A pair of loaders scrapes the area north of Union Station where the design calls for excavating to build an underground bus station for FasTracks. Work began on Monday. Inside Lane photo.

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

A group of rail transit advocates asked a federal judge on Tuesday to stop FasTracks construction at Denver Union Station until the court can rule in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the environmental approval for the work.

Colorail – the Colorado Rail Passenger Association – sued in U.S. District Court in Denver last May claiming the Federal Transit Administration should not have approved the Environmental Impact Statement that RTD produced for the $480 million project. RTD, along with its partners Denver, CDOT and the Denver Regional Council of Governments, is converting Union Station into the hub of most FasTracks rail lines.

An E Line light rail train prepares to depart for Lincoln Station from Denver Union Station, while a mall shuttle takes on passengers. Inside Lane photo.

You can read the 25-page court filing here.

You can read the original lawsuit here.

You can read the Union Station environmental impact statement here.

And you can read the FTA’s Record of Decision approving it here.

Colorail has longstanding objections to the design of the transit facilities and maintains that it wasn’t properly reviewed in light of requirements in the federal National Environmental Policy Act that requires such studies. The FTA issued its approval on Oct. 17, 2008.

This true-perspective view from the existing light rail platform at Union Station looks northwest to where it would be relocated for Fastracks, to right in front of the freight cars where the concrete pipes are lined up. Inside Lane photo.

They would be connected by the underground bus station and grade-level plaza planned to run along the 17th Street axis. That is the site where early construction began this week.

Colorail wants a new environmental study.

Backers of the Union Station design, including RTD and Denver’s newly created authority overseeing the redevelopment, Denver Union Station Project Authority, maintain that the law was properly followed. Delay at this point, RTD says, would delay completion of the station improvements necessary to stay on schedule with FasTracks corridors. The West Corridor light rail is currently under construction in Denver, Lakewood and Golden with an opening in mid-2013 that would bring its trains into the station. The East Corridor heavy-rail commuter train to Denver International Airport is supposed to be done the following year.

The case is before Judge John Kane.