Roadgeeks like to name things.

Today we’re going to try to hang a name on something.

I’m proposing that we give a household name to the interchange in the Denver Tech Center where Interstate 225 dumps into Interstate 25. I say we call it the Full House. That’s the name that fellow roadgeek Duncan Shaw, a news producer at CBS4 Denver, proposed for it in 2001.

Read more to see why…

RTD Press Release

Today, the Regional Transportation District is marking the 15th anniversary of light rail opening in the metro area. Since RTD opened the 5.3-mile Central Light Rail Line October 7, 1994, RTD’s 35-mile light rail system has carried nearly 150 million passenger trips.

The light rail network carries an average of about 60,000 passenger trips every weekday, ahead of ridership projections. All four of RTD’s light rail lines were built on time and on budget, and each exceeded ridership projections.

RTD Chairman Lee Kemp said, “The 15th Anniversary of light rail in the metro area is yet another milestone among the many RTD has surpassed, with many more to come. The importance of providing rapid transit service, including the full FasTracks system, to meet the current and future needs of the region cannot be overstated.”

This view looking southwest from U.S. 36 in Broomfield shows where the new 120th Avenue Connection will cross the open field.

A major project gets underway Thursday in Broomfield to unsnarl a traffic mess where the drivers snarl as much as the roads – the 120th Avenue Connection that eventually will allow east-west traffic to cross the Boulder Turnpike directly instead of having to make detours.

The Colorado Department of Transportation, Broomfield and the Federal Highway Administration are funding the $23 million design-build project that is being handled by a team headed by Edward Kraemer & Sons and HNTB. The construction period is about 18 months.

This initial phase of construction will build the major elements, including a new bridge curving over the turnpike about four-tenths of a mile southeast of the Wadsworth Parkway bridge. It will allow east-west traffic to bypass the worst of the congestion.

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UPDATE: The RTD board Tuesday night approved the issuance of the Eagle P3 request for public-private partnership proposals, along with the increased stipends to the unsuccessful bidders and the $20 million payment to the winning bidder in the event RTD later cancels the project.

The vote was 14-0, with Director Bill James absent but sending a statement of support.

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RTD board members tonight will consider increasing the $1.75 million stipends it is offering to each of the three teams of bidders on the FasTracks lines to the airport and Arvada-Wheat Ridge, to $2.5 million each, to encourage them to stay in the chase for the innovative and risky public-private partnership.

That’s in addition to a new $20 million fee RTD will take up tonight to be paid to the winning team in the event it signs a deal with RTD and the transit district later backs out.

It is all part of a vote to release a request for proposals by the end of the month to the three teams.

The public-private partnership idea is part of RTD’s strategy for bringing down the upfront costs of FasTracks, now $2.2 billion underwater with expenses over finances if it wants to finish on the original schedule of 2017.

The winning private team would enter into a concession contract with RTD to provide significant private financing – up to $1 billion – plus a design-build project delivery approach similar to that used by RTD and CDOT on the successful T-REX highway-transit project, and then capped off with a 40-year operating and maintenance agreement with the private partner. Under the concession, the private team would receive annual payments from RTD in exchange for providing the system and operating it to RTD schedules and standards.

View RTD Light Rail Platform Extensions in a larger map

Click on any of the blue balloons, then zoom in, to view the station platforms to be extended in the RTD contract.

RTD is set to lengthen seven more light rail station platforms to accommodate longer four-car trains, with a $2.26 million contract to a Longmont company.

The extensions will allow the transit agency to add capacity to each trip, as needed, now that it has started to take delivery of the first of 55 new light rail cars as part of the FasTracks program.

The seven stations included in the work are Mineral, Littleton Downtown, Oxford City of Sheridan, Englewood, Evans, Invesco Field at Mile High and Pepsi Center. They are on the Southwest Corridor and Central Platte Valley spur that serves Union Station. The work is scheduled to be completed in early 2011, and is the second phase of the project to upgrade the length of station platforms. The T-REX corridor and RTD’s original Central Corridor stations were lengthened in earlier contracts.

So was T-REX really under budget?

When RTD closed out the books last week on its half of the T-REX multimodal expansion along Interstates 25 and 225, it finished with $3.7 million left over out of its $879 million share of the $1.67 billion budget it split with the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Skeptics cry foul. They point out that the Major Investment Study on the Southeast Corridor, completed in 1997, said the light rail project would cost $445 million. They want you to think RTD went double over its budget.

The skeptics are either uninformed or deliberately misleading you. They are feeding you an apple and claiming it’s an orange.

RTD closed out the books on its part of the T-REX project with $3.7 million leftover out of the final budget of $939.4 million. The final close-out of the project had the funds left over even after RTD spent some of the surplus on extra items after the project opened, including access to Park Meadows mall, three pedestrian bridges, and upgrades and art at stations. Under federal rules, the $3.7 million must remain in the southeast corridor that T-REX built. RTD says it will use it to upgrade electrical power substations along the route to meet power demands when FasTracks’ extensions come on line. FasTracks includes a short extension of the T-REX line farther south to RidgeGate in Douglas County.

RTD is building the FasTracks West Corridor light rail project with less money in its contingency fund than the Federal Transit Administration would like to see, RTD officials said Friday. FTA wanted RTD to maintain a $44 million contingency, but the current total set aside for unforeseen expenses in the three-and-a-half year project is $32 million.

If there’s a bright side, it’s that RTD built the more expensive T-REX light rail with even less in contingency funds, and wrapped it up with money left over.