My understanding of this whole debacle is that RTD based their bid for what it was going to cost to build on what they "thought" the existing tracks could be leased for (without checking) and only after they sold this bill of goods to the taxpayers (which we sadly bought) someone bothered to ask and the railroads were wanting something in the order of 3 times the amount what RTD had budgeted.  Couple that with copper going through the roof, the entire project became impossible to do.  So instead of telling the taxpayers "uh, this is going to be really expensive" they opted for selling us another bus system and named it "FastTracks" to give us a feeling that somehow we were getting equal to a train - but with a bus.  I'm big on rail development - but let's face it folks.  The general public got screwed on this one.