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f"it <.L'- .:.---c JfOc..K'f {V1"f. f....~..> 'O/~'::'I/I Area region~lstudy says jobs to exceed population By ROBERT THRELKELD Rocky Mountain New' Statehouse Reporter Directors of the Regional Transpor- tation District (RTD) were told Thurs- day that although the population of the seven-county northern Front Range re- gion will nearly double in the next 30 years, jobs will outstrip the population growth and the area will not turn into a "megalopolis." . The predictions were made during a one.- hour report to the directors meeting in the State Capitol on what was labeled as "perhaps the most comprehensive study of the region ever made." The consultant team of Development Re- search Associates and Wallace, McHarg, Rob- erts & Todd presented the report. The team has been hired to present a public transportation plan by the end of this year, which will be re- fined in 1972. A public hearing will be held be. fore it is submitted to voter approval in 1974. L. Lloyd LeBlanc of Denver Research Asso- ciates told the directors that the consultants see "a very stable growth" for -the region with a population increase of 1.1 million people in the next 30 years, or nearly double. While the population increase represents a growth rate of about 2 per cent, LeBlanc said the availability of jobs should increase at about a 3.5 per cent rate, outstripping the population growth. 'A fairly rapid pace' The seven counties covered by the study and included in the transportation district are Ad- ams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson and a portion of Weld County. LeBlanc said that although the population projections indicate the region will not become a megalopolis in the manner of what now exists along the Atlantic coast, it will "grow at a fair- ly rapid pace." LeBlanc and Dr. William R. Eager, project director, warned that the second million people who will come into the region the next 30 years will be more disruptive to the physical and so- cial patterns of the region than the first million. "In addition, besides doing for the second million people what had to be done for the first million, we will have to provide for the prob- lems created by interaction of an increasing J:lumber of residents," Eager said. The consultant team also projected that in the next 30 years more than 85,000 additional acres in the district will be urbanized or devel- oped, nearly doubling the presently developed acerage. More than 73,000 acres of the total will be- come residential development, with the remain. der in industrial, office and retail uses. This development, LeBlanc noted, "is bound to affect the quality of life in the district." ' Most positive impact Eager said it was the goai of the consultants to recommend a public transportation plan that has the most positive impact possible toward achievement of the goals of its residents. In order to do this, the consultants have col. lected a mountain of data on the economic, social and environmental characteristics of the dis. trict. Much of the data was condensed and pre. sented in a rapid-fire slide presentation for the directors. The environmental information included a study of water fowl migrations in the area as well as studies of the region's climate, geology, hydrology, physiography, soils and vegetation. "Our judgment is based on all available in- formation we could collect on the developmental, invironmental and ecological history of the dis- trict," Eager said. "We projected this informa- tion to the year 2,000 to arrive at specific con. elusions." . He said that the information so far assem- bled "clearly indicates an urgent requirement exists for a public transportation plan and for the execution of that plan." A very significant portion of the district's population does not have access to transporta- tion of any kind, because of economic status, age or healht, he said. He noted that 30 per cent of the jobs for non- skilled workers are in areas without public transportation and about a fifth of the families in this group don't have a member who is a Ii. censed driver. Eager said that air pollution will be reduced by public transportation because it is coricen. trated in high density corridors where im. proved transportation proves most successful. Highway construction Another reason for development of public transportation, he said, was that the mainte- nance of the current relative eaSe of travel by automobile through much of the region will re- quire a level of highway construction in the years ahead that may be unl!lcceptable to resi- dents of the region. The report noted that major freeways in the. metropolitan area already have reached the saturation point during peak travel times, and arteries .in outlying cities of the district such as Greeley, Longmont and Boulder also are over. . crowded. Among other projections presented Thurs- day by the consultants: . Steady growth is forecast in all industry groups, but no substantial change is seen in the share of growth within: any specific employ- ment group. o Development in the immediate Denver area will be to the northwest, southeast and in- creasingly to the west in coming years. Devel- opment ni the northeast wUl not be as great be- cause of the continued expansion of Stapleton International Airport. . Other cities of the district also will experi- ence steady, but not spectacular growth, with the exception of unusual occurrences suC"h as lo- cation of a plant at Windsor by Eastman Ko-- dak. 0982