West Corridor Light Rail Officially Receives Federal Funding

Today, Denver's RTD officials will meet with Federal Transit Administration acting Administrator Sherry Little in Golden's Taj Mahal, also known as the Jefferson County Government Center, to sign over $308 Milllion in federal funds to complete the West Corridor light rail route. When completed, the line will link Union Station in Downtown Denver with Golden, Lakewood, and west Denver utilizing the old Associated Railroads right-of-way for much of the route. In 2012, the West Corridor Project is going to be the first to be completed as part of RTD's FasTracks program.

Union Pacific Strikes Preliminary Deal With RTD For FasTracks

Union Pacific and RTD have struck a preliminary deal worth $210 Million for railroad relocation to allow RTDs FasTracks light rail/commuter rail project to proceed after negotiations failed earlier this year. RTD will pay to relocate UP assets to create its planned corridors. The deal specifically mentions the West Corridor, the Gold Line, the North Metro Line and the East Corridor from Union Station out to Pena Boulevard. RTD acquires UPs Boulder Industrial Lead from Denver to Boulder.

The differences were resolved. The projects moved foward. And there was much rejoicing.

So What Will It Look Like?

If you want to know exactly what is going on with Union Station these days and what's on the agenda for its "coming soon" redevelopment as the transportation hub for metro Denver, Westword has a 7 page article (print version) that serves as an interesting read, at least for a Sunday afternoon. With no "artist concept" drawings, it's hard for me to envision it. Honestly, I just hope they fix the ceiling soon.

Price Of FasTracks Continues To Rise

RTDs FasTracks continues to revise its cost estimates for completing the FasTracks project on time. As oil and other energy prices soar and sales tax revenue dips, the finishing price will likely continue to rise, placing the latest estimate at $7.9 Billion (up from $6.1 Billion).

Opinion: This is not unprecedented, nor wholly unanticipated. The price of oil and hassles of driving will continue to push commuters away from cars and onto cheaper, efficient Light Rail. New growth around the completed Southeast Corridor reinforces the principle that better transportation brings prosperity and opportunity, two things Denver will need to continue to thrive. Politicians will continue to wrangle over the cost, but there's no getting around the triple constraint.

In the News:

• Denver Post article
• Longmont Times-Call article

RTD Ponders Future of FasTracks

Denver's RTD is pondering unpleasant options as its initial $4.7 Billion estimate for completing FasTracks is falling short of actual costs by a considerable percentage. Now admitting to as much, RTD is now considering three main options or a combination of the same to bring costs under control. The age-old triple constraint is at work as illustrated in the civil engineers' mantra: "Quick, inexpensive, or to specifications; pick two."

If Denver wants their FasTracks program on time and (relatively) inexpensive, the third constraint, finishing the job to specifications, they must sacrifice their original objectives of a complete system. When an area that was supposed to get light rail or commuter service gets word that it won't, it's a safe guess that they will be less than pleased at the news. Access to dedicated, efficient mass transit plays a major role in property values. A sagging economy and rising gas prices will immediately impact those values if a proposed light rail line or a portion of it is abandoned or spun as "indefinitely postponed."

If they want it relatively on time and to specifications, the cost is going to go up by more than just a little. The same sagging economy makes this a very painful option that may be out of reach for RTD. Increasing taxes in a recession is similar to reversing the bilge pumps to pump in water on a ship that's already got a hole in its side. The local economy could grind even slower and the property values would eventually sink when people realize they can't make a living in Denver.

If Denver wants the program inexpensive and to specifications, the third constraint of time will overrun the estimates. This will give more time for the existing taxes to raise more money, provided inflation does not become an issue. By far, this is the most attractive option but it may be only partially effective. Waiting longer to complete some or all of the remaining lines will have the smallest impact on property values if the certainty of completing the lines is real. Time seems to be the one thing people have faith in, Eventually, Denver still would have a first-rate transportation system serving its population and adding incentive for further growth, just slower and more sustainable.

As any one of Denver's successful microbrewers could tell you, timely maturation is an art. You can rush things, but that can ruin it. Waiting too long can be equally costly, but this is one time that spacing things out until economics improve seems the best course.

Update 8/24/08: Latest estimate is $1.8 Billion shortfall.

RTD Light Rail Hailed On NBC

NBC Nightly News featured Denver's RTD Light Rail D-line on their Wednesday night (6/18) broadcast as part of a piece on fuel prices and improving quality of life for urban centers. If costs are managed better, Denver can be the example of what western cities can do with mass transit systems. The video from the broadcast is embedded below.

RTD FasTracks Cost Increases Due To Surging Material Costs

The Denver Rocky Mountain News presents a more comprehensive look at why FasTracks is going over budget and why RTD may struggle a bit with the burden. The blame is being laid on rising materials costs:

Since FasTracks went up from its original price tag of $4.7 billion to $6.1 billion in May 2007, there has been another year of hefty inflation in the construction industry - fueled by hikes in steel, concrete and oil. The Colorado Construction Cost Index, a measure of costs for transportation projects maintained by the Colorado Department of Transportation, increased 6.1 percent last year.

Unfortunately, this means that Denver's fledgling light rail network is facing some peripheral cuts, but even that doesn't look like enough to keep the costs under control. Narrower bike trails and fewer cameras only buy you so much and then you're looking at cutting much more than the optional landscaping.

Times And Seasons In The I-70 Corridor

It seems like another era when I was a kid in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. My dad would take me hiking, camping and jeeping. What I enjoyed most was fishing. There were days when we took our eight-per-person limit of fish from places like Lake Ivanhoe, Allen's Basin and Yamcola Reservoir. We learned that there were times and seasons when the fish were biting. Some times we happened to hit it just right and we couldn't keep our lines in the water for all the fish we were catching. More often, however, we had between few and none to show for our travels.

Right now, articles like this are common because the time and season is right to fund and build a rail-based solution for the I-70 corridor. This is the time that the Interstate 70 driver has nearly every reason to ditch his car and board a train bound for the Colorado high country. Crowding on the highway is at an all time high and likely will continue to climb for at least the next 20 years. Gasoline prices are prohibitively expensive, causing families to cancel or scale back their plans. These same prices are fueling an employment boom on the western slope, which sits on a vast reserve of oil and gas. I-70 figures to be the one highway everyone is talking about and trading in rubber on asphalt for steel on steel sounds more and more reasonable with every penny-per-gallon and every car-per-day.

Though it pains me as a consumer to say this, the worst thing that could happen as far as I-70 rail proponents are concerned is for gas prices to drop or remain at it's present level. Consumer demand would adjust and prices would normalize, and the numbers of voters and drivers willing to support a rail-based option would not expand but contract. Talks of a solution would shift to paving or other low-cost quick fixes.

Strategically speaking, the push for rail needs to grow and change from promoting a "gee, isn't this a good idea" aspect to advocate a lasting, growth-minded improvement that will offer Colorado a 50-80 year solution instead of a 10-20 year fix. Opponents of rail really don't have anything to compete with that, and their only gripe will be the price involved in any lasting change. Colorado has put off this solution for too long and we are reaping the results of such deference today. Our choice is, do we perpetuate the cycle and produce the same-old tired approach of more lanes in finite space or do we end it by instituting an improvement that will last longer and go further to build our economy?

I don't get up to the mountains as much as I used to. That's a refrain we'll hear more and more as the Rockies become our biggest liability, rather than our biggest asset if we continue to pave our way with good intentions. Rail offers true options, and the season has never been better to start building.

Pueblo Chieftain Editorial On CDOT Study

The Pueblo Chieftain weighs in on CDOT's announced R2C2 study.

C-DOT Plans Second Study Of Eastern Rail Corridor

The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is planning a study called Rail Relocation for Colorado’s Communities or R2C2. This idea has been rolling around for at least a dozen years in its current form. Essentially, CDOT believes there is an untapped commuter rail market along Colorado's Front Range or what is also called the Colorado Piedmont between Ft. Collins and Pueblo. They would know because they count the axles on their own freeways. In order to have commuter rail, however, the steadily increasing flow of coal and other rail freight needs to be relocated. That's where R2C2 comes in.

The study will be to determine the alignment the rails would travel, how to best complete the bureaucratic red tape that would surround such a project, and how to put together a public-private partnership. That last goal confirms my observation about project management that every project needs one or two "gimme" objectives to be able to claim success. It appears that this project is coming closer to a definite reality.

Here's hoping that 2018 will see a passenger embark in New York and never stop riding the rails until they get to Chama, New Mexico. After that much traveling, though, all I'd be looking for would be a bed!

FasTracks Follow Up

I want to amend something I left out in my first post. It can hardly be said that the Union Pacific has ever been favorable toward Colorado or Denver. In 1870, Coloradoans had to fund the Denver Pacific, their own connection with the Union Pacific, when UP placed their route through Cheyenne in 1868. For over a century afterward, UP connected with Denver through their acquisition of the Kansas Pacific and sent all standard gauge traffic north to Cheyenne or Julesburg. It had little apparent interest in Denver except as a backwater, and this attitude seems to remain so to this day.

The Denver Post just followed my train of thought on FasTracks Slowing Down with their own special on RTDs right-of-way woes with the Union Pacific. The closing line of the Denver Post article was most ominous for RTD:

...RTD may have to consider acquiring much more private property for the FasTracks lines at a time some in the Colorado General Assembly are proposing to curb RTD's power of eminent domain.

I had hoped that Coloradoans, especially Denverites, had the sense to keep the public transit ball rolling to improve the quality of life in the Mile High City with rail-based rapid transit. Those hopes are fading. Let's hope that legislators keep the big picture and give RTD what it needs to complete FasTracks. Denver doesn't need another I-470 debacle.

More importantly, I hope that Union Pacific can see reason in allowing Denver to use the right of way for a more reasonable figure than $700 million. Doing so would increase goodwill and possibly give them the public support to build a new route further to the east to increase efficiency over the Palmer Divide, ease rail congestion and improve grade crossings. With all the coal headed south from the Powder River Basin and the Craig coal fields, you'd think they'd want some improvements.

FasTracks Slowing Down

Just when they sell off the lots around Union Station to meet a $200 Million shortfall in the improvements necessary to make the station a hub for rail and bus operations, RTD is finding itself looking at more potential red ink. Failed negotiations between Union Pacific and Denver's Regional Transportation District (RTD) for sales of key tracts of land near downtown Denver's Union Station have led RTD to consider other properties and consequently change the alignment of some routes. This is likely going to lead to further analysis like environmental impact assessments and other unanticipated costs in both time and money.

So why did UP price itself out of the market on real estate? Two factors have been offered as an explanation. First, freight traffic by rail is at an all-time high. Railroads are laying down considerable amounts of cash to expand capacity. Selling off any usable assets--even if they're not likely to be used--doesn't sit well with the bean counters. This is compounded by the second factor. Railroads have long been out of the business of acquiring land, and the government doesn't exactly hand out land grants anymore. Buying private land piecemeal can't be all that appealing to a railroad executive at Union Pacific, but that's exactly what the folks at RTD are going to have to do. The speed of which is going to be anything but FasT.

RTD Orders 55 Light Rail Cars From Siemens

Even as Denver's RTD takes delivery of new light rail cars, presumably for immediate use on the Southeast Corridor line, they have ordered another 55 cars for use on FasTracks lines currently under development. Trains Magazine reports a $184 million order for 55 SD160 vehicles to be built in Sacramento by Siemens. This exceeds all other single orders by RTD.

Coal Train Derails, Then Hit By Light Rail

A south-bound Union Pacific coal train derailed in southern Denver at 6:30 a.m. this morning between Oxford and Mineral. Some of it's cars fell on the RTD Light Rail right-of-way and a Light Rail car struck the obstruction, derailing the car. It is unknown what might have caused the initial derailment, but cold weather may have been a factor. Santa Fe is closed in the affected area and RTD is using buses to maintain service between the Oxford and Mineral stations.

More details available at 9news.com.

RTD Fastracks Overview

Recently found this Fastracks overview by Railway Gazette from June helpful, if a little hard to read because of the tiny font. Still worth reading if you want to catch up on the generalities of what RTD is planning.

RTD West Light Rail Construction Begins Mid-May

The first construction phase of FasTracks, RTD's Light Rail & Commuter Rail expansion plan is scheduled to start mid-May. A ceremony is scheduled to start May 16th at 1 p.m. at Quail and 13th Street where they expect to begin removing the existing rails from the right-of-way.

The Denver, Lakewood & Golden originally laid down rails as their main line between the Platte River and the town of Golden in 1891 with the last spike being driven in Golden at the corner of Washington and Third Streets on September 7, 1891. In 1904, the Denver, Lakewood & Golden became the Denver & Intermountain, an interurban line, and in 1909, overhead catenary wires were installed to permit the use of electric locomotives and self-propelled passenger cars (trolleys).

In 1953, the line was abandoned, but the Denver to Simms Street portion was sold to Associated Railroads, a corporation owned equally by the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe, Chicago Burlington & Quincy, Chicago Rock Island & Pacific, Colorado & Southern and the Denver & Rio Grande Western. This was to service the Denver Federal Center, formerly the federally-owned Denver Ordinance Plant created in 1940 and operated by Remington during World War II to manufacture .30 caliber rounds and then added the capacity to make artillery shells. After the war, the Federal Government retooled the site for office space, becoming the Federal Center and the largest concentration of Federal employees outside of Washington DC.

Over the years, traffic on the line dwindled and the Rio Grande was handling all traffic. Interestingly, a catenary pole was mounted on a diesel switcher solely to activate the signals for grade crossings. Eventually by the mid-1990s, a century after the rails were laid, the line lay dormant, with the grade crossings mostly paved over and crossing signals removed. The right of way still existed, however, and RTD acquired it under their new FasTracks program.

The goal of the West Corridor, as the line is now called, is to reduce congestion along Colfax Avenue, two blocks to the north. The line will navigate past the existing end-of-track near Simms on a new extension past Red Rocks Community College to the Taj Mahal-like Jefferson County Administration and Courts Facility.

On a personal note, having grown up in the area and only seeing one or two trains on the line my entire lifetime, seeing the line in use for a very practical and helpful purpose will be very gratifying. It's still a question, however, how the north-south arteries like Sheridan, Wadsworth and Kipling will handle the double trouble between Colfax and the new traffic on the line.