Longmont plots “rail” road
Former Mayor Pirnack, who “drank the Kool-Aid,” wants to sue RTD
To compromise or not to compromise, that is the question Longmont leaders must consider when it comes to the overdue commuter rail line that was supposed to connect Longmont to Denver via Boulder.
Former Longmont Mayor Julia Pirnack is firmly in the no-compromise camp.
She is trying to get $5,000 together so that former Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler can explore whether suing the Regional Transportation District for the lack of a train in Longmont is a viable option.
Pirnack was one of the people who pushed for Longmont to vote for FasTracks in 2004 and said she feels RTD made a liar out of her because the commuter line promised by the plan is currently not planned to reach Longmont until 2042.
“I was one of the people who drank the Kool-Aid,” Pirnack said in an interview earlier this month. “Here we are, more than a decade later, and I feel really badly that I somehow misled people.”
In 2004, voters in the eightcounty RTD taxing district approved an additional 0.4 percent sales tax to the 0.6 percent sales tax for the FasTracks plan. Part of the plan was to build a commuter rail line from Denver to Boulder and terminating in Longmont.
RTD originally planned to negotiate with Burlington Northern Santa Fe for use of the right-ofway along BNSF’s existing freight rail lines. But BNSF was only ever willing to give up operating windows on its lines — times when RTD could run its commuter trains that wouldn’t interfere with freight cars.
According to RTD, additional
requirements for train cars passed around that time that would have meant that every bridge along the proposed 38mile corridor would have had to have been raised.
In 2004, RTD officials had estimated that BNSF’s cooperation would cost $66 million. A 2012 Denver Post article found that the new estimated upfront cost was $535 million.
The result is that the Northwest rail line is currently projected to start when funding is secured, sometime beyond 2040 —36 years after voters approved it.
The B Line — which connects Union Station to Westminster — opened in 2016. The B Line is the first leg of the planned Northwest line.
Pirnack said that despite RTD’s assurances that it wants to finish the Northwest rail line as much as Longmont wants to see it finished, she is skeptical.
Nate Currey, RTD spokesman, said that simply isn’t true.
“We have a legal obligation to build rail and we want to. It was never our intent not to build this,” he said.
Currey said that RTD’s response to possible lawsuits revolving around the Northwest rail is the same as it was in 2015 when people running for Longmont City Council were kicking around the idea.
“Our financial situation has not changed. We have no wiggle room to add any new capacity, especially on a project that size,” Currey said.
Pirnack referenced recent reports in The Denver Post that RTD will save money over the long term by refinancing $300 million in federal loans for Union Station in downtown Denver. RTD projected it should save $6 million a year through 2040, or $134 million, according to the Post.
U.S. Rep. Jared Polis issued a news release in February urging RTD to use the money saved to finish the Northwest rail line.
Currey said it would be up to the RTD board of directors on how to allocate the saved money. Two of the 12 directors on the board answer to parts of Boulder County.
Joan Peck, who won her seat on Longmont City Council in 2015 partly on a promise to push RTD to finish the Northwest commuter rail line, said she doesn’t see an appetite for suing RTD. Longmont and other cities along the corridor are working with RTD on a phased-in approach to the commuter rail, Peck said.
Peck said that over the past year, discussions have moved forward, but RTD and the cities aren’t
There’s a baseline below which I don’t believe we should go just because they don’t want to deliver.” Former Longmont Mayor Julia Pirnack
ready yet to go public with a reduced service plan until every city has given its OK.
“A lawsuit would be a last resort, perhaps,” Peck said. “But we’re not anywhere close to that point.”
Longmont Assistant City Manager Shawn Lewis said in an emailed statement that city staff think they have positive momentum with RTD right now.
“For the last several months, staff from Longmont, Boulder, Boulder County, Broomfield, Louisville and Westminster have worked closely with RTD staff to design potential routes, begin cost estimation on those routes and redesign stations to reduce capital and operating costs in order to start a phased service option significantly sooner than 2042,” Lewis said in the email.
Bagley, who is a lawyer, agreed that the time isn’t right for a lawsuit.
“We don’t want to go to war with RTD because they do provide some great services to our town,” Bagley said at a multi-modal transportation event on Thursday.
Pirnack said she doesn’t want “partial rail.’ She wants what was promised in 2004.
“If you don’t want to build that exact model, then you talk with the people and say ‘OK, this is at least as good. This is at least what you bought,'” Pirnack said.
Pirnack rides RTD buses to Denver from Longmont four days a week for her job as director of College in Colorado and said the Bus Rapid Transit solution already deployed along the U.S. 36 corridor isn’t good enough. “I’ve sat in snow, in accidents, even in a dedicated lane for hours (on a bus.) That doesn’t happen with trains. There’s a baseline below which I don’t believe we should go just because they don’t want to deliver.”
Gessler, reached Friday afternoon, said that it’s too early for him to speculate on the legal merits of a lawsuit against RTD.
“What I will say is that there seems to be a lot of frustration,” Gessler said. “At minimum, if the government asks for a tax raise, they should spend that money on what they said they’re going to spend it on. One would hope that we don’t have to go down the legal road.”