It wasn’t too many years ago that transit was an afterthought in the United States. For years at a time in the latter half of the 20th Century only a handful of US cities were actively building new transit lines at any given time.
But as this map from national transit blog The Transport Politic shows, the times, they’re a-changin’.
Major transit openings and construction starts planned for 2012.
Image by Yonah Freemark on The Transport Politic.
The map was published as part of an extensive post that lists every major transit line in the US that will either open or be under construction in 2012.
The list is impressive. Nearly every major metropolitan area in the country is represented, and even more would be if the list included projects in the planning stages but not yet slated to begin construction.
The listed projects range from the gargantuan to the mundane. The five map icons in Colorado indicate the continuing progress of RTD’s FasTracks, plus BRT lines under construction in Fort Collins and Aspen.
Our country still has a long way to go before the decades of automobile-focused planning are fully repaired. Even this list, impressive as it may be, is short compared to the highway construction list from most individual states. But still, we’re making progress as a country. We’re doing things now that we weren’t doing a few decades ago. Transit is reaching more people, in more places.
So let’s congratulate ourselves for a solid step forward. But let’s not be too happy; there’s still much work to be done.
Can anybody give me an update on the I-225 line? Is it still on board?
Only thing funded was an extension to Iliff. I believe construction is set to begin Spring 2013 (those dates may be sooner since CDOT got the go ahead to do lane expansion after the dates where announced so that could accelerate things).
As far as the full extension all the way up to Peoria that’s unfunded.
Aaron,
So just to be clear, the line that runs into downtown Aurora has not been funded and as of now, is not on the board to break ground?
I am not so sure where downtown Aurora is. Do you mean the area around the mall? Either way as of now the only thing funded is an extension of the line from Nine Mile Station to Iliff station. The Iliff extension should be completed within the next few years.
The rest of the 225 extension (Iliff to Peoria) is unfunded so absent an increase in sales tax revenue or a federal grant it probably will not be finished in it’s entirety until the 2020’s. The last year I saw thrown out there was 2026 but that is tough for RTD to predict with any degree of accuracy. So unless the additional sales tax RTD has been considering passes RTD will likely not be starting construction on the extension beyond Iliff anytime soon.
I am very anxious for Denver to build streetcar lines. I would love to see lines along E. Colfax from Auraria to Anschultz, downtown to the Highlands(and eventually to the planned Wheat Ridge town center at 38th and Wadsworth), along south Broadway and Lincoln from downtown to at least I-25, and from downtown to Cherry Creek. I worry that the continuous cost gaps for the FasTracks project make it very difficult to get the necessary support for streetcars.
Transit starts show we’re making progress DenverUrbanism Blog – just great!