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.

Congress should consider initiating a vehicle miles traveled fee to replace the gasoline tax currently funding federal highway and transit programs, an infrastructure report issued by the Urban Land Institute and Ernst & Young recommends. The report also calls for boosting transportation investment through other sources. This report is the fourth in an annual series. It focuses on the pressing need for long-term and integrated investments in transportation and other infrastructure.

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.

RTD again offers RockiesRide service to all weekend 2010 Rockies home games, and select weekday games including Opening Day Friday, April 9. Light Rail available for all games. RTD offers RockiesRide to all weekend games and the following weekday games: Friday, April 9 (Opening Day); Tuesday, June 22, Wednesday, June 23 and Thursday, June 24 (Red Sox Games); Friday, July 2, (fireworks), Friday, July 30, (Cubs Game) and Friday, September 24, (fireworks). RockiesRide express bus service will get fans to Coors Field 30-60 minutes before the first pitch.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that voters in that city and county approved by a wide margin a half-cent increase to the transit sales tax to restore lost bus and Call-A-Ride service and, eventually, expand the reach of mass transit farther into the St. Louis suburbs.

Metro transit officials had warned that the agency would have to dramatically scale back bus and Call-A-Ride service. MetroLink trains would likely have run less often, too, putting jobs and classrooms out of reach to thousands who depend on public transportation.

Instead, Baer said, the agency’s work begins today on restoring bus routes, possibly as soon as June. Bus drivers will have to be hired and certified. Metro will take its restoration plan to its governing board later this month and will then hold public hearings.

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.

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.

The Summit County Citizens Voice reports that the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority is close to releasing a final version of its feasibility study for high-speed rail, which would run north-south along the Interstate 25 corridor between Fort Collins and Pueblo, and east-west along Interstate 70 between Eagle and Denver International Airport.

“There are a whole slew of alternatives that are feasible,” said Harry Dale, Clear Creek County commissioner and chairman of the authority.