John Hickenlooper’s vision for Colorado in urban areas (and maybe beyond?) is for people to bike, walk and ride mass transit.

The occasional car, of course, is needed to transport Denver Mayor Hickenlooper around the state to enlighten the rest of us.

In a video recently posted by Adobe Airstream, an online culture magazine, Hickenlooper discussed sustainability, urban planning and Denver’s new bike sharing program.

“How do we begin thinking about people moving on bicycles and walking and taking light rail or buses?” said Hickenlooper [at 5:37 of the video]. “We have the largest bike-sharing program in the United States, right? Almost 500 bicycles, 45 stations. And the whole notion is that people can get off light rail. They can get onto a bike. They can do the last hundred yards. It doesn’t cost them anything. You know, this is, you know, how do we wean ourselves off automobiles?” (Emphasis WSYS)

And how is Hickenlooper campaigning for governor across the state? By stagecoach?
We’ve already seen how Hickenlooper’s eco-vision translates into policy with FasTracks, the Denver metro region’s mass transit project reportedly facing a $2.4 billion shortfall.
In the documentary “Sprawling from Grace,” Hickenlooper described the promise of transit-oriented development around light-rail stops. “So that you’d have the maximum opportunity for people to get what they want without having to get in a car,” he said.
In 2009, Hickenlooper said said it would be “insane not to be spending tens and tens of billions a year” to combat climate change. “But I’m a moderate.”
With moderates like this who needs extremists?
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Must Like Cars, David Harsanyi, The Denver Post, 7/2/10

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper helped sell metro Denver on a 122-mile commuter rail and light rail system that is now more than $2 billion in the hole. But that hasn’t dimmed his ardor for Coloradans riding the rails – or his desire to spend other people’s money.

At a recent gubernatorial campaign event in Fort Collins, Hickenlooper was asked his views on passenger rail on the Front Range.

“Geographically, we are perfectly set for it,” he said. “We’re probably 10, probably 20 years away from having enough density. You have to look at what is the capital cost…And what does that cost per person, do we really get a benefit to society, if you have enough people that would use it?

“Even as busy as the road is, you probably wouldn’t get enough use of it right now. Ten years, maybe 15 or 20 years, absolutely…The Rocky Mountains concentrate people along the Front Range, which sets us up for some kind of system like that. So, that will definitely happen. It will happen in our own lifetime. Hopefully…high speed. It only costs…my grandfather always said, ‘It only costs a little more to go first class.’”

Actually, such a mass transit project would cost a FORTUNE, according to an Rocky Mountain Rail Authority feasibility study.

And high-speed rail might do little to relieve traffic congestion, according to Randal O’Toole, who was an early critic of Denver’s $4.7 billion FasTracks referendum in 2004 and has written detailed criticisms of federal and regional rail spending.

“‘Not a single high-speed track built to date has had any perceptible impact on the road traffic’ in Europe, says Ari Vatanen, a European Parliament member,” O’Toole wrote in a 2009 column, “A High-Speed Rail Mirage.” “California predicts its 220-mph trains would take just 3.5% of cars off of roads. California highway traffic grows that much every two years.”

Now if Hick wants to fly first class or – with these kind of numbers – via private jet that’s up to him and his wallet. But earth to grandpa – first class costs 5 to 10 times as much as coach and private can cost far more. Pretty typical liberal thinking to lump “a little more” right along with 10 to 100x. “A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” Who said? Usually attributed to Everett Dirksen but clearly not BELIEVED by John Hickenlooper.

[Updated 5/12/10]

A few million here and a few million there and all of a sudden you’re talking about real money. This week there was plenty of media coverage about former chief of RTD Cal Marsella’s pension payout. He received $2.9 million in February from RTD when he cashed out his pension.

In a recently posted interview of Marsella (by the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization at the Regional Mass Transit Summit, May 27, 2009), he discusses the millions RTD spent on studies for additional lines before a financing plan for those lines was in place.

“We had built our first few rail lines and they were so successful that the agenda in metro Denver ceased to be ‘Will it work?’ and it became ‘When do we get ours?’ Everybody wanted a line. So the board, my board of directors, said let’s go out and do these major investment studies. Now, I come from the old school where you don’t do the studies until you have a financing plan in place, which we didn’t. The studies are not cheap, they were several million dollars apiece. But the board said ‘No, we’re so committed, we’re going to go ahead and take a leap of faith and do these.’ And I really was not supportive, but we did it, it was a board directive and we did it. In retrospect, it was the smartest thing we ever did…”

Yes, everyone wanted a line. OF COURSE everyone wanted a line.

Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute (seen in this earlier WSYS video), addresses the issue of all the metro-area cities wanting a rail line in the clip below from Jon Caldara’s Independent Thinking.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQXrpvNi_Ec]

http://www.youtube.com/v/tQXrpvNi_Ec

A recent Denver Post editorial makes the point that “. . . RTD is struggling financially to complete FasTracks and the district will need to convince voters at some point that it’s a good steward of their money.”

Millions in pension, millions in studies – it starts to add up.

In nearly seven years as mayor of Denver, John Hickenlooper has sang the tune of “regionalism” in economic development and planning. His views on regionalism take on new significance now that he’s seeking to be governor of Colorado.

“The days of Denver making decisions for their own benefit are over,” Hickenlooper said recently at The Colorado Real Estate and Economic Summit. “And we recognize we’ll never be a great city without incredible suburbs. And that we will do everything from now on to make sure that, if we can’t find a decision that serves both the suburbs and the city, we’ll find something else to work on. And there was a long pause. And then huge applause. Right. Exactly.”

A key example of such regionalism during Hickenlooper’s tenure as mayor is FasTracks, the 122-mile commuter rail and light rail project he championed and which metro voters approved in 2004 through a $4.7 billion ballot measure.

“So here is a question Colorado voters should ask gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper: Based on what we know today, including 40 percent cost overruns, revenue shortfalls, and the trivial amount of congestion relief that FasTracks is expected to provide, would you still have endorsed the 2004 FasTracks ballot measure?”

That question was posed by The Antiplanner, a website of Randal O’Toole, a longtime critic so-called “smart growth” planning and of FasTracks.

For more from Hickenlooper and O’Toole about FasTracks, see WhoSaidYouSaid’s video…