Tom Clark can cite the exact moment in 1997 when metro Denver’s economic leaders became convinced that a more comprehensive rail and bus network was critical to the region’s prosperity. They were talking to executives at Level 3 Communications about a potential relocation, but their prospects were balking. They were afraid that without transit, Denver’s potential workforce was effectively cut in half because of congestion on I-70, the main east-west interstate artery.
There were challenges in going to voters for transit funding at that stage, however. Denver International Airport, the area’s major infrastructure project of the 1990s, had been plagued with billion-dollar cost overruns and an automated baggage system that had to be scrapped. The public’s trust in local government’s ability to pull off large projects was at an all-time low, leading in part to the recent defeat of an ambitious but vaguely defined transit initiative called Guide The Ride.“They were the catalytic piece of us deciding that we really had to get serious and get transit back on the ballot again,” said Clark, CEO of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation. “It was one of those a-ha moments in your life where you just go ‘Wow, this has real economic implications.’”
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