The RTD FasTracks West Corridor team will roll out the main span of a double-track light rail bridge across 6th Avenue just east of Simms/Union the weekend of April 23rd through April 25th. All lanes of 6th Avenue between Simms/Union and Kipling Street will close at 8:00 p.m. on Friday, April 23rd to prepare the area for the roll-out, scheduled to begin early Saturday morning. 6th Avenue and the frontage road will re-open by 5:30 a.m. Monday, April 26th.

The Regional Transportation District Board of Directors decided at a Special Board Meeting tonight, April 13, not to pursue a 2010 sales tax election for the FasTracks transit expansion program. For months, the agency has been evaluating cost, schedule and polling data, and considering public feedback on whether to seek an increase in the RTD sales tax of an additional four-tenths of a percent (four pennies on a $10 purchase) to complete the FasTracks program by 2017.

The Denver Post reports that RTD directors will decide Tuesday night whether to endorse a ballot measure in November that would double the FasTracks sales tax in metro Denver. Directors have signaled they are leaning toward postponing the vote, mostly likely until 2012, because polling indicates it will be very difficult to win an election for a tax increase this year.

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.

Lakewood Edge reports that FasTracks construction will limit the use of the center lanes along a stretch of West 6th Avenue for about 10 days next month while crews relocate a signboard, the Denver Transit Construction Group announced Thursday.

Work crews will close the east- and west-bound center lanes of the heavily traveled highway between the Simms/Union exit Indiana Street beginning April 11 to move the Colorado Department of Transportation sign. The sign is in the middle of the highway near the area of the entrance road to Red Rocks College.

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.