RTD simulation shows a Gold Line heavy-rail commuter train along Ridge Road in Wheat Ridge. The Gold Line dropped 14 percent in price mainly through cuts in project scope and planned service.

While the overall cost of RTD’s FasTracks program dropped 6.4 percent this year in the transit agency’s annual reappraisal of the its costs and revenues, the changes in the program’s individual components – the 10 rapid transit corridors and associated elements – were all over the boards.

And they came not necessarily from the much-anticipated impact of declines in the construction materials cost, but also from RTD’s decision to trim scope from the corridors to try to hold down their costs and get more of the program built by 2017.

RTD now estimates the entire FasTracks program will cost $6.5 billion by 2017 but that it will be short $2.45 billion in financial resources to meet that price – a dilemma that means it can’t all be built without finding new revenues or reducing the price tag further.

Iliff Station site plan on the east side of I-225.

RTD plans to jump start its FasTracks program by breaking out a segment of the I-225 light rail corridor up to Iliff Avenue for early construction starting late next year if metro voters approve a second sales-tax increase to complete FasTracks.

Later this month, the RTD board will consider a $3.5 million contract award to Michael Baker Jr. Inc. to do final design on the initial 1.4-mile segment to Iliff Avenue. The construction of tracks northward from the existing Southeast Corridor end-of-line at Nine Mile Station – at Interstate 225 and Parker Road – to the first new station at Iliff Avenue would bring faster relief to parking problems at the jammed Nine Mile park-n-Ride garage, said RTD’s project manager Larry Warner.

Since the 2006 opening day of the Southeast Corridor light rail, built as part of T-REX, the 1,225 spaces at Nine Mile typically fill up by 7 a.m.

“We’re looking to get that leg open as soon as possible,” Warner said. “We’re looking at providing an early opening of that segment because of our parking problems at Nine Mile.”