N-Line delay angers cities
RTD has announced that the NLine commuter train, which will serve Denver’s northern suburbs, may not open to passengers before August 2020 — the second metroarea rail line to face opening delays of two-plus years.
And the reasons sound familiar — perfecting the performance of crossing gates and implementing positive train control.
The first project to run headlong into the clock was the G-Line, the 11-mile line to Wheat Ridge and Arvada that opened in April — 2½ years later than originally scheduled.
Now the N-Line, which RTD at one time had set for a debut in early 2018, could also hit that ignominious 30-month behind-schedule mark.
Regional Transportation District general manager Dave Genova told his board of directors Tuesday that the N-Line’s debut would likely be pegged to when the agency implements service changes next year — meaning May or August.
For at least two mayors whose communities the line will serve, the delay is proving frustrating. Thornton Mayor Heidi Williams said her city doesn’t even have bus service north of 120th Avenue.
“We have nothing,” she said Wednesday. “To be mayor of a city of 140,000 that has been paying for
ever for a train they don’t have makes me less hopeful.”
The 13-mile N-Line through Commerce City, Northglenn and Thornton — part of the 2004 FasTracks initiative — is supported by a sales tax paid by those making purchases in the transit district.
“It’s sad that it gives people hope and they start making plans and then it’s delayed — and this is not the first delay,” Northglenn Mayor Antonio Esquibel said of development plans near the still-vacant stations. “They took our money and didn’t produce.”
Two years ago, RTD announced that the N-Line would be delayed 18 months due to construction issues. This week, the agency cited certain “milestones” — including advanced testing of crossings and positive train control — that still need to be met before an opening date can be set.
That sounds a lot like the troubles the G-Line train to Arvada and Wheat Ridge faced during its prolonged delay to launch: issues with getting the timing right on gate openings and closings and integrating the first wireless signaling system with positive train control.
The problems there led to legal action between RTD and its private-sector partner, Denver Transit Partners, and prompted four members of Colorado’s congressional delegation to write a letter to RTD and the Federal Railroad Administration urging a fix to the problems.
An RTD spokeswoman told The Denver Post on Wednesday evening that the agency doesn’t believe that properly activating crossing gates and positive train control, a safety technology for railroads, on the N-Line will face nearly the same challenges experienced on the G-Line and the University of Colorado A-Line because of lessons learned with those prior lines.
The N-Line was built through a traditional contracting arrangement between RTD and Regional Rail Partners, a joint venture of Graham and Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Inc. Balfour Beatty was also part of the partnership that built the G-Line.
Genova this week told the RTD board that the overhead catenary system wires on the N-Line went live in March and test trains began running the corridor in April.
“The N-Line is a long-awaited connection for our riders in the communities north of Denver, and the project team continues to work diligently toward meeting all regulatory requirements and ensuring public safety of the line,” he said in a statement.
Before N-Line service starts, Regional Rail Partners will have to turn the line over to RTD, which will operate it. Regional Rail Partners built the first 13 miles of the NLine from Denver Union Station to the Eastlake-124th Station. Completion of 5½ more miles of track extending farther north into Thornton is awaiting funding.