♪ [Music] ♪ - Hi everyone, welcome to Both Sides of the Story.

I'm your host Alan Gionet from CBS4, thanks for joining us.

We complete our final rounds tonight with the second debate from our winners bracket, and it sure is going to be a great one.

In tonight's show, students from George Washington High School who know each other, compete for a spot in the winners bracket championship.

So let's meet our participants now.

First up, Kalina Kulig a senior from GW high school in Denver.

Let's hear her story.

- My name is Kalina Kulig and I go to George Washington high school where I'm a senior.

I'm very passionate about what is going on in the world, so that inspires me to keep debating and that is part of what inspires me to research every resolution too, because I like finding out how the world works and I like exploring different ideas.

I am also very involved in local politics.

I love researching that, and then attending different events that are related to that.

- Kalina is a really hard worker on her team, she is always thinking about the bigger picture, and the kind of debate that she does is focused on the world, the way it ought to be, so they often use different philosophical concepts in order to support that.

Kalina has done a great deal of reading and exploring and she is really able to break that down so that it is understandable, and also really helps support her debate argument.

- One of my favorite things to do is to talk to people from other schools in tournaments, and meet them and hear about what their life is like.

That's been something I have enjoyed.

- All right, you have met her.

If you have been watching our 2021 tournament, and we do have a lot of groupies out there, we were likely expecting to see the winner from our fourth debate, Sarah [indiscernible] from Range View High School, but unfortunately Sarah needed to drop out of this year's tournament due to some other academic responsibility in her senior year.

So with limited time to prepare for the debate, we are very lucky to have the next student join the competition.

Ethan Carter, also a senior from George Washington High School in Denver, and Ethan, your coach tells me that you have a sophisticated worldview that you defend with a lot of conviction, but tell me just a little bit about yourself, because we did not have time to make a video.

Tell me about what event you compete in first of all, in speech and debate.

- Yeah sure, so I do the Lincoln Douglas debate, which is the same as my opponent, we just debate about philosophies and how the world should be and not really what it is.

- And of course there are other things every debater out there amazes me with all the things that they do.

Tell me about some of the other things that you do in addition to speech and debate.

- So outside of speech and debate, I'm the president of our Hispanic heritage club, La Casa.

I'm also very much prevalent within the advocacy scene around Denver and Aurora.

- Oh wow, and what you think you can do with speech and debate, and this experience, that you are doing in high school?

- I'm really looking forward to going into law and politics.

So I feel like speech and debate has given me the tools and set framework and how to actually debate with morals and how to use those morals and inspire others as well as also creating the most just world for the greatest number of people.

- Pleasure to have you here Ethan, thank you so much for coming on such short notice to the top debaters in our state.

You're going to be watching today.

Also joining us today is our special panel of experts who will offer their analysis of our debate today.

They are Dominic Dezutti, host of Colorado Inside Out, the weekly roundtable program here on PBS 12.

He is joined by Kim O. Connor, co-director of the young writers program at the lighthouse writers workshop.

And Marianne Goodland Chief Legislative Reporter with Colorado Politics.

All right, let's set our ground rules right now.

Each side will present their case, they will ask each other questions and have a chance to offer rebuttals as well.

Both students have prepared a pro and con case for tonight's debate.

And they will not know which side they will defend until we have a coin flip right here in our studio.

Then when it is finished, we will go to our panel for questions and find out who they felt offered the best argument.

So let's get started.

Here we go, here's our issue that comes up for debate.

It is this.

Is mass transportation should be prioritized as the solution to traffic congestion in Colorado?

Should we prioritize mass transportation?

Let's have a coin flip right now and get ourselves underway.

Kalina, I'm gonna have you call it heads or tails?

- Heads.

- Head it is, what would you like?

- I will take the affirmative.

- Okay pro, con over on the site.

So that means Kalina as a proponent, during this round, the floor is now yours to get things going.

For three minutes, go ahead.

- I affirm the resolution.

Mass transportation should be prioritized as the solution to traffic congestion in Colorado, for three reasons.

The first reason that mass transportation is a valuable solution to traffic, is that it mitigates climate change.

Mass transportation is anything that gets many people from one place to another.

And it includes things like buses, trains, shuttles, subways, and light rail.

A study conducted by the Colorado Department of Transportation proves that mass transportation significantly reduces traffic.

They also elaborate on the environmental benefits.

Which includes reduced fossil full use, better oil efficiency, and lower pollution.

Mitigating climate change should be a priority right now.

And accessible transportation is one way to achieve that.

Coloradans should also seize the opportunity to reduce air pollution.

According to the Denver Post, Colorado's air quality is deteriorating.

If you remember, the smoke from the fires last summer, their report confirmed that things will only get worse.

Mass transportation reduces the air pollution per capita, making it far better for the environment.

The next clear benefit of mass transportation is the opportunities that come with it.

The American Public Transport Association found that taking the bus saves the average consumer more than $10,000 every year.

That adds up.

The truth is that for many Coloradans, driving simply is not an option.

And that's where mass transportation comes in.

By connecting the city, it opens up employment opportunities.

This creates jobs, benefiting the entire economy.

The same organization found that we gain four dollars for every one dollar spent on buses and trains.

What is more?

This economic growth directly benefits low income individuals.

Because they are more likely to use mass transportation.

But what if someone cannot afford to take the bus?

Well, not only is riding the bus far cheaper than using a car, Colorado already has fair assistance programs in place that can be expanded on.

The last reason that mass transportation should be prioritized is the most important: Safety.

The Institute for Highway Safety reported close to 600 deaths from car crashes in 2019 in Colorado alone.

91 of those killed were teenagers.

National Express found in the study that mass transit is tens times safer than driving.

If people, especially teens, had used buses instead of driving in 2019, we would have saved 540 lives.

Therefore, mass transportation should be prioritized.

Because it mitigates climate change, creates opportunities, and saves lives.

- Kalina Kulig, thank you very much, and now Ethan Carter you have two minutes for questions and cross examination, go ahead.

- Great, so you talk about climate change and impact, but what does your case have to do with actually increasing or decreasing congestion for traffic?

- Great question, so the very first empiric that I read was from the Colorado Department of Transportation and in the study, they found that mass transportation significantly reduces traffic congestion.

So in this round, I am arguing that that is the best solution not only because it reduces congestion, but because it reduces congestion along with giving us a whole other array of benefits.

- What causes this congestion?

- This congestion is caused by many things, but I would say people not using mass transportation is actually part of the problem here.

- Great, and you talk about opportunity, but you mentioned that there is an existing program that allows people of lower income communities to already have this.

What else are we doing on the affirmative side, when in context to giving mass transportation more economic priority?

- Of course, the ways the affirmative side will help lower income communities, are first mitigating climate change which will unfortunately will weigh the heaviest on them.

Most importantly, literally saving lives as I've shown that mass transportation is far safer and the economic benefits by connecting the city and opening up job opportunities for everyone, but especially people in low-income communities.

- Great, so you talk about job opportunities, do you agree that current congestion on traffic in Colorado is causing a decrease in our economy?

- That is not necessarily what I'm saying, my argument here is that if we were to decrease traffic and give them a way to work that is $10,000 cheaper every year, that opens up opportunities that enable people to take jobs a little bit further away from their house and ultimately benefits the economy by 400% compared to what we spend.

- All right, well you see our question right there, we'll have to wrap those up, should mass transportation be prioritized as a solution to traffic congestion in Colorado.

In the affirmative, we have Kalina.

In the negative, we have Ethan.

Ethan, now the floor is yours in the nag for three minutes.

- Great, I negate that mass transportation should be prioritized as a solution to traffic congestion in Colorado for the following three reasons.

First Colorado's poor infrastructure of highways, and roads, leads to congestion.

Potholes are just one of the many examples of how Colorado congestion happens.

According to [indiscernible] Colorado ranks 28 in the nation for pavement conditions on urban interstates and the bottom five for pavement conditions along world interstates.

Road infrastructure is a problem of mass transportation, is pointless if the streets are not safe, addressing poor infrastructure must come first before prioritizing anything else.

Too many Coloradans are wasting their time and money stuck on congested and potholed roads, said [indiscernible] President and CEO of Colorado Concern, Coloradans pay the price of lackluster road infrastructure.

Second, congestion is caused by weak infrastructure which negatively impacts the economy.

Have you ever been rushing to work while there was roadwork, on the highway or freeway?

Most likely you have, poor road infrastructure harms our economy.

According to a trip report nearly half of Colorado's major and locally and state maintained roads are in poor or mediocre condition.

These poor and mediocre conditions can negatively impact our economy.

The efficiency and condition of Colorado's transportation system particularly in its highways, and its highways is critical to the health of the state's economy.

Approximately 1.1 million full-time jobs in Colorado in key industries such as tourism, retail sales, agriculture, and manufacturing are dependent on the quality and safety of the reliability of the state's transportation infrastructure network.

If we keep ignoring this, our flourishing economy will become stale.

Third, the development of the highway traffic lights will reduce congestion besides improving the current road infrastructure.

It is essential to invest in new technology to reduce congestion.

According to AP news, many entrance ramps on Metro Denver's highways, have traffic lights to control traffic flow, but they are programmed to respond to the roads conditions by making consistent and minute changes to the length of time cars wait on the entrance ramps before merging onto the highway, traffic engineers and slowdowns and logjams can be reduced greatly or avoided altogether.

This idea was drawn from existing Australian infrastructure from the M1 freeway, which has reduced congestion.

The number of vehicles getting through increased by 25% during peak commuting periods, travel speeds improved 35 to 60% during peak, and crashes went down by 20 to 50%.

Thus proving that in response to mass congestion, the infrastructure of roads and highway traffic lights must be prioritized over mass transportation.

For these reasons, I negate that I now stand open for cross examination.

Thank you.

- Thank you very much as he said, cross examination time, questions, Kalina here you go.

Two minutes go ahead.

- Great so you talk a lot about fixing infrastructure here, is that mutually exclusive with also improving our mass transportation system?

- The infrastructure that I'm talking about specifically is in the context of roads.

Our roads as I mentioned in the evidence, are horrible amongst the worst in the nation, especially on rural or urban interstates.

The fact that people do not have access to safe roads is going to increase crashes but also commute time.

- But why does that detract from mass transportation?

- That detracts because you will not be able to have effective mass transportation if the infrastructure of roads is not beneficial.

You cannot have a big movement towards buses if the streets that the buses are riding on are not safe and effective, because I proved throughout my case that mass congestion and Colorado and traffic-- - So is fixing the roads part of mass transportation?

- No, I'm saying that you cannot have mass transportation when the roads are not fixed.

- Okay, so you are saying it is a prerequisite?

- Yes, we need to prioritize fixing infrastructure... - Well if they go hand-in-hand, why can we do both of them?

- We need to prioritize one over the other.

Because if you do not have beneficial roads first, then you're not going to be able to fulfill the infrastructure properly, for example if you were to say that we are going to do both of them at the same time, you're not putting one prioritized and one which needs to be addressed more, we need to address what is actually going to... - And then you talk about how weak infrastructure leads to congestion, the people that are affected by that right now are mostly those people that can already drive right?

- Correct.

- So why not prioritize the people who can't drive?

And maybe need to rely on mass transportation?

- But see mass transportation is not going to be fixed.

It is not going to fix the solution because the people that will drive no matter what, they will either... - But you just said that we are mostly helping people that can drive already right?

Why not help those people that can't afford cars as a priority?

- That's not going to help with the actual issue of solving traffic congestion.

Yes that is a great idea, but the technicality of the debate, we need to focus on reducing traffic congestion over anything else.

- We have to ask the questions right there.

- Kalina now, two minutes for rebuttal.

- In this speech, I'll be running down the negative case and demonstrating why the affirmative will stand strong in today's round.

First, my opponent claims that poor infrastructure is at the root of congestion.

This is certainly part of congestion, but it's not the only factor.

In fact, the Colorado Department of Transportation did find that the roots of traffic also has to do with a lack of accessible mass transportation.

If we prioritize mass transportation, we are reducing the number of people on the road.

And that is the best long-term solution to traffic congestion.

If we were to solve potholes, sure, that helps in the short-term, but there are still the same number of people on the road.

On the other hand, if we prioritize mass transportation, we are actually reducing the number of people driving, meaning that congestion is reduced in the short and the long term.

What is more?

My opponent talks about infrastructure in both of his first points, and none of this is mutually exclusive with anything that I am advocating for.

Yes, we can have infrastructure and mass transportation.

But mass transportation ought to come first.

My opponent told you during cross-examination that his infrastructure plans prioritize people who can already drive.

But as I have demonstrated, that is not everybody.

In fact, it costs $10,000 more every year to drive yourself to work and then to take the bus.

So I'm saying let's prioritize those people who can't afford to drive.

Let's prioritize the low income people and in so doing, we can also have things like highway traffic lights, but also recognize that the priority ought to be the low income people and the long term benefits of reducing congestion going forward.

- Well we have a debate right here, the big question today should mass transportation be prioritized as a solution to our traffic problems in Colorado?

Ethan, three minutes now to respond and close.

Go.

- Great, let's start off on the affirmative side of the debate today, so first my opponent brings up climate change.

Yes this argument sounds great as it is in the general debate, we are talking about traffic congestion specifically.

We need to prioritize what is going to traffic congestion rather than reducing climate change because the overall debate that we are debating is not whether climate change is good or bad, or how to reduce it, we are debating how to mitigate traffic congestion.

And on this point, we have to also look at opportunities.

My opponent, yes, I agree that there are opportunities, but looking at what prioritizes and what causes congestion, think about the evidence I write.

1.1 million Coloradans during their commute do not-- are negatively affected by poor infrastructure within roadways, and on interstates.

So to make the claim that yes it is solely based on the lackluster mass transportation unit while that can be seen as fair, we have to prioritize the overall making sure the infrastructure is beneficial.

If the infrastructure is not beneficial, what we're going to see is that there will be a big sweep of mass transportation happening while these roads are in horrible conditions.

Again, Colorado is ranked fifth in the nation for rural interstates and ranked 28th in the nation for urban interstates.

That is a big problem.

This needs to be prioritized over anything else, I'm not going to disagree with the idea of the beneficial effects of my opponent's case, what I'm going to say is that this is not really topical.

This is not a necessity for us to look at today's round.

When evaluating this debate, we need to prioritize what is going to be reducing the amount of congestion, think about this for example, if you are on a road and there is a large accident caused by lackluster infrastructure, whether that be on I 25, or I 225, that is not going to be changed whether there is mass transportation or not.

So the idea is to reduce congestion, we must do what we are ought to do, we ought to create stable infrastructure.

Again it is not my burden to say that we do not have to have mass transportation, but in response to congestion, it is evident that the only way to reduce, the only way to reduce traffic congestion is through traffic lights and road structure, and I'm going to give you reasons why the negative won today's debate, first we have to prioritize streets.

Again like I said in my first speech, if the streets are not safe, how can we put our low income Coloradans onto public transportation, that is putting them at risk.

Also we need to prioritize our road infrastructure, we are amongst the lowest [indiscernible] of states in our country when it comes to the infrastructure of our roads.

If we are not prioritizing them, that is what is going to cause us the most amount of harm in the long run.

Again this is not a short-term solution, because fixing infrastructure is going to maintain a lackluster of congestion.

And finally, you have to vote for the negative because of traffic lights.

I provide an idea from the case of Australia of how traffic lights significantly reduce congestion and crashes.

Thank you.

- All right, Ethan Carter in the negative.

Kalina Kulig in the affirmative.

Now one minute for your close, Kalina, go ahead.

- To close out the round, I would like to give you several key impacts.

First, the idea of climate change.

This is the number one priority in the round because it is something that will affect everybody, but weighing especially heavily on the communities that we are prioritizing.

Being low income communities, in today's round.

I have shown you that mass transportation reduces the number of people on the road in the long term, far more so than my opponents infrastructure plans.

Thus to solve climate change, we have to prefer the affirmative.

Next the idea of opportunities, I have proven to you that we get a 400% return on investment, from putting money into mass transportation.

And finally, safety.

The affirmative side is saving 540 lives, especially those of teenagers.

This is also a key impact in today's round, and is a reason why we should prioritize mass transportation.

- Kalina, thank you very much.

We will have to wrap it up there.

There is your debate, let's go to our illustrious panel now, Dominic.

If I told you two people who probably only recently got their licenses would be the ones on this issue, you'd be amazed.

- I would be amazed because what a fantastic way to close our semifinal debates with this conversation.

Both did a fantastic job, but your job is not over yet.

It's time for some questions from our judges.

Kim, why don't you start off with a question for Kalina?

- Kalina, mass transportation that is excessive, depends on people choosing to take it.

What do you say to people who simply won't consider it either because of how long it takes to get from place to place, or other reasons, maybe not wanting to be around people because of COVID?

- Absolutely that's a great question, I believe part of prioritizing mass transportation does mean making it safer but another problem that we are seeing right now is not that people do not want to take mass transportation, but that problems related to accessibility.

I have shown you that mass transportation is $10,000 cheaper which is a great incentive.

So we ought to make it more accessible so that more people can take it and get incredible benefits that come with it.

- Marianne, it's your turn to ask your question for Kalina.

- Thank you very much.

Kalina, I want to ask about the cost of these things, expanding mass transit would require going in the neighborhoods that right now do not get it, a lot of low income neighborhoods and you talk a lot about how this going to help low income people, but you have a lot of people who aren't willing to spend 2 to 3 hours on a bus or train to get around.

Where's the cost on this?

Where's the money going to come from?

- Another great question so we have two statistics to help us out, the first is that we have a 4 to 1 return on investments, so every dollar that the city spends, we get four dollars in return.

So rather than being a cost or financial burden on the city, this is actually a massive economic benefit.

And second, for those that can't or do not want to spend this amount of money on transportation, not only is it cheaper but the city also has their assistance programs in place that can reduce that cost.

- Ethan it is your turn, Kim a question for Ethan?

- Yes Ethan, you mentioned the lights that mitigate the congestion on interstates, but what about the congestion on the city streets or other city streets that cannot be controlled with these lights?

- Yes, so if you go back to my case, I talk a lot about things like potholes and stuff like that, but also urban roads and how that is negatively affected by lackluster infrastructure.

The issue is that when we are in the city, and there are large amounts of potholes, that's going to cause delays.

For example, if a pothole causes an accident, that's going to lead to you being backed up, and the best way to mitigate this is through increasing our infrastructure within roads and excuse me.

Or highways, as I mentioned we have the opportunity to get out of the bottom [indiscernible] of being for the nation's-- when it comes to road infrastructure.

- Marianne, your question for Ethan?

- Thanks very much.

Hi Ethan, what is the solution in terms of cost to these infrastructure problems?

Because the state legislature for example has prioritized things like mass transit, green cars, and things like that.

They are not as inclined to put money into some of these big highway projects and we sort of turned back from that.

Where is the money going to come from?

- The money will come from taxes at the end of the day, it will be derived from taxpayers and will be worth it.

Again if you look back at the evidence provided from the example from the M1 freeway in Australia, when that traffic light initiative crashes-- the likelihood of there being fatalities from a crash decreased from 50%.

That is an inherent statistic of how this program will work.

Yes it will be costly, but at the end of the day, we are looking at what is best to reduce congestion, that is going to be increasing infrastructure.

Yes it may come out of our pockets and hurt us, but that money will help us in the long run.

- Alan, we have to figure out who moves onto the championship, we have some work to do.

Give us a minute and see if we can work this out.

- All right, the illustrious panel do your best over there.

We will let them talk and that will give me a moment to let you know this.

You know that next week begins our third place match, first for a consolation bracket, and of course this all leads to our championship match which comes up on December 10 and December 17.

So make a note of those.

You will not want to miss that.

We have had some great debates this fall.

All right, illustrious panel, do we have your decision?

- We do indeed, Alan.

First of all both Kalina and Ethan need to know that we thought you did a fantastic job.

And one of the first things we mentioned here, as difficult as it was to judge the last debate, this was even tougher.

So you need to know this is very hard for us to come up with, but it is our job to pick a winner.

Kalina, we decided that with both how agile you were in handling questions and how you were able to offer more valid arguments, we felt in the end, it helped you win the day.

Congratulations and good luck with the championship.

- All right Kalina congratulations, and congratulations go hand-in-hand I guess that works out well.

Congratulations to you, you will go on now to compete in the winners bracket that is the championship coming up on the 17th of December.

- Ethan, we will see you on the third place match on December 3 and I can tell you your competition there is tough.

You both gave our viewers a wonderful debate tonight, and you both ought to be very proud as well.

That's all the time we have for our program tonight.

I want to thank our excellent students and our esteemed illustrious panel for their judgment and I want to thank you for tuning in.

It is the support of viewers like you as well as the sponsors that helps to make this show a reality.

You can catch up on past episodes of this program on PBS12.org and you can catch me on CBS4 for all the latest news and information impact in Colorado, for everyone here at PBS12 I am Alan Gionet and thanks for watching Both Sides of the Story.

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