RTD plans to jump start its FasTracks program by breaking out a segment of the I-225 light rail corridor up to Iliff Avenue for early construction starting late next year if metro voters approve a second sales-tax increase to complete FasTracks.

Later this month, the RTD board will consider a $3.5 million contract award to Michael Baker Jr. Inc., the engineering firm that did the environmental evaluation for the 12-mile I-225 Corridor, to do final design on the initial 1.4-mile segment to Iliff Avenue.

The construction of tracks northward from the existing Southeast Corridor end-of-line at Nine Mile Station – at Interstate 225 and Parker Road – to the first new station at Iliff Avenue would bring faster relief to parking problems at the jammed Nine Mile park-n-Ride garage, said RTD’s project manager Larry Warner.

Warner, formerly with the Colorado Department of Transportation, was the project manager for the T-REX project.

Since the 2006 opening day of the Southeast Corridor light rail, built as part of T-REX, the 1,225 spaces at Nine Mile typically fill up by 7 a.m.

“We’re looking to get that leg open as soon as possible,” Warner said. “We’re looking at providing an early opening of that segment because of our parking problems at Nine Mile.”

Iliff Station has plans for a 600-space surface parking lot. Adding that many spaces upstream from Nine Mile is projected to offload a large number of the parkers from the north who head to Nine Mile, by giving them a closer option.

At the same meeting on Oct. 20 when the board will consider the Baker contract, it will also consider approval of the I-225 Environmental Evaluation that Baker performed. That process took early engineering on the line to the 30 percent level.

If RTD is able to build the I-225 Corridor, it would bring back the G Line light rail service that it eliminated earlier this year due to low ridership. In the service plan outlined in the Environmental Evaluation, the existing H Line trains between Nine Mile and downtown would instead originate one stop north at the Iliff Station. H Line trains would not go all the way to Fitzsimons or the Peoria end-of-line station. They would start out at a pocket track between the northbound and southbound tracks at the Iliff Station, go south to Interstate 25 then north to downtown.

The new G Line service would provide full connectivity from Peoria along Smith Road, where there would be a transfer point to the East Corridor airport train, all the way down I-225 and I-25 to the existing Lincoln Station end-of-line in Douglas County, and eventually farther south on the FasTracks Southeast Corridor Extension to a new end-of-line at RidgeGate in Lone Tree.

Completing the I-225 link to Fitzsimons would provide the added ridership to make the G Line effective.

Because RTD has the funds on hand now to pay for final engineering on the short segment to Iliff, it can get the project shovel-ready by next year and advertise for contractors immediately after a November election on a possible 0.4-cent sales tax increase.

Warner said that even if voters turn down the increase – which would double the FasTracks tax to 0.8 cents, or eight cents on a $10 purchase – the short segment to Iliff still makes sense as an addition to the I-225 line by addressing the problems at Nine Mile. The value of the final design would not be lost while RTD seeks other resources to build it in the event the tax hike fails, Warner said.

The plan also gibes with Aurora’s desire to relieve the congestion at Nine Mile.

The I-225 Corridor is one of the FasTracks projects imperiled by the cost increases and revenue reductions plaguing the overall program. Unlike the East Corridor to Denver International Airport and the Gold Line to Arvada/Wheat Ridge, it does not qualify for federal funding. Rather, it relies entirely on local funding.

Meanwhile, FasTracks’ costs have jumped from $4.7 billion to $6.9 billion through 2017, the original completion year, while the recession has cut revenues to the point that available financing to build it all has dropped to $4.7 billion through 2017.

RTD is looking at a public-private partnership to build the East and Gold Line corridors to bring private capital into the program and free up its own resources for the seven other projects.

But even with that, RTD says it cannot build all of the lines to completion without another tax increase or stretching out the completion date at current tax levels as long as 2034.

The jump-start on I-225 is part of a strategy by RTD to get all of the remaining corridors shovel-ready as soon as possible after the 2010 election. Each corridor is at a different stage in planning and development, but RTD is trying to get as many as possible in shape to put out on the street for design-build proposals or bids by the end of next year. You can read the memo outlining this plan here.

While RTD plans to build all but one of the remaining projects using a design-build method, in which it hires a joint design and construction team of contractors as was done with T-REX, the Iliff extension would be done with traditional design-bid-build.

That’s where an agency does all the design, then puts that out to bid to the contracting community. RTD doesn’t have the resources on hand to do a design-build procurement for the extension, but it can fund the final design.

Doing it now will allow RTD to seek construction bids on the heels of an election.