Cal Marsella resigning as RTD chief

The Associated Press reported that RTD Director Cal Marsella is resigning from his position to take a private sector job with MV Transportation Inc.

I am no fan of Marsella. He constantly loaded his position with huge and undeserved benefits. On his way out for example, Marsella will get crash credit for 2,000 hours of unused vacation and sick time. He also was the man in charge of the RTD incompetence we have seen since the beginning of FasTracks. During the last five years, RTD has gone hugely over-budget and probably will have to delay the ambition transit plan mostly due to their inability to figure out the actual costs of the project. The transit system has also seen massive service cutbacks, fare increases, disputes with its labor and a scandal-plagued leadership that uses tax dollars for luxurious business trips.

But in the 14 years he has been RTD director, Marsella has also guided RTD's implementation of thee separate light rail lines that were both under-budget and wildly successful. And he has done much to promote the use of transit for all in the district, even if he makes it harder for riders to actually afford and use the system.

I prefer to use Marsella's resignation as an opportunity to bring new voices and leaders to a system that is clearly in stagnation. In the coming weeks, riders need to be a voice in the process of choosing a new RTD director. We need to make sure whoever that person is will listen to our concerns instead of becoming another career bureaucrat like Marsella became. The Marsella era is over...what's in store for the next stop is for us to decide.

RTD's FasTracks problem

One of my main problems with RTD is their failure to properly forecast problems before they happen and their subsequent inability to adapt when what they though was supposed to happen ends up false.

Take this article in yesterday's Denver Post. RTD is trying to use eminent domain on a shingle plant in north Denver so they can build a sprawling maintenance facility there. The problem with this proposal in that according to workers at the shingle factory, they would take years not months to properly move the facility at a cost of $80 million. 

RTD disputes those claims, but doesn't actually have any analysis of what they think the move would cost, waiting until this fall when the Environmental Impact Study of the Gold Line is completed. But the plant represents another costly and time-consuming obstacle to the completion of FasTracks at a time when RTD can scarcely afford one. Not to mention the fairness of putting the jobs at the shingle factory at risk. 

And the reality is this has everything to do with RTD's inability to anticipate the realities of a large and complicated infrastructure project. RTD first wanted its maintenance facility to be acquired from Union Pacific land, but that proved too costly. Then the agency wanted in near the new River North developments next to Brighton Boulevard, but after the developers decried the plan, RTD is trying for the shingle plant, which may be just as intractable as the other sites. Of course the real reason it needs the maintenance facility in the first place is that RTD now will be using commercial rail cars instead of light rail for the vast majority of the newly-built lines. Many of the lines were originally supposed to be light rail, but had to change most of them to commercial rail once Union Pacific told them light rail cars would be too dangerous to operate next to the heavy freight lines. So now RTD has to scramble to build a huge maintenance facility for these new trains. Poor planning, don't you think?

It's an unfortunate reality now that the FasTracks voters passed in 2004 is turning into something more expensive and complicated now that it is being built. The shingle plant is just the latest obstacle of RTD's making that could further delay or increase costs in an already bloated plan. RTD wants voters to approve even more money to FasTracks in November. But with a bad economy and constant signs that RTD doesn't know what it is doing, will voters endorse that?

RTD Unveils New Web Site

So in all of my complaining about RTD, I do have to give them props for their new Web site: http://new.rtd-denver.com. 

It's sleek. It's more intuitive and navigable. And the new trip planner is really nice with its ability to do a standard RTD trip finder or a Google maps feature that actually shows you the exact route on city streets the trip will take. And the trip planner gives you many more options to describe where you are and where you are going including addresses, intersections and a variety of landmarks. The schedules are also much improved. The old ones seemed to crunch all of the stops together and times did not always correspond to the stop. These new schedules fix that completely and also let you customize the tables so you can search by arrival and destination stops and the time in which your actually leaving instead of trying to search though a table for the ones that are relevant to you. 

So at least our taxpayer dollars were going to something worthwhile for a change. The old site was pretty bad with hard to find information and a trip finder that was definitely not intuitive. So good job RTD. Hopefully your rider-first approach with the Web site won't end there.