Looking north along I-25 where I-225 splits off to the right. CDOT photo.

Roadgeeks like to name things.

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

Usually, we like the technical names. We like to talk about “collector-distributor lanes,” the barrier-separated lanes that run alongside the through-lanes at freeway interchanges to allow exiting and entering traffic to merge and weave safely off the high-speed freeway. They’re used in the Narrows section of Interstate 25 between Washington Street and University Boulevard. My wife, Harriet, calls them “hunter-gatherer” lanes, perhaps a more picturesque description.

In that spirit, I’m proposing that we give a household name to the recently rebuilt and expanded interchange in the Denver Tech Center where Interstate 225 dumps into Interstate 25.

I want to 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.

It works on two levels. One, if you were holding a poker hand with three twos and two fives, you’d have a full house. Two, the interchange handles more than 200,000 vehicles a day, making it one of the fullest places on the regional roadway system.

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We’ve got one of the unique names in the nation as far as interchanges go, with the Mousetrap at I-25 and Interstate 70 in the Globeville neighborhood. Technically, it’s a variation on what’s known as a Turbine Interchange, with sweeping circular ramps making the connections. Mind you, I don’t want to get into the middle of the debate over whether retired traffic reporter Don Martin or longtime Channel 7 television reporter Bill Clarke coined the Mousetrap term. But everyone knows it as the Mousetrap; they don’t say “You go north on I-25 and exit at I-70,” they say, “Take I-25 to the Mousetrap.”

So it’s time we stopped saying “Go down I-25 to that Semi-Directional T interchange at I-225 and head north.”

It’s time to play the Full House.

Headed from southbound I-225 to southbound I-25, under light rail bridges, in the Full House interchange. Photo by Ryan Wanner, of Ryan's Digital Roadgeekdom at http://r-dub.us/

Duncan says he threw out that name in 2001 during an online discussion on usenet.

“I first proposed the name ‘Full House’ for Denver’s I-25/I-225 interchange in the misc.transport.road newsgroup back in 2001 during a thread on interchange names where people were suggesting some for ones that didn’t have regularly-used names.

“I felt it was both a creative and unique name. You’ll find ‘spaghetti bowls’ and ‘mixmasters’ all over the country that could describe any number of interchanges. But I can only find 21 in the United States where both the same pattern exists as I-25/I-225 and the numbers could make up a legitimate full house hand.”

(Let’s pause here to appreciate the level of roadgeekery it takes to scour the nation’s highway system for all of the places where the potential exists to have two- and three-digit interstates meet that contain three of one number and two of another number.)

“For instance, I-10/I-110 would not count since there are no 1’s and 0’s in playing cards.”

Here is a link to a list of highway interchange nicknames from around the country.

And here is a link to a glossary and diagrams of various types of freeway interchanges.

The old interchange, before T-REX's extreme makeover highway edition, had hazardous left-lane access ramps.

The old Tech Center interchange had been build with a left-lane exit and entrance onto I-25 from I-225, which led to hazardous merging as traffic congestion grew over the years. Contractors Parsons Transportation Group and Kiewit, which teamed for the design-build project, redesigned this interchange while threading the light rail bridges through it as well.

In 2003, in my Lane Ranger column in the Rocky Mountain News, I solicited interchange names from readers, and Duncan’s name was, in my opinion, the best. I used it in my coverage whenever I could slip it past my editor. Matt Salek, a transportation engineer who maintains the Highways of Colorado web site with stats and data on every state highway, included the name on his site.

Duncan says that when he was a morning news producer at 9News working with traffic reporters Al Verlay and Tony LaMonica, he tried to dell them on the name as well, with little success.

But we can’t say that it caught on back then.

“At this point, I figure it will only be known – and remembered – by a limited number of people in the roadgeek community, and that’s fine with me,” Duncan said. “But it would have been nice to turn on the radio during rush hour, hear someone use the name I came up with during a traffic report, and know that drivers knew exactly where it was!”

So we already have the Mousetrap; Orange County, Calif., has the Orange Crush interchange; Chicago has the Hillside Strangler; Dallas has the High Five.

It’s time for people to start using the name Full House!

An RTD light rail train heads through the Full House interchange while highway traffic passes underneath.

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.”

In an effort to help address traffic congestion and growing pains, in 1994 the Regional Transportation District (RTD) succeeded in opening the Denver metro region’s first light rail line. The 5.3-mile Central Corridor Line cost $116.5 million and was fully funded by RTD. Shortly after opening, ridership surpassed 17,000 daily boardings, 3,000 more than anticipated. The Central Corridor allowed RTD to remove 400 bus trips per day from downtown city streets. The new line not only demonstrated the success of light rail in the metro area but also provided the backbone of the planned regional light rail system.

RTD added the 8.7-mile Southwest line in July 2000, connecting with the cities of Sheridan, Englewood and Littleton. The 2-mile Central Platte Valley/C-Line was added in April 2002, providing service to the Auraria Campus, Invesco Field at Mile High, the Pepsi Center, and Denver Union Station (DUS), just two blocks from Coors Field. The 19-mile Southeast Line down I-25 from Broadway with a spur on I-225 to Parker Road, part of the T-REX Project, opened in November 2006.

Southwest Corridor
Once metro area residents saw how successful light rail could be, surrounding communities clamored for more. In May 1995 RTD received a Full Funding Grant Agreement in the amount of $120 million for the $177 million Southwest Corridor line. The line opened in July 2000, adding 8.7 miles of light rail and 5 stations, bringing suburban commuters from the Englewood, Sheridan and Littleton areas into downtown Denver. This was the first light rail line running from a suburban area to downtown. Ridership exceeded projections by nearly 70 percent on opening day and continues at levels above projections.

The City of Englewood took the opportunity to redevelop the all-but abandoned Cinderella City shopping center, which once housed 1.35 million square feet of retail space, into a Transit Oriented Development (TOD) village. Utilizing a pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use concept that combined retail, entertainment, residential, office, civic and open space elements, the RTD Englewood Light Rail Station was the cornerstone to its success. A former department store was transformed into the new Englewood City Center, housing City Hall, the Library and the Museum of Outdoor Arts. The Englewood City Center community is now an international model for TOD.

Central Platte Valley/C-Line
RTD took a big step in public-private partnerships when it opened the Central Platte Valley (CPV) light rail line in April 2002. Two miles in length with four additional stations, the CPV, now designated as the C-Line, provides riders with service to Denver Union Station.
RTD’s funding partners for the $47.8 million C-Line light rail included DRCOG, the City and County of Denver, and private stakeholders, including the Denver Broncos, Colorado Rockies, Six Flags/Elitch Gardens, Lower Downtown District, Auraria Higher Education Center, Pepsi Center, and the Trillium Corporation. Daily boardings were again ahead of projections, and special event service is well ahead of projections. With the opening of the CPV line, 35,000 students could take light rail to the Auraria Higher Education Center, home to the Community College of Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver and the University of Colorado at Denver.

The C-Line made Denver the only city with all major pro sports venues served by one light rail line. Fans of the Colorado Avalanche, Denver Broncos, Colorado Rockies, Denver Nuggets, and Colorado Mammoth can take light rail to root for their teams. Denver Union Station became the focal point of the new line, with riders able to take light rail all the way to lower downtown and DUS. Ridership opening day exceeded projections by 61 percent. RTD’s 16th Street Mall Shuttle service was extended to Union Station to connect with C-Line.

With the opening of the C Line, a color coding system was introduced to differentiate Denver’s light rail lines. The new CPV extension became the “C” or “Orange” Line, while the Central Corridor line through downtown was named the “D” or “Green” line. The historic Denver Union Station was purchased to coincide with the opening of the C-Line. The Station was acquired by RTD in 2001 in partnership with the City and County of Denver, the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Denver Regional Council of Governments. The station and surrounding acreage is being transformed into a transportation hub serving current and future needs of commuters, residents, and tourists.

Southeast Line/T-REX
The light rail portion of the T-REX project, the Southeast Light Rail Line, along I-25 to Lincoln Avenue includes a total of 19 miles of new light rail. T-REX was a partnership between RTD and the Colorado Department of Transportation, which widened the highway along this same corridor. Of T-REX’s $1.67 billion budget, the light rail portion was $879 million (including $525 million in federal funding) and finished $2 million under budget. The Southeast Light Rail Line opened 13 additional stations, with park-n-Rides providing a total of 6,000 parking spaces, and linked the existing system from Denver through the municipalities of Greenwood Village, Centennial, Lone Tree and Aurora. Ridership exceeds year 2020 projections.

FasTracks
The region’s recognition of the importance that passenger rail will play in helping to address mobility needs, traffic concerns, smart growth and “green” transit options in the rapidly growing metro area led to RTD developing the comprehensive FasTracks rapid transit expansion program. Overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2004, FasTracks is RTD’s voter-approved transit program to expand rail and bus service throughout the RTD service area. FasTracks will build 122 miles of commuter rail and light rail, 18 miles of bus rapid transit service, add 21,000 new parking spaces, redevelop Denver Union Station and redirect bus service to better connect the eight-county District. The FasTracks investment initiative is projected to create more than 10,000 jobs during the height of construction `and will pump billions of dollars into the regional economy.

West Corridor Light Rail Line
The West Corridor Light Rail Line, the first FasTracks line, is well under construction, with RTD having received a $308 million full funding grant agreement in January from the Federal Transit Administration for the $634.7 million line. Opening in 2013, the West Corridor adds 12 stations and 12.1 miles of light rail running from DUS through Denver, Lakewood, and Golden, ending at the Jefferson County Government Center.

Eagle P3 Project
RTD just issued the request for proposals (RFP) for the Eagle P3 project, the public-private partnership (P3) venture that will complete several FasTracks projects through one collective contract. As planned, the RFP was delivered to three pre-qualified teams on September 30.

The $2.3 billion Eagle P3 Project will design, build, finance, operate and maintain the commuter rail lines of the East Corridor from Denver Union Station to Denver International Airport, the Gold Line to Arvada and Wheat Ridge, a short segment of the Northwest Rail Corridor to Westminster and the commuter rail maintenance facility. In 2008, RTD short-listed three teams to compete for the P3 contract. Proposals from the bidding teams are due in spring 2010, and RTD expects to make a decision on selecting a final team in June 2010.

A growing number of public entities are pursuing public-private partnerships as a way to benefit from upfront private equity to help build major infrastructure projects. While P3 projects are more common internationally, RTD’s Eagle P3 Project represents a unique model for a major transit project in the United States.

More FasTracks
In addition, the FasTracks program is moving forward with the I-225 Corridor, the North Metro Corridor, Northwest Rail, the US 36 Corridor, the extensions to the Southwest and Southeast Lines, and the Denver Union Station redevelopment.

Looking southwest from US 36, the 120th Avenue Connection will cross this field.

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.

The parties are holding a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday morning at the site.

The traffic problem exists there primarily because the Boulder Turnpike, which is U.S. 36, cuts diagonally right through the area where Wadsworth Parkway on the south, CO 128 on the west, U.S. 287 on the north and 120th Avenue on the east converge. You can read about the history of the Boulder Turnpike here.

It forces all sorts of maneuvers that traffic engineers call “out of direction turns,” through which drivers have to zig-zag out of their direction of travel in order to keep going the way they were headed.

The problem is made worse by growth in traffic over the years that overwhelms the road network.

The first part of the 120th Avenue Connection project will design and build the new roadway, in red, and the local streets running north-south, in dark blue. A later phase will complete the tie-in to 120th Avenue on the east, in light blue on the right.

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.

But this first phase won’t complete the roadway connection on the east side. Because the new curving roadway must bridge over the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway tracks, cut a swath through some developed private properties and require extensive realignment of the current local streets including turning some into cul-de-sacs, neither CDOT nor Broomfield has the estimated additional $40 million this later phase will cost. Much of that cost will be for acquiring the right-of-way.

In that later phase, the connection would be made to existing 10th Avenue at Teller Street. That would give the complete new roadway a length of about 1.2 miles.

It’s a lesson in how sometimes, the funding situation in transportation forces agencies into breaking up projects into segments that can stand alone and provide some relief to safety, mobility or other issues without yet completing the whole project. Building serviceable segments in stages when they can be paid for makes sense, while planning for funding for the remainder.

But for now, traffic on the east will connect to 120th by turning onto an extended Commerce Street.

You can read here the 2005 Environmental Assessment document that studied the project and other alternatives.

Design-build is a method of project delivery that combines final design with the construction process, taking the owner’s performance requirements and allowing the contracting team the ability to achieve potential cost and schedule savings by blending the design-construction process in real time.

This was the process used by CDOT and RTD on the successful T-REX highway and transit project on Interstates 25 and 225, which was completed in 2006. CDOT is using it for several other multi-faceted road projects, and RTD intends to use in to try to cut costs on its remaining FasTracks transit corridors.

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

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RTD simulation shows the larger heavy-rail electric commuter rail cars along Grandview Avenue in Arvada. Different than light rail cars, these are proposed for use on the Gold Line and East Corridor.

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.

At the end, all of the assets would revert to RTD.

You can view a presentation RTD staff made to the board last month here.

It helps RTD upfront by lowering the initial capital costs, exchanging that with the private partner for the annual concession payments. It’s similar to a homeowner paying a monthly mortgage over time for a house instead of paying cash to build it. It requires less money now, although more over time. It helps ease RTD’s need for more money now if it hopes to build the entire FasTracks system.

RTD staff also said that in the current economic climate, the guarantee of a higher stipend helps make the process financially feasible for the bidders.

Also tonight, the board will discuss a proposal from directors John Tayer and Noel Busck to negotiate an “equity agreement” with northern and eastern communities at risk of not getting their FasTracks corridors as promised if RTD fails to close the budget gap. RTD is planning to ask voters for a second tax increase as early as fall 2010 to complete the original plan, but Tayer and Busck said shortchanged communities need to know what will happen if that fails. They want a pledge of increased bus service to fill in.

Both the $2.5 million stipends – a maximum of $7.5 million if RTD doesn’t pick any – and the $20 million kill-fee if it backs out after a deal is reached – would be based on actual expenses incurred by the teams in the bidding and contracting process.

The stipends are likely to fall short of the private teams’ total costs of preparing for the multi-billion-dollar deal. But they are considered crucial to keeping the teams competitive, RTD staff told board members, for what is the next rail corridor project to head down the FasTracks pipeline, the East Corridor to Denver International Airport and the Gold Line to Arvada-Wheat Ridge – plus construction of a commuter rail maintenance facility for the heavy-rail passenger cars the lines will use.

The total cost of the various elements of Eagle P3 is estimated at more than $2.1 billion. The corridors are among four in FasTracks – including the Northwest Rail to Westminster, Broomfield, Boulder and Longmont, and the North Metro Corridor to Commerce City and Thornton, that use self-propelled “heavy rail” passenger cars, unlike the light rail lines RTD operates elsewhere. The heavy cars are crash-safety compliant for use in corridors where freight trains also operate.

RTD simulation shows what the East Corridor electric powered commuter train would look like near DIA.

The package of three FasTracks projects – two corridors and the maintenance facility – is being called Eagle P3 by RTD. “Eagle” is a combination of East and Gold, and “P3” refers to the project delivery method of “public-private partnership.”

To view an RTD video summary of the East Corridor project, click here.

Actually, there’s one more piece of terminology for it as well – Penta-P, for Public Private Partnership Pilot Program. In July 2007, the Federal Transit Administration approved RTD’s request to be part of the Penta-P, which seeks to demonstrate the cost savings and efficiencies that can be derived from using this model of project delivery. Two rail projects in Houston also were selected.

FTA says Penta-P will “study whether public-private partnership projects speed completion, allow more reliable projections of project costs and benefits, and improve project performance. The pilot will study projects that, among other things, use methods of procurement that integrate risk-sharing and streamline project development, engineering, construction, operation, and maintenance. The amount and terms of private investment in such projects is a significant factor in selecting projects to participate in the program.”

Under the pilot program, FTA will offer some preferred handling for the Eagle P3 package, such as cutting red tape during approvals, flexibility in the use of federal funds and a higher cost threshold for qualification for grants.

RTD hopes to get $1 billion in FTA grants for the East and Gold Line corridors.

The three teams competing for the concession are Denver Transit Partners, Mile High Transit and Mountain-Air Transit Partners. They consist of design firms, investment banks, construction outfits, railway car builders and others.

RTD wants the proposals submitted by March 31 next year, with a selection of a winning team by June 15. A concession contract would be negotiated by July 6, with early construction work starting in August. RTD is looking at splitting the project into two phases, with work on the airport line first, and then Gold Line work starting in a second phase contingent on how things go in the beginning of the project. Full notice to proceed would take place by the end of 2011, with opening of both lines by the end of 2016.

The make-up of the three consortiums interested in the Eagle P3 project.

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 project is funded with federal stimulus program money through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Four of the five bids came in under the agency’s estimated budget.

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.

When this contract is done, only one station in the system will be incapable of handling four-car trains – the Auraria West Station on the Central Platte Valley spur. The reason it’s left out is that it is being replaced within the next four years with a new station just to the west, on the west side of Fifth Street, as part of a realignment of the tracks to accommodate the new junction for the West Corridor light rail. That corridor from Auraria to Golden through Lakewood and Denver is now under construction.

To accommodate a consist of four light rail cars, a platform needs at least 320 feet of straight track. That length wouldn’t have been available at the Auraria West station, which is located between Fifth Street and a curve in the track to the east. But by relocating the station, RTD can have the new station serve both the Central Platte Valley spur and the West Corridor.

The contract went to Krische Construction of Longmont, which had an earlier contract to lengthen the station platforms at Colfax at Auraria, 10th and Osage, Alameda, and 20th and Welton.

The contract amount is $737,000 under the engineer’s estimate of $3 million. Four of the five bids RTD received in July were below the estimate. Krische was not the lowest bidder, but RTD rejected the $1.45 million bid of TC2 Construction of Evergreen, saying it was not in compliance with the agency’s goal of 12 percent participation by disadvantaged business enterprises.

Krische exceeded the goal with proposed DBE participation of 16.85 percent.

The construction contract covers only the civil constriction and track work. RTD plans to issue another contract later for signalization and electrical upgrades necessary to run the four-car trains.

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.

Since the project was finished 22 months earlier than the original schedule, this forms the basis for RTD’s claim that the Southeast Corridor, which extended light rail from Broadway Station to Lincoln Avenue in Douglas County and Parker Road in Aurora, was completed under budget and ahead of schedule.

CDOT makes the same claim for its highway portion of the project, which added lanes to both freeways, reconfigured the “Full House” interchange of I-25/225, added Intelligent Transportation Systems for better traffic management, replaced all of the out-of-date bridges and fixed the drainage problem that caused storm flooding under the Logan Street overpass. CDOT finished $8 million under its $790 million budget.

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. The project indeed came in under budget, for both RTD and CDOT.

The $445 million projected cost of the southeast corridor light rail outlined in the 1997 MIS was not a budget. As it states specifically in the document, it is in 1995 dollars. Patient drivers will recall that the project was built between 2001 and 2006.

It is intellectually dishonest to portray the estimated costs in an initial study document as some sort of final budget, because the costs are stated in constant dollars – what it would cost if it could all be built right then and there. That’s because no one knows in the beginning when, or whether, the project can be built so it’s impossible to set up an actual budget. You simply don’t know in what year you’ll have to buy the steel or concrete or labor. All you can do is quantify how much of each item you think you’ll need, and state its cost at the time.

In this case, it’s even worse. The 1997 MIS stated costs in 1995 dollars.

Projects are not paid for in “constant dollars,” they are paid for in “year-of-expenditure dollars.” They are not the same thing. When it’s time to make an actual budget, estimators take the unit quantities for each piece of work, determine in what year it is needed and then estimate inflation trends to come up with an actual “year of expenditure” cost.

In the case of T-REX, trying to compare the estimate of light rail cost when it was stated in 1995 dollars to the budget for when it actually would be built between 2001 and 2006 is, simply, bad math.

Skeptics are feeding you an apple and claiming it’s an orange.

One other factor makes the comparison with the early figure bogus.

The MIS outlined a different project. The Southeast Corridor light rail plan in 1997 had only 10 stations in the first phase; the T-REX project advanced the Yale, Orchard and Dayton stations from a later phase and incorporated them into the opening day plan.

But the biggest difference between the 1997 MIS and the 1999 EIS wasn’t with RTD, it was with CDOT.

When Bill Owens became governor in 1999, he ordered up a new look at the highway improvements that the MIS outlined for I-25 and 225. Because CDOT hadn’t been able to identify any source of money to do a full blown widening of the freeways, the 1997 study had no added through lanes at all. It consisted only of some shoulder widening for breakdown and emergency access, auxiliary lanes between the ramps between Arapahoe and Orchard roads, the braided ramp separating traffic entering northbound at Belleview Avenue from the traffic exiting onto I-225, and the drainage work at Logan.

Total cost of the highway work in the MIS was only $57 million.

But Owens had a plan to get the money CDOT needed to widen I-25. In November 1999, the state put the TRANS Bonds measure on the ballot to ask voters statewide for borrowing authority to issue up to $1.7 billion in bonds to accelerate work on up to 28 vital transportation corridors around the state, with the lion’s share of the money earmarked for T-REX.

The measure won, and CDOT was able to join RTD in a much larger project that added four full lanes south of Belleview and two lanes north of there and along I-225. It added to overall right-of-way costs for the wider building envelope.

So since CDOT’s budget ended up at $790 million, would critics say the costs ballooned 14-fold? Well, maybe they would, but they’d be wrong. The scope of work is what ballooned, and rightly so given the much safer and congestion-free segment of highway that resulted.

Now, it doesn’t matter to me whether you’re going to be for or against a highway project or a transit line. What does matter is being straight about it either way.

In RTD’s case, at the end of the environmental impact study, the projected cost of the light rail project was $879 million. And that’s where it ended up – minus $3.7 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.

T-REX Project Map

T-REX was a total $1.75 billion project done in partnership by RTD and the Colorado Department of Transportation. The multimodal approach to widening Interstates 25 and 225 with 17 miles of new lanes and a big new interchange plus extending the light rail system for 19 miles was unique in the nation. Using a design-build method of contracting to speed up the process, contractors Kiewit and Parsons Transportation Group brought the project in 22 months ahead of the initial schedule.

The project extended along Interstate 25 and 225 between Broadway, Parker Road in Aurora and Lincoln Avenue in Douglas County. The initial budget of $1.67 billion grew not because of cost overruns or budget-busting, but because RTD, CDOT and third parties such as Denver, Greenwood Village and others including private developers paid for additional items they wanted built concurrently.

Among the items RTD added to the project with the budget surplus:

• Three pedestrian bridges
• Access to Park Meadows Mall
• Commissioned art at various stations
• Louisiana/Pearl Station plaza
• Power upgrades to the entire system
• New track crossover and tail track at Lincoln Station
• Power switches at the Southmoor Station
• Overhead Catenary System (OCS) overlaps
• Additional lightning protection for electrical equipment
• Additional safety barriers
• Dayton Station access to Boston St.
• Arapahoe Station plaza
• Dry Creek pedestrian bridge extension
• Nine Mile canopy

During the project, managers absorbed extra work while remaining on schedule. RTD’s budget at the start was $879 million, but added elements as extra funding became available to get up to the final total.

For instance, RTD landed a federal grant for $11.5 million for an electronic data system that was an upgrade to the initial project.

CDOT also added project element s into the project as it went along, successfully replacing the Colorado Boulevard and Hampden Avenue bridges over I-25 after it got a $15 million loan from the state Transportation Commission, since repaid. Those bridges hadn’t been included in the original [project because of a lack of funds.

Third parties that wanted enhancements also added to the total. Greenwood Village came up with $7.4 million for several upgrades, including better looking bridges and rail stations and a new design for the Arapahoe Station to lure development, and Denver paid $2.92 million to add a concrete plaza over the Louisiana-Pearl light-rail station, which is down at the highway level. A private developer paid to add two floors to the Lincoln Avenue end-of-line station.

Some of the add-ons were much smaller. The University of Denver paid $7,588 to have T-REX paint the school’s colors at the University light-rail station. And the Parliament Apartments, atop a hill at the I-225 interchange, paid $3,652 to lower the noise wall so it doesn’t obscure the brick sign and flagpoles advertising the complex.

The West Corridor’s current unallocated contingency of $32 million, out of the total project budget of $707.6 million, is the fund from which unexpected expenses will come in the next three and a half years. That amount is down from $44.3 million when the current project budget was set up last fall.

FTA, which is putting $308 million in a multi-year grant into the 12.1-mile light rail line from Denver to Golden, had RTD pushed for a contingency of $44 million. The minimum requirement for the project is $24.7 million.

“FTA has expressed concern about the limited contingency, and it will do an analysis of our budget this fall,” Rick Clarke, the acting chief of engineering for the FasTracks program, told a meeting this morning of West Corridor elected officials, local government staff and residents of the West Corridor.

“West Corridor is within budget but it’s very tight and it will be a challenge to keep working within that,” he said. “We have a relatively limited contingency to deal with things.”

Nevertheless, RTD has worked bigger projects with even less contingency. Its margin for error on the T-REX project was slimmer than for West Corridor. The light rail portion of T-REX, completed in 2006, was $941 million and ran on a contingency fund of $22 million. T-REX’s total contingency including the $814 million in highway expansion costs was $42 million, and it ended with $3.7 million left over.

T-REX also started out during a recession, which made budgeting and projecting a volatile exercise. The current recession is more volatile than the one in 2001.

However, Clarke noted, RTD now has signed contracts with its two general contractors, Denver Transit Construction Group and Balfour Beatty, with guaranteed maximum prices. That effectively insulates RTD from much volatility for the scope of the project already under contract. The remaining risks have been categorized into 20 areas of significance, with three of them considered high risk. Two of those three concern remaining unknowns over hazardous materials and soil contamination in demolition and excavation.

An excavator works on a retaining wall for the track bed at West Corridor's future Perry Street station.