Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff announces $304 million in loans to renovate Denver Union Station and $120 million in grants for three FasTracks rail corridors. Seated to the left are Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, Sen. Michael Bennet and RTD General Manager Phil Washington.

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

FasTracks’ federal funding picture came into sharper focus today as the Federal Transit Administration announced it will provide the sought-after $304 million in loans toward the conversion of Denver Union Station into a regional commuter rail hub.

FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff, who traveled to Denver for the announcement, also said that by including $80 million in grants to the two commuter rail corridors to Denver International Airport and Arvada-Wheat Ridge in President Obama’s proposed 2011 budget, the feds are sending a clear signal that they intend to sign agreements with RTD, likely next year, to provide New Starts grants for the East Corridor and Gold Line commuter rail projects.

“That translates into a federal commitment to provide over a billion dollars for FasTracks,” Rogoff said to a crowd of about 200 people at the Union Station transit platform. “You put that together with the Union Station loans and they represent thousands of jobs.

“These dollars are an initial downpayment on those projects,” Rogoff said. “The most important part of Monday’s announcement is that the Obama Administration committed itself to signing a Full Funding Grant Agreement for both of these projects.

“Make no mistake about it, the discussion is over. Union Station is going to happen. It’s at the center of what President Obama is talking about when he talks about economic recovery,” Rogoff said.

Transit advocates who have been planning for the day that the historic train station would be reborn were ecstatic.

“This is a historic day in the history of Colorado,” said Dana Crawford, the developer who helped pioneer the rebirth of lower downtown. Reactivation of the station as part of FasTracks is expected to spur the growth of the Central Platte Valley.

One by one, question marks that surround RTD’s FasTracks rapid transit program are being turned into exclamation points as these key targets in the beleaguered financing plan are reached. The grants and loans Rogoff announced Friday are not new money for FasTracks – the amounts already had been plugged into the financial plan – but by committing to those amounts, Rogoff eliminates a few more of the unknowns.

The announcement provides some relief for local officials who have been concerned about RTD’s ability to nail down the remaining unsettled pieces of the budget.

“FasTracks is laying a foundation for our future,” said Sen. Michael Bennet, who addressed the audience. “It’s about jobs, it’s about people. It’s projects like this that give us hope that we are going to fulfill the legacy of our parents and grandparents – to create more, not less, opportunity for generations of Coloradans to come.”

RTD General Manager Phil Washington, left, rides the C Line light rail to the 10th and Osage station after the announcement to tour a senior housing site with FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff and Denver Housing Authority Executive Director Ismael Guerrero.

RTD still faces a $2.45 billion shortage in funds to complete the $6.5 billion project by 2017. It is going through budget-cutting proposals before finalizing project scope and deciding whether to approach voters for a second sales tax increase to get the other new corridor, serving Aurora, Adams County, Boulder and Longmont, back on track.

Rogoff said transportation investments such as FasTracks are not short-term make-work projects.

“They are investments in a better life for the people of this region,” he said. Robust transit systems help to drive business decisions to locate where reliable transportation for workers, goods and services is available.

Mayor John Hickenlooper added to that when he spoke to the crowd.

“I think this will be one of the pillars of economic development in our community for many years to come,” he said.

RTD General Manager Phil Washington said the agency is fully focused on finding a way to get the entire system built out.

“We will not miss a deadline, we will be good stewards of the public’s money,” he said. “We’re going to make this real and we’re going to build this project.

The total project cost for Union Station’s reconstruction is $479.4 million. The loans for Union Station come through two programs.

One loan is through the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, which provides credit assistance for surface transportation projects of national and regional significance. The TIFIA loan is for $151.6 million.

The second loan, for $152.1 million, comes through the Federal Railroad Administration’s Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program, which gives direct loans and guarantees for development of railroad infrastructure.

RTD is allocating $200 million in FasTracks funding to the Union Station renovation. The loans are to be repaid through the increase in taxes generated by private development on the site. The project is being carried out by the Denver Union Station Project Authority, and just last week the Denver City Council agreed to assume a “moral obligation” to be a final backstop for the loans through the city general fund – a controversial move that helped seal the feds’ deal.

The grants that Rogoff announced — $40 million to the East Corridor and $40 million to the Gold Line – help to keep those two on course. They are packaged into a privatization proposal called Eagle P3, through which RTD hopes to offload a substantial part of its upfront capital construction costs in exchange for a 40-year concession with a private consortium that will finance, design, build, operate and maintain those two lines and a maintenance facility for the heavy-rail vehicles they will use.

Two international teams of interested bidders are preparing their proposals and RTD expects to select a winning team in June. The privatization move, backed by the federal government as a demonstration of the benefits of public-private transit projects, is part of RTD’s strategy for closing its FasTracks budget gap.

Rogoff also formally announced that the 2011 budget includes the next $40 million annual installment on the FasTracks New Starts full-funding agreement for the West Corridor light rail already under construction in Denver, Lakewood and Golden.

The West Corridor is one of the light rail lines designed to terminate at Union Station – along with the C and E lines from the southwest and southeast corridors. RTD’s design for the transfers between the light rail and heavy-rail commuter trains remains controversial and the subject of a lawsuit by transit advocates who oppose the current design. Some of them attended the announcement, happy to see the federal government committing funds to the project but still working for a change.

RTD is planning to relocate the current light rail platform about two and a half blocks north, adjacent to the freight tracks. Connecting them will be an underground bus transfer station and a ground-level plaza. Some transit advocates say this degrades the intent of convenient transfers.

“If a train station isn’t designed for the convenience of passengers, what is it for?” said Edie Bryan, a former RTD board member and now a member of ColoRail, which is suing over the issue.