Colorado ranks No. 4 where Americans would most like to live (Denver: sales, condos)

[CAVA1990]

Originally Posted by smdensbcs

For better or worse, I suspect our "front range urban corridor" will not be among the 6-8 largest developing mega-regions, in part because of reasons jazzlover touched on and in part because I don't believe our entrenched Western mentality will ever submit to the transportational innovations mega-regions will likely require (i.e. that's my gobbledygook talk for "high-speed rail"). At least, we won't agree to pay our share of the cost of such a thing. I expect other regions will innovate and reap the long term rewards. Here, I expect more sprawl.

I doubt transportation is going to limit your growth. You'll just build more highways. They carry a lot more traffic than "transportational innnovations". What will limit growth is your remoteness from any other major metropolitan areas and lack of any real role in our national and global economic future. With perhaps the exception of Chicago, the interior of the country will continue to decline relative to the coasts.

[Josseppie]

Originally Posted by CAVA1990

I doubt transportation is going to limit your growth. You'll just build more highways. They carry a lot more traffic than "transportational innnovations". What will limit growth is your remoteness from any other major metropolitan areas and lack of any real role in our national and global economic future. With perhaps the exception of Chicago, the interior of the country will continue to decline relative to the coasts.

This is a map of the emerging mega regions in the United States. As you can see the front range in Colorado is among them!

[jazzlover]

Originally Posted by CAVA1990

I doubt transportation is going to limit your growth. You'll just build more highways. They carry a lot more traffic than "transportational innnovations". What will limit growth is your remoteness from any other major metropolitan areas and lack of any real role in our national and global economic future. With perhaps the exception of Chicago, the interior of the country will continue to decline relative to the coasts.

I laugh when I read that we "will just build more highways." Hell's bells, we can't truly afford to build any more of them right now. We can't even afford to maintain the ones we already have. When fuel goes to $6-$8 per gallon (and it will) and asphalt--being made from oil (duh!) goes up accordingly--our highway system will become even more unaffordable. That's the transportation wreck we are heading for in this country.

CAVA is right about one thing--when the transportation system craters, places like Colorado--completely overdependent on highway or air transportation for just about everything, and far from everything--are going to suffer terribly. As James Kunstler says, "The world is going to get very big again," and places like Colorado will sink back into geographical isolation.

[Josseppie]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

I laugh when I read that we "will just build more highways." Hell's bells, we can't truly afford to build any more of them right now. We can't even afford to maintain the ones we already have. When fuel goes to $6-$8 per gallon (and it will) and asphalt--being made from oil (duh!) goes up accordingly--our highway system will become even more unaffordable. That's the transportation wreck we are heading for in this country.

CAVA is right about one thing--when the transportation system craters, places like Colorado--completely overdependent on highway or air transportation for just about everything, and far from everything--are going to suffer terribly. As James Kunstler says, "The world is going to get very big again," and places like Colorado will sink back into geographical isolation.

We do need more then just highways on the Front Range and that is why I support the HSR line from Pueblo to Fort Collins and Albuquerque to Pueblo with the hub for HSR and Amtrak in downtown Pueblo. Not sure when it will happen but it will happen sometime this century. Personally, I hope its sooner rather then later.

[jazzlover]

Originally Posted by Josseppie

We do need more then just highways on the Front Range and that is why I support the HSR line from Pueblo to Fort Collins and Albuquerque to Pueblo with the hub for HSR and Amtrak in downtown Pueblo. Not sure when it will happen but it will happen sometime this century. Personally, I hope its sooner rather then later.

Here is the future reality. High-speed rail is pretty much worthless. You can't move 25,000 people a day at 180 mph and make any impact on a metropolitan transportation problem. You have to be able to move 500,000 people a day at 50 mph. And you will have to do it with 25% of the fuel we are using now. Only one thing can do that: conventional passenger rail. That is where we should be spending our ever scarcer tranportation dollars. Both the general public and transportation planners need to pull their heads out their ***es and see that is where we HAVE to go--right now--to avoid a complete transportation coronary in this state and this country.

[Josseppie]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

Here is the future reality. High-speed rail is pretty much worthless. You can't move 25,000 people a day at 180 mph and make any impact on a metropolitan transportation problem. You have to be able to move 500,000 people a day at 50 mph. And you will have to do it with 25% of the fuel we are using now. Only one thing can do that: conventional passenger rail. That is where we should be spending our ever scarcer tranportation dollars. Both the general public and transportation planners need to pull their heads out their ***es and see that is where we HAVE to go--right now--to avoid a complete transportation coronary in this state and this country.

The fact is business moves to fast for a 50 MPH train network for short distances. The definition for short distances I am using is from Albuquerque to Fort Collins. That is why they need a HSR network with a hub in Pueblo that connects the Front Range of Colorado to the growing areas of New Mexico. Then you can have Amtrak connecting in Pueblo as well for the longer hauls with your slower speeds you talked about or they can just connect through the airport at Pueblo as it will be the easiest to use since it is located by the major rail hub in the Front Range mega region.

[CAVA1990]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

You have to be able to move 500,000 people a day at 50 mph. And you will have to do it with 25% of the fuel we are using now. Only one thing can do that: conventional passenger rail.

Nah, what about W's hydrogen cars?

[CAVA1990]

Originally Posted by Josseppie

Then you can have Amtrak connecting in Pueblo as well for the longer hauls with your slower speeds you talked about or they can just connect through the airport at Pueblo as it will be the easiest to use since it is located by the major rail hub in the Front Range mega region.

I've not heard of Amtrak planning to restore passenger service to Pueblo. Wasn't La Junta the hub where the Denver - Dallas line crossed the Santa Fe Chief mainline?

[brightdoglover]

I suspect the original "survey" was for fantasy moves. For Colorado, the image of living in, say, Ouray, in the summer. Not going to work or driving in snow or even trying to find a job. Same with the other places. Picturing, say, Florida- vacation. Beach in winter. Not summer, not finding a job, or having a decent school, or anything that has to do with daily reality.
I just spent a weekend in south Jersey (right across from Philly). I am still horrified and overwhelmed with the unbelievable sprawl and lack of towns or centers or anything. It bordered on nightmarish.

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by Josseppie

You do realize that the reason you have the redevelopment in downtown Denver that you do is because of public and private partnership? Coors Field and Mile Hi Stadium were both built with the help of the public sector and the Denver Urban Renewal Authority has been instrumental in making a lot of those areas you now like the way they are. Pueblo does the same thing and, like Denver, many areas you would not want to be in during the 1970's and 1980's are now vibrant and important parts of the Pueblo MSA. In part because of what the city has done including the Pueblo Urban Renewal Authority.

Those silly programs is partly why Colorado and it's localities have debt it doesn't need. Sure it is in the best interest of a gubment to promote it's locality but my point was you don't need gubment DICTATING to people to move to a certain area, whatever their reasons are. Let people live where they want and there are a lot of people that would rather live close to work downtown than out in the burbs. Let people and the free market decide and in the case of Denver plenty of people in recent times want to live downtown.

We've already seen recently obama's horrendous failure with "shovel ready jobs" and other stimulus BS, that you never get ROI on those "programs". It is private enterprise that drives the economy and that makes and creates goods and services. The only tangible thing I have ever seen a gubment bureaucrat create is more paperwork, more rules and more fees and tax demands.