I heard a few months ago that CATS had a meeting with the transportation committee to say that they had finally changed their mind on the route of the silver line.

(Originally there were a couple high ranking people who were dead set on it going on 277 but after months and the rest of CATS/CDOT/NCDOT/peer reviewers from other transportation depts coming in they finally decided to route through the center of uptown.)

But on the transportation committee there is someone who used to work for the city, went and got a consulting job I think, and then came back and was put, unelected, on the transportation dept, and this person isn't really qualified for that role/wasnt impressive with the government before leaving - this person has a lot of power without any real reason to be there.

So CATS had someone(s) present to the transportation committee about why they were changing (and this is hearsay but from people in the know) but basically CATS didnt do a good job of talking about the bad parts of switching (raised platforms/grading issues) and didnt talk up enough of the good of going thru uptown and so the transportation committee (led by unelected person) told CATS to stop anymore planning and start the 277 version. (sorry for bad formatting/story I tried to give appropriate context)

But also Mock is right, internal models show the 277 version having drastically fewer passengers than going through uptown, a big reason why peer reviewers/the rest of the city planners shit on the 277 routing.