National Journal covered RTD's recovery from a budget crunch to make FasTracks a reality via public-private partnerships.
Excerpt:
Bill Sirois describes the first four months of 2007 in his office as "chaotic." The regional transit authority where he works as a senior manager had just learned that they were $1.5 billion over budget on a light-rail system that they had promised to deliver within a decade. Three years earlier, Colorado voters had approved a high-profile ballot measure to raise $4.7 billion through sales taxes to build the train system called FasTracks. Now the costs were projected to run well over $6 billion.
The money from available tax revenues might allow the rail network to be finished by 2042, internal analysts told the Regional Transportation District (RTD).
"So there was kind of like, 'Ah, what are we doing?'" Sirois remembers. "'We got it passed by the voters, and how can we even tell them that we can't do it when we said we were going to do it?'"
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