman, once a serious opponent of a subway under L.A.’s Westside, is now arguing that the entire line — from Wilshire and Western to UCLA — be submitted to the FTA for consideration in one big step.
• Second Avenue Sagas announces that New York City’s DOT will finally begin a study of a streetcar line between Red Hook and Downtown Brooklyn. Note that Brooklyn has plenty of ideal routes for streetcars, but the Red Hook corridor isn’t really one of them.
• Las Vegas, previously the domain of a fight between conventional rail-based DesertXpress and the California-Nevada Maglev, now gets another competitor for the route: Desert Lightning, which would also include a link to Phoenix.

Image above: Track plan for Denver’s East and Gold Lines, according to Mountain-Air Transit Partners (one of two teams hoping to win PPP contract), from RTD FasTracks