Years after voters said the A Line and the L Line should connect, RTD has yet
to deliver its FasTracks promise - Denverite, the Denver site!
Years after voters said the A Line and the L Line should connect, RTD has yet
to deliver its FasTracks promise
The RiNo Art District wants the .8 mile L line extension back on the rails.
The 30th and Downing Station is the end of the L Line (for now). Dec. 14, 2021.
Kyle Harris/Denverite Kyle HarrisYesterday, 4:00 a.m.
- SHARE
- TWEET
- EMAIL
If the voters who passed RTD’s lightrail expansion FasTracks in 2004 had their
way, the L Line would no longer end at 30th Avenue and Downing Street.
By 2017 riders would have been able to take the train all the way to the A Line
at the 38th and Blake streets stop and have easy access to both Denver
International Airport and Union Station. And Five Points would have been a
better-connected neighborhood, from the Welton Street Corridor to Brighton
Boulevard.
Things haven’t worked out that way — yet. Seventeen years later, the L Line
still fizzles out at 30th and Downing.
Vacant, unleased and for-sale commercial buildings — including a shuttered
Burger King and the building that once housed the Wrangler — line the stretch
of Downing where the L Line should be running. Brighton and Welton remain
poorly connected by transit and challenging to travel between.
Downing Street, Dec. 14, 2021.
Kyle Harris / Denverite
What went wrong?
While RTD managed to build 25.1 miles of light rail and 53 miles of commuter
rail track, the .8 mile stretch connecting the L Line to the A Line proved not
to be a priority.
“In 2007, 2008, 2009, when we were going through the recession, we had to
reconfigure our planning for FasTracks and determine what we could continue to
move forward with based on the funding we had and how far along the projects
were in their planning and engineering processes and what we were going to have
to push out farther,” said Pauletta Tonilas, a spokesperson for RTD. “The
Central Corridor Extension is one of the projects that had to get pushed out
until we identified funding.”
Yet for years, the project was piddling forward.
RTD conducted an environmental evaluation that wrapped in 2010. In 2013 and
2014, there were more studies on how the project would work, and by 2015, basic
engineering was finished.
ADVERTISEMENT
Then things stalled.
In 2019, RTD estimated it would need to raise $140 million in capital costs for
the extension. Since the pandemic, inflation and rising construction costs has
likely driven that number higher, but the project has been kicked down the road
so far that there isn’t a current estimate.
“The issue is we don’t have funding secured to complete that extension,” said
Tonilas. “And so that is one of the few remaining FasTracks projects that we
currently don’t have funding to complete.”
The others include a B Line extension to Longmont, the Southwest Rail Line
Extension which would take the C and D Line service south into Highlands Ranch,
and an extension of the N Line to Thornton.
Not only is there no money, but “we don’t have any of them prioritized,” said
Tonilas.
A closed Burger King at 3200 Downing St. Dec. 14, 2021.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
The RiNo Art District wants the Central Rail Line Extension to be prioritized.
Two weeks ago (and four years after the L Line extension should have been
wrapped), the nonprofit RiNo Art District launched a Change.org petition to
pressure the city and RTD to connect the two lines.
“We believe the L-Line to be a vital link between Five Points and Downtown and
extending it to 38th and Blake Station will offer significant benefits to
community mobility, whilst also creating enhanced transit options for A-Line
passengers wishing to access central downtown,” the RiNo Art District noted.
“We call upon RTD and the City and County of Denver to work in partnership to
develop an implementation plan to enable transit operations to commence within
the next five-year period.”
Nearly 400 people have signed the petition.
ADVERTISEMENT
RTD itself is eager to wrap FasTracks, since the ongoing delay continues to
stain its reputation.
“No one would like to complete the remaining Fast Tracks projects more than
RTD, but it really is all about funding,” said Tonilas. “And given that we’re
in a position of trying to recover from the pandemic, obviously, we are looking
at how we restore service for our existing system right now and yet still
looking for opportunities on the horizon where we can solidify funding to
complete these remaining projects.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Pauletta Tonilas. We
regret the error.