RTD photo shows Denver Union Station at 17th and Wynkoop streets lit up for the 2007 World Series featuring the Colorado Rockies.

Transit advocates might seem like odd opponents of a transit project, but members of Colorail – the Colorado Rail Passenger Association – and their supporters plan to speak out Thursday night against the current design of the FasTracks rail hub at Denver Union Station.

The occasion is a public meeting of the Denver Union Station Project Authority, the entity overseeing the financing and contracts for the redevelopment of the historic station and its environs.

The meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Thursday at RTD headquarters, 1600 Blake St. You can view the meeting notice and agenda here.

The meeting includes a presentation on “public realm schematic design,” the concept plan for integrating the various public elements of the 19.5-acre site including the passenger platforms for boarding trains, an underground bus station, shuttle bus routes and pedestrian pathways and plazas.

FasTracks commuter trains would stop under a partial canopy right behind Union Station.

Colorail members say the way the design evolved over the past few years makes the so-called “crown jewel” of RTD’s FasTracks program – the Union Station hub and the ancillary commercial development that will help finance the improvements – more like costume jewelry. Even though their questions are long-standing – the issue first arose more than two and a half years ago – they plan to raise them again during the questioning period of the DUSPA board’s meeting.

RTD and its supporters, on the other hand, say the current design is a result of cost constraints, operational issues and consensus building over the course of a lengthy environmental process, and that the issues Colorail raises were discussed and settled. Reversing course would add cost and schedule delay that the FasTracks program cannot absorb. The Federal Transit Administration signed off 13 months ago on the Record of Decision approving the environmental plan.

Critics believe the current design leaves no capacity for expansion of bus connections or intercity trains, and is less convenient for transit riders than the original concept voters saw in 2004 when they approved FasTracks. Originally, the light rail tracks and the new FasTracks heavy-rail commuter train tracks were adjacent to each other and right behind Union Station, allowing quick transfers.

Map shows transit access to Denver Union Station, with light rail in blue, commuter rail in yellow and the 16th Street Mall shuttle in red. Colorail wants the blue line at the top left to come down to Union Station, as it does today, so light rail is closer to the yellow commuter train lines.

You can read Colorail’s criticism here. Colorail is the plaintiff in a suit filed last spring against the Federal Transit Administration over the agency’s approval a year ago of the Environmental Impact Statement for the Union Station project. You can read Colorail President Ira Schreiber’s letter explaining the lawsuit here.

The current plan that has light rail trains from southwest, southeast and the new West Corridor stopping at a station platform next to the freight rail tracks about 1,100 feet, roughly three blocks, away from Union Station’s door. Meanwhile, the FasTracks commuter lines – the East Corridor to Denver International Airport, Gold Line to Arvada and Wheat Ridge, Northwest Rail to Westminster, Broomfield, Boulder and Longmont, and North Metro Corridor to Commerce City and Thornton – all converge on five tracks right behind the station.

Cut-away view shows the underground bus station below 17th Street with the covered access to street level.

“Denver Union Station will cost, including 30-year interest on federal loans, almost $1 billion,” said Bert Melcher, a Colorail member who once served on the RTD board. “It will be outgrown long before the loans are paid. The underground bus terminal will be at capacity by 2030 and there is no way to expand it for further increases in bus traffic. Few additional national or intercity trains will be able to enter DUS. There are better alternative layouts that will cost far less and have a long-term capacity and far better intermodal connectivity.”

The changes that Colorail wants, said Roger Sherman, a consultant who is spokesman for the Union Station project, would require reopening the Environmental Impact Statement for a supplemental study, because the changes would substantive.

A similar EIS reopening on the West Corridor light rail FasTracks project took 10 months in 2007. Early related construction on the Union Station project already has begun and major work was to start this fall, but may be put off to early next year. Delaying for a new environmental process would add to the time and, along with redesign work, would significantly delay the completion beyond the 2015 time needed to meet the planned opening of the line to DIA.

“It could add years” to the project, Sherman said.