Long, hot, frustrating summer in store for Denver RTD light rail transit users

There’s a long, hot, frustrating summer in store for RTD light rail transit users.

The Regional Transportation District is undertaking a $152 million renovation of rail lines that will shut down the 5.3 miles of the "downtown loop" rail service, delay train arrivals and divert many outlying trains to Union Station, rather than their customary downtown endpoints.

Starting in May, RTD’s rail service will be disrupted for the next two summers by the reconstruction project.

“The track was built to last 30 years,” said Stuart Summers, chief communications and engagement officer for RTD. “It opened October 7th, 1994. We've hit the 30-year mark, so we feel really good about that. It got its useful life out of it, and now we need to rebuild it for 30 more years.”

Summers said the tracks have been physically pushed down by decades of heavy busses and other vehicles rolling over downtown streets to the point it’s necessary to pull them up, find out what’s under the tracks, and restore them to their proper height, along with replacing any damaged or worn-out rails.

One of the problems Summers spoke of was the drainage along the rail bed that is causing corrosion of the rails.

“First and foremost, think back 30 years ago,” said Summers. “Downtown Denver, when this was built, a lot of the tall buildings that exist now, were not here. And since then, they've done a lot of digging running utility lines. So, with all these new buildings, the way the water flows and the drainage are really corroding the rails.”

Summers said nobody really has any idea what’s under the tracks today, much less what will be required to restore them — so time estimates are wildly speculative.

“One of the big things we're going to do is fix the drainage that's underneath,” said Summers. “So, a lot of them have French drains that the water will run through. We've got to get under there, dig out, see actually what's going on under there, how much degradation has happened. Then we've got to figure out how we build it back.”

This summer’s goal is to renovate five downtown loop intersections to minimize disruptions and find out how they need to go about repairing the rest of the railbeds between intersections. In the fall, the system will go back into service for the winter and renovation will resume in summer of 2025.

The five intersections that will be reconstructed in the project’s first phase are located at 15th and Stout streets, 17th and Stout, 15th and California, 17th and California and Broadway and Welton Street.

Summers told The Denver Gazette the intersections will not be closed simultaneously, but rather RTD is working in concert with the City and County of Denver to plan closures and detours that will take into account ongoing reconstruction of the 16th Street Mall.

Streets may be narrowed to one lane for limited periods of time or rerouted.

“We're very limited this year because we need to get in there and see what we don't know,” Summers said. “No one's lifted up this track in 30 years. We are making assumptions of what we're going to find.”

Summers said RTD is planning to work through September and then return to normal service for the winter and next spring and then begin phases two, three, and four, using the knowledge gained through the intersection renovations.

Part of the project requires rerouting of trains from outlying areas to Union Station and providing additional bus service to help commuters get where they need to go.

Additional busses will help fill the gap and RTD is bringing back the Metro Ride service that will run from Union Station to Civic Center Station along 18th and 19th streets.

There will be large banner signage at stops telling riders where they can get to and which bus to take.

The second phase of the ongoing repairs to caps on the walls along the I-25 corridor will resume in May, which will dramatically slow down service again.

The caps, called coping panels were installed incorrectly, leading to water leakage down into the walls, and created a danger of a cap falling onto the tracks, RTD said. 

RTD sued the original contractor and won a judgment that is allowing them to replace and repair the caps using a different contractor.

That project started last year and RTD completed about half of the repairs. These repairs can only take place during warm weather, so the project was shut down in October.

In order to make the repairs, one of the two sets of rails along the corridor must be shut down and the overhead powerlines deenergized.

The result is that two-way service is impossible, so delays along the corridor occur where only one set of tracks can be used.

The E, H, and R lines are all affected by the project.

Summers said RTD wants to complete that project at the same time the disruptions downtown are happening to minimize the length of the disruptions.

Summers promised a communications campaign to inform customers of how they need to modify their travel plans to cope with the disruptions.

“We started communicating this last month because we want people to be very well aware that this summer services are still going to exist,” said Summers. “It's not that it's a shutdown of the system, you just may have to utilize it in a new way that you may be unfamiliar with.”

The marketing campaigns, service alerts and social media posts will stress that buses will be a “great option this summer,” Summers said.

“If you're trying to get from anywhere in the metro area into downtown, a bus is probably going to get you there faster, quicker, more in a more expeditious manner than waiting for a train that may have some disruptions to it,” Summers added.

RTD encourages customers to use its Next Ride web app to plan a trip and see bus and train locations in real time. Customers may also sign up for Service Alerts for specific route information.