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Transportation:
Limits on RTD's ability to do smart growth

Our Position: oppose
Bill Number: HB1278
Sponsor: Representatives Summers and White and Senator Tochtrop
Legislative Session: 2008

Limits on RTDThis bill would require RTD to only exercise of its power of eminent domain and rights-of-way when acquiring property for public transit purposes. In other words once a property is acquired it would require that it be used only for RTD purposes. It would prohibit RTD from selling or transferring ownership of property to any other person. Unfortunately, that makes it really difficult to do Transit Oriented Development - creating shopping/living/working areas around transit hubs. This is the kind of new livable development that the Sierra Club supports.

Status

01/31/08 Introduced in House - Assigned to the Transportation and Appropriations Committee

02/19/08 Passed the House Transportation Committee

03/14/08 Passed House Appropriations Committee

03/28/08 In the House Second Reading it was re-referred to the Appropriations Committee

04/11/08 Re-passed House Appropriations Committee

04/11/08 Passed House Second Reading

04/14/08 Passed House Third Reading

04/16/08 Introduced in Senate - assigned to the Senate Local Government Committee

04/24/08 Bill Postponed indefinitely by Senate Local Government Committee on a vote of 6-0!

Action Needed

Thank Senators Kester, Tochtrop, Ward, Wiens, Schwartz, Bacon for voting to kill this bad bill.

Background

For the implementation of FasTracks or any other large scale transportation project, property is needed for both temporary purposes and for permanent use. When large projects like FasTracks are developed they require property to assist with the staging and creation of rail lines, in addition to the property needed for permanent structures like parking garages. As stated on the RTD website, they only purchase properties “that are necessary for the agency’s transit projects. However, it isn’t until a project reaches an advanced stage of design that RTD knows for sure what properties the agency definitely needs to purchase for a project.” In other words, for the implementation of a large scale transit system, property is often anticipated to be needed or only needed for the development of the project, but not for long term use. In either case there is sometimes property that is left unused in the long term.

The question then becomes what should be done with the land not used? First of all, RTD uses the powers of eminent domain sparingly and when necessary for development, it doesn’t use those powers just to gain property with the intention of reselling it to private owners. Secondly, if RTD were to rent out space it would bring in revenue which would benefit the public, not just a private group of people. Basically this bill is trying to prevent RTD from displacing people from their homes or land in order to make profit off the property, which is definitely a questionable act. Since this is not the purpose or design of RTD, this bill has the potential to be overreaching and restrict the limited powers that RTD currently has. That is why we need to oppose this bill, not to allow RTD to profit, but to allow them to do what they are intended to do – create a public transit system.