The American Association of State Highway and Transportation officials presents a weekly review of major transportation infrastructure events. Watch it here:

With warmer weather to help it along, construction progress on the West Corridor light rail project is ramping up.
The work may be most visible along the Sixth Avenue Freeway, where a dramatic steel arch bridge will be rolled out over the roadway during a full weekend closure in two weeks and a long curving bridge is winding its way over the Indiana Street interchange. Denver Transit Construction Group and its major subcontractors have almost all of the bridge structures underway. Click here to see a slide show and read an RTD report on construction progress.

A new poll shows that metro Denver voters are almost evenly split on whether to approve a second sales tax hike for RTD’s FasTracks program, but that some of the counties with the most to gain from it are the most strongly opposed.

When FasTracks rolls out the bridge that will span West 6th Avenue on the west side of the Federal Center, it will do so literally, closing down a stretch of the heavily traveled highway for two days.
And the Regional Transportation District plans to make the snail’s pace placement of the bridge a spectator event.

You’re going to be seeing a new style of shuttle bus on the 16th Street Mall come next spring. Faced with the need to replace the current fleet of mall shuttles as well as having to add to their numbers because of the FasTracks program’s extension of the mall for three more blocks, RTD has approved a contract with a Charlotte, N.C., bus manufacturer for two prototypes and an option for up to 57 more if they work out.

RTD is moving closer to collecting bus and light rail fares through pre-paid smart cards with a $15.35 million contract to ACS Transport Solutions Inc. to provide the cards, readers, base data processing equipment and wireless communications.

The North Metro commuter rail corridor through the heart of Adams County will be proposed as a single-track line but with five strategically placed double-tracked segments that will allow RTD to slash costs while retaining the capability for 15-minute service on this FasTracks corridor.

RTD has reached a total $143.8 million agreement with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway that will move progress forward on two FasTracks corridors to Arvada/Wheat Ridge and Westminster.

A federal judge in Denver has denied a request from Colorail, a rail transit advocacy group, to stop RTD’s construction work at Denver Union Station while the group appeals to have the design study redone.

It’s a first in the United States for bridge construction – the FasTracks bridge over Sixth Avenue Freeway in Lakewood will be rolled into place intact during a weekend highway closure in April.