Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute says "I told you so" on the subject of Denver's mass transit system.

He says it may be time for voters to cut their losses.

In 2004, I spearheaded a David vs. Goliath campaign against RTD’s 67 percent tax increase called FasTracks. Among other things, we predicted FasTracks would be underfunded and over-cost. However, the corporate welfare machine behind the tax increase and Mayor Hickenlooper in front of it promised the impossible. Goliath won. Taxpayers lost.

Four years later, the fallout of promising the impossible is obvious as Kevin Flynn of the Rocky Mountain News reports:

RTD conceded Friday that it cannot deliver the FasTracks program as promised to voters four years ago. The program, originally budgeted at $4.7 billion when voters approved a sales tax to support it, rose to $6.1 billion last year and is poised for a substantial increase next month during budget talks with the elected board.

Unfortunately taxpayers are in no-win situation. Continue to fund this massive failure, while no mayor is willing to push the project back or cut lines in their district? At this point, everyone is looking for a viable solution. In addition to my suggestion to ask the voters to kill it, the Rocky gave some other possible solutions:

Strategies that will be discussed soon include some, all or a combination of these:
* Going beyond the original completion year of 2017.
* Trimming some project elements such as was done with the West Corridor light rail, the first FasTracks corridor to start construction.
* Shortening some of the planned lines.
* Privatizing the financing and construction of more than the two corridors now being privatized.
* Asking the legislature for permission to go to voters for additional taxes.

You can bet that TaxTracks, as Ari Armstrong of FreeColorado.com calls it, will continue to disappoint its supporters and demand more and more taxpayer money to stay afloat. The options above are upsetting, no doubt, but fleecing our wallets continuously for another decade or so is even worse. I say we put it to another vote and let Coloradans decide if they have had enough.