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 Boulder Daily Camera reports that bus commuters from Boulder to Denver on U.S. 36 may see an average of 15 minutes shaved from their daily travel time by this summer.
The Regional Transportation District is in the midst of two major projects along the congested highway that will complete the first phase of “bus rapid transit” improvements.
A pedestrian bridge that’s halfway installed over U.S. 36 at the Odeum Colorado, formerly the Broomfield Event Center, is scheduled to have its counterpart welded into place Monday night.
In Boulder, the last project among the first-phase improvements — which is expected to take an additional three or four minutes off the bus commute to Denver — is the planned construction of a pedestrian bridge over U.S. 36 between Table Mesa Drive and Foothills Parkway.
Go to the Boulder Daily Camera to see the entire article.
The Boulder Daily Camera reports that on Tuesday, city officials were invited to a private meeting with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood on Friday to discuss the U.S. 36 corridor.
Boulder Mayor Susan Osborne said the city received a request to send a delegation of City Council members to the meeting, sparking “an enormous flurry of excitement” that LaHood might have been sent to announce that the U.S. 36 improvement project had received a much-sought-after federal grant.
The Boulder Daily Camera reports that city officials generally agree the planned Transit Village development should move forward, but they disagree on details including the amount of affordable housing and what the project should be called.
At a meeting with nearly two-dozen city officials Tuesday night, the city council and planning board studied the initial concepts for Transit Village – a an 11-acre site at the southeast corner of 30th Street and Valmont Road meant as a sustainable development of 1,400 to 2,400 homes, as many as 4,300 jobs and up to 1.4 million square feet of commercial space.
It would also include a rail station for the FasTracks program, which is facing serious funding shortfalls.
The Boulder Daily Camera reports that funding for maintenance and upgrades to Boulder’s transportation system is facing a crisis so severe that officials are suggesting breaking with tradition and allowing advertising at city bus stops, or charging a new maintenance fee.
The City Council on Tuesday will be asked at its study session to consider some creative ways to fund up to $14.5 million in annual maintenance costs. Officials said the costs of raw materials, such as concrete and pavement, have skyrocketed in recent years, while the national recession has led to a decline in local sales-tax collections.
Go to the Boulder Daily Camera to see the entire article.
Boulder transportation officials say they’re worried that the popular Eco Pass program could be dropped from some neighborhoods next year as a growing number of residents close their wallets, the Boulder Daily Camera reports.
The Regional Transportation District’s board of directors last month voted to reinstate the neighborhood component of the Eco Pass program — which allows residential areas to purchase bulk annual bus passes at a substantial discount. RTD had placed a moratorium on the program last fall amid concerns the passes weren’t paying for themselves.
While officials are overjoyed that the ban is being lifted Jan. 1, they say the immediate challenge is to keep funding the 45 or so neighborhoods already in the program.
Go to the Boulder Daily Camera to see the entire article.
The Regional Transportation District is proposing to donate a portion of a freight rail line it acquired for FasTracks to the Boulder County Railway Historical Society for an excursion-train operation, the Denver Post reports.
RTD bought the 33-mile Boulder Industrial Lead freight line from the Union Pacific Railroad for the FasTracks North Metro Corridor commuter train that is to run between Union Station through and Commerce City/Thornton.
The right of goes beyond the project limits past and turns west, crossing Interstate 25 and into Boulder County. RTD is proposing to license the portion that runs west of I-25 to US 287 to the Boulder railway historical society for 10 years at no cost.
“The proposed operation would consist of a dinner train two nights per week year-round and seasonal heritage trains running five days per week for the summer months of June through September,” RTD said in a lease proposal that RTD directors will vote on next week.
Go to the Denver Post to see the entire article.
About 30 people attended a public RTD hearing Monday night in Boulder on plans to cut or reduce services, including doubling the wait times for the popular Route 205 from Gunbarrel to Boulder, the Daily Camera reports.
RTD’s plan — part of a regional set of reductions also aimed at Westminster, Conifer, downtown Denver and Golden — would impact four routes in Boulder. RTD officials said the routes were chosen because of ridership declines. In total, the cuts would save RTD an estimated $376,400, or 57 percent of its total cost savings of $662,400 from reductions systemwide.
Martha Roskowski, program manager for Go Boulder, the city’s alternative-transportation program, said Boulder is unfairly bearing the brunt of the current round of cuts. “It’s really important to our community to keep a good transit system,” she said. “We rely on local bus service. That’s our workhorse.”
RTD spokesman Scott Reed said since August 2007, RTD has cut $12.9 million. Of that, Boulder County’s reduction is $873,860, or about 7 percent of the total, Reed said.
Read the entire article at the Daily Camera.
There’s a new iPhone application to help navigate the bus routes in the unfamiliar college town of Boulder— courtesy of a fellow CU student who knows the bus system can be befuddling, reports the Daily Camera.
CU sophomore Zack Shapiro has created an app that pulls up easy-to-use route information for Regional Transportation District trips to the airport and Denver. Next, he said he wants to develop an application that will deliver information for local routes, including the Hop and Skip shuttles that are popular among CU students.
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