Bridge piers for the West Corridor light rail crossover of Sixth Avenue Freeway at Indiana street straddle the westbound freeway on-ramp.

Led by planned spending increases on design and construction of its FasTracks program next year, RTD’s staff is proposing a 20.6-percent increase in expenditures in its 2010 budget over projected 2009 total spending.

The proposed 2010 budget is $984.6 million in new appropriations. RTD expects the 2009 budget to end up at $816.2 million. The year began with a much higher budget total but RTD cut expenditures during the year in the face of the economic downtown.

Proposed spending on the ambitious FasTracks rapid transit expansion program is up 50 percent over the expected total for this year – $408 million compared with $270.9 this year, reflecting ramped up construction and design work. Combined with capital funding carried over from this year plus federal funds, total FasTracks spending is budgeted at $928.7 million in 2010.

The largest chunk of money is to be spent on the West Corridor light rail project, currently under heavy construction in Denver, Lakewood and Golden, and on the East Corridor between downtown Denver and Denver International Airport.

The East Corridor is part of a package including the Gold Line to Arvada/Wheat Ridge, a new commuter rail maintenance facility and other improvements, that is being put out to the private sector for proposals that could bring new private dollars into the FasTracks program and help to close a $2.2 billion budget gap between costs to complete by 2017 and the amount of money available to RTD by that time.

The privatization program is called Eagle P3, for East, Gold Line Public-Private Partnership. The plan is to reduce RTD’s upfront capital funding needs in exchange for long-term concession payments to the private group that would finance, design, build, operate and maintain the East and Gold Line commuter rail corridors for 40 years.

Being in the budget is no guarantee the money will be spent. The 2009 amended budget as of August listed $800.5 million in FasTracks spending, but the projected end-of-year total is listed as $265.4 million. Most of what wasn’t spent this year is rolled in with the new appropriations for 2010.

The RTD board will discuss the proposed budget Tuesday night, with a vote scheduled on adoption at its Nov. 17 meeting.

The budget assumes a boost in sales tax revenues next year of 5.1 percent, after ending this year with a projects 10.4-percent decrease in sales taxes, due to the recession, from 2008. That doesn’t mean RTD expects the retail economy to grow that much in 2010, because about half of the increase results from a temporary suspension of vendor allowances – sales tax collections retailers are allowed to retain for themselves in exchange for prompt remittance to the state.

You can read the budget presentation starting on page 50 of the agenda and supporting materials for Tuesday’s RTD board committee meetings.