Colorado's voters resoundingly defeated the monorail ruse to take $50 million in State money and start funding their expensive research and development activity. November 6th's election found the ballot issue defeated by a 2 to 1 majority. Only three of Colorado's sixty three counties (5%) delivered a significant majority for the monorail and all three were those most actively involved with CARTS, the monorail's principle boosters.

That is the good news and it is indeed good. SMARTrans and its supporters deserve a lot of credit for this action and Colorado voters again proved their common sense. Author Wright will be meeting with State Legislators to attempt to abolish the failed CIFGA authority. Hopefully, that will be the last we will hear about the ELF.

The bad news is that the multi-million dollar, multi-year PEIS study on the I-70 Mountain Corridor being conducted by the Colorado Department of Transportation has already eliminated SMARTrans from its mix of alternatives to the highway. They were able to do this through the simple expedient of placing all alternatives on a common right of way (which eliminated SMARTrans's capability to use a tighter alignment) and by not using cost as a screening factor ( with SMARTrans obviously the least costly of all of the alternatives to implement). And since the purpose of the PEIS appears to be to justify expanding the highway to six lanes and making other "improvements" so that its capacity would double, it is unlikely that ANY alternative (other than I-70 highway expansion) will be seriously considered well into the future..

Happy motoring!