The FasTracks Northwest Rail corridor could get a head start under a plan that would build its first six and a half miles, between Denver Union Station and south Westminster at 72nd and Lowell Boulevard, as part of the construction of lines to the airport and Arvada. That will give RTD the capability of initiating rail transit service to southwest Adams County and Westminster sooner rather than later.
The Denver Post reports that the Denver Regional Council of Governments board of directors voted Wednesday night to include the proposed Jefferson Parkway toll road in the group’s long-range transportation plan. The vote was 35 to 17.
Jefferson County, Broomfield and Arvada have been promoting the toll highway, which would run from the Interlocken commercial complex just off U.S. 36 to CO 93 north of Golden. Officials from the city of Golden and communities in Boulder County were among those opposing the effort to include the toll highway in DRCOG’s plan.
RTD is holding two public hearings in the coming weeks on the FasTracks Gold Line Final Environmental Impact Statement, and anticipates getting federal approval for the project in the fall.
The Gold Line is an 11.2-mile heavy-rail commuter corridor that connect Denver Union Station with Wheat Ridge at Ward Road, while preserving a future extension corridor from there into Golden.
The Gold Line has been packaged into a single initiative called Eagle P3, a planned Public-Private Partnership, with the East Corridor commuter rail project to Denver International Airport and construction of a rail yard and maintenance facility for all four FasTracks commuter rail corridors.
If successful, a consortium of designers, contractors, transit operators and financiers will take over the two corridors and other associated work, finance it privately, design it and build it, and then operate it for at least 40 years, under a contract with RTD.
The upside for RTD is that, by converting projects it would have to pay entirely upfront through borrowing and grants into a long-term concession contract for which it would make annual payments to the operators, it could build some financial breathing room into the beleaguered FasTracks plan of finance.
Could $1.2 million from three local communities start a controversial highway project that $15 million from the Colorado Department of Transportation couldn’t? That`s the hope of elected officials in Broomfield, Arvada and Jefferson County, which each have given $400,000 to the Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority, reports the Broomfield Enterprise.
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