FasTracks at a crossroad: metro voters mull ticket to ride.

Lakewood Brick Co. feels the effects of the Denver metro area's traffic woes every working day.

Each company truck manages one round trip a day between the company's Pueblo plant and its Lakewood plant or a Denver-area job site. Six or seven years ago, each truck could drive one-and-a-half Denver-Pueblo trips. About a decade ago, one truck completed two round trips.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see we're at 50 percent of the efficiency we had 10 or 12 years ago," said Tom Murray, Lakewood Brick's president. "When 'rush hour' lasts all day long, it's hard to get much efficiency out of transportation."

Many drivers who tackle Interstate 25 at 8 a.m. or South Santa Fe Drive at 5 p.m. share Murray's frustrations. But what should be done about Denver's crowded highways and byways? That question is at the bull's eye of the debate over a proposition to raise the metro-area sales tax by 0.4 cents and put the money into a 12-year-long, $4.7 billion transportation plan known as FasTracks. Voters, who must approve or reject the FasTracks proposal in November, are being bombarded by arguments, pro and con.

Proponents say FasTracks--which will build out the light-rail system, add diesel commuter trains and expand bus lines and parking areas--will give a needed boost to the state's construction and engineering industries; help attract new businesses; and make Denver a more livable place. Many civic and governmental groups have endorsed the proposal--Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is among its strongest supporters.

"The area will be more attractive and will be a better place to live and to work" if FasTracks is built, said Julie Bender, president and CEO of the DIA Partnership, the regional economic development organization for the northeast metro area. "And we're in a very competitive economic development environment."

Opponents counter that FasTracks is a massive waste of tax money that won't truly ease traffic congestion or pollution, will be expensive to operate and will only redistribute rather than generate economic development.

"FasTracks takes valuable limited resources that could be used to solve traffic problems and puts them into absolutely nothing," said Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a think tank in Golden. Caldara is a former Regional Transportation District (RTD) chairman who opposes light rail and who helped defeat 1997's $5.9 billion Guide the Ride initiative to expand rail transit.

FasTracks has tried to avoid the fate of the 1997 initiative by being less "trust us on the details." Through the cooperation of RTD, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), local governments, business leaders and citizens, and more than 300 meetings, a detailed FasTracks proposal was created that calls for:

* Raising the RTD sales tax from 0.6 cents to a full penny per $1 purchase. (RTD tax isn't collected on drugs, groceries, gasoline or home heating or electrical bills.)

* 119 miles of light rail or commuter rail tracks.

* New or extended lines to Golden, Wheat Ridge, Aurora, Lone Tree, Highlands Ranch, Denver International Airport, Boulder/Longmont and Thornton.

* The first phase of a bus rapid transit system to Boulder.

* 21,000 parking places added at existing and 31 new Park-n-Rides.

One big question is whether a tax hike will sell to a public still feeling battered by the economy. Another is whether a transportation initiative can hold attention against squabbling U.S. Senate and presidential races. Perhaps the enthusiasm Denver area residents have shown for light rail will make a difference. The existing service--between South Santa Fe Drive and Five Points, and serving Downtown's major sports and concert venues--has drawn 70 percent more riders than projected.

The southwest corridor "is an immense success story," said Pat Cronenberger, Littleton City Council member and a member of the Transit Alliance, a nonprofit coalition that promotes rail and bus service. "It's shown people will get on the train. They will get out of their cars."

A couple of stops north, Englewood leaders are equally enthusiastic about light rail's impact. Down-at-the-heels Cinderella City Shopping Center has been replaced by the kind of "mixed use" development that transit proponents love: Housing, retail and offices mingle within walking distance of the Englewood stop.

"Ten years ago, Englewood had sort of a white elephant on its hands," said Robert Simpson, community development director.

After light rail's arrival, Englewood got 1,400 new jobs--600 alone from the relocation of the national headquarters of The Sports Authority, a sporting goods retailer, from Florida. Residential property values are on the rise, and retail and office lease rates are strong.

Other communities that have embraced rail-based transit describe similar benefits. A 2002 study of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit light-rail system by the University of North Texas Center for Economic Development and Research found that residential property values increased 65 percent faster, and commercial values increased over twice as fast as properties not near rail lines.

It is difficult to tell if property values are changing yet along proposed FasTracks routes. According to an analysis run for ColoradoBiz by Cushman & Wakefield, 16 property sales were made along the proposed routes from January through July. The average sales price was $2.76 million, with an average price per square foot of $6.98. That compares to 209 sales throughout the metro area in the same period with an average sales price of almost $1.96 million and average price per square foot of $1.48. The number of acres involved in area-wide sales is much larger on average, however, which would dilute the price.

If metro voters approve FasTracks, Denver will join many metropolitan areas that are pouring--or have poured--millions into rail transit, light and heavy: San Diego, San Jose, suburban Los Angeles, Portland, Salt Lake City, northern Virginia and northern Illinois are all aboard rail transit.

That's partly why FasTracks must move ahead, says Bender, from the DIA Partnership. "Business always looks for communities that invest in themselves, and FasTracks (would be) one way the Denver metro area is investing in itself," she said.

Caldara, however, sees no good in the new rail systems. "Is a 67 percent tax hike that serves 2 percent of the commuting population good for business?" he asked. "The answer is overwhelmingly no."

In a June study for Caldara's Independence Institute, Randal O'Toole, director of the Center for the American Dream, pointed out that FasTracks would take 0.5 percent of weekday traffic and 1.4 percent of rush-hour traffic off the roads. Taking motor vehicles off the highways helps curtail certain air pollutants, O'Toole said, but rail travel will emit more nitrogen oxide, a precursor of ozone depletion--and the only pollutant for which Denver fails to meet federal standards.

O'Toole and Caldara believe that taxpayer dollars would be better spent for bus rapid transit and what is known as HOT (High Occupancy Toll) lanes on highways. Compared to trains, they argue, buses are cheaper to run, more flexible at handling demand and faster if operated in HOT lanes.

HOT lanes and buses have their places, said Lauren Martens, executive director of the Transit Alliance. "I do not think they're a magic bullet," he added. "The evidence shows they don't pay for themselves."

One favorite example of HOT lanes advocates is Orange County, Calif., Martens added--yet Orange County, too, is pursuing rail transit.

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If voters give FasTracks a green light, its $4.7 billion budget is expected to create thousands of construction jobs and generate hundreds of millions of dollars of new spending during each year of the 12-year-long construction period, according to the Regional Transportation District.

That's happy news to the state's construction and engineering industries, hard hit by the Colorado Department of Transportation's reduced budgets of late. FasTracks conjures up memories of the prosperity produced when Denver International Airport was built.

"DIA helped pull us out of the last recession," said David Frazier, vice president and head of project development-civil infrastructure, Merrick and Co. "We're excited about (FasTracks), and we don't do light rail per se.... We think there will be a lot of spin-off in infrastructure."

In a report for the American Council of Engineering Companies of Colorado, Frazier estimated 500 to 1,000 engineering personnel would be needed during the four-year design phase, 2006 to 2010.

Construction, from 2009 to 2016, would occur concurrently in every quadrant of the city. RTD estimates conservatively that 3,000 to 8,000 construction jobs would be created, said Liz Rao, RTD's assistant general manager of planning and development.

John West, executive vice president of TARCO and secretary-treasurer of the Colorado Contractors Association, said the ultimate impact on the state's construction industry will depend heavily on how RTD structures FasTracks contracts. CCA has met with RTD and explained that smaller members would like a chance to compete for parts of the project.

While no decisions have been made, RTD likely would use a blend of contracting methods if FasTracks is approved, Rao said. "It's a big project and we will be doing a mixture of elements."

WRITTEN BY SANDY GRAHAM

ILLUSTRATION ROBERT PIZZO