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Costly commutingGroup pushes for investment in public transportationGene Davis, DDN Staff WriterWednesday, March 11, 2009 | |
Activist groups showed up yesterday morning to RTD’s Market Street Station in support of “Transportation Freedom Day”— the date that marks when a typical area household has earned enough income since Jan. 1 to cover transportation costs for the entire year — for Boulder, Denver and Greeley counties.
According to findings released by the Colorado Public Interest Research Group (CoPIRG), the average Denver household spends the equivalent of just over two months of its annual salary — which CoPIRG calculated as $51,888 for Denver, Boulder and Greeley counties — to pay for transportation costs. CoPIRG used data from the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago that examined such things as car ownership, maintenance, gas and transit to determine transportation costs.
“The cost of getting from place to place shouldn’t take such a huge slice of our paycheck, especially in these tough times,” said a statement from Danny Katz, state director of CoPIRG. “People may not recognize how much they pay for transportation because they do so in increments. But when gas prices tip over $4 a gallon again, transportation will likely become households’ biggest expense.”
CoPIRG said their study found that access to high-quality public transportation is a primary factor for how much of Colorado residents’ income will be spent on transportation. The American Public Transportation Association calculates that a driver in Denver could save $8,800 annually by switching to public transportation, according to a press release.
FasTracks
CoPIRG and other activist groups that included FRESC: Good Jobs, Strong Communities, Environment Colorado and the Colorado Environmental Coalition used yesterday’s event to promote their belief that Colorado should use some of the estimated $102,715,664 in stimulus money for funding FasTracks and other public transportation projects. CoPIRG’s announcement came on the same day the Denver Post reported that several Colorado mayors are pushing for a FasTracks sales-tax increase on the November ballot to help fund the expected $2.2 billion funding gap for the project.
Katz said the sales-tax increase is a good idea because he believes FasTracks must be completed, regardless of the economy. According to Katz, FasTracks would create 18 percent more jobs than building roads in Colorado while also helping reduce global warming emissions.
“Shortchanging public transportation is a classic case of being pennywise and pound foolish,” he said in a statement. “Now more than ever, public officials must make transit a top tier pocketbook issue.”
Bad idea?
Not everyone thinks increasing the sales tax to help fund FasTracks is a good idea.
Jon Caldera of the Independence Institute said mayors that vote in favor of increasing the sales tax would be rewarding failure and deception. According to Caldera, the assumptions that RTD used to say that FasTracks would be on time and on budget, like projecting a local 6 percent revenue growth over the next 30 years, were misinformed at best.
“Those mayors who decide to reward the deception that was FasTracks, this could be a mistake that they might not recover from politically,” he said.
A recent decline in sales tax revenue has hurt RTD because the transportation department depends on the source of revenue for funding. RTD has estimated that sales-tax revenue will be down approximately 4.4 percent in 2009 compared to the previous year.
“RTD is doing things as effective as any transit agency,” said Katz. “It’s not their fault we’ve got a bad economy right now.”
Caldera said he isn’t buying the sales-tax argument, and that he believes the forces behind FasTracks blatantly lied when they gave their original estimations for the project’s funding and cost.
“When the economy was good, (a FasTracks funding shortage) was because commodity prices were too high. When commodity prices go through the floor, it’s because sales-tax revenue are slow,” he said. “It was such a faulty fiscal plan, it’s inexcusable.”
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