Federal Boulevard Closure Marks Significant Progress On FasTracks
DENVER (CBS4) – Federal Boulevard has a week of closures between 56th and 60th avenues while crews work on the Gold Line as part of the Regional Transportation District's FasTracks project.
RTD has ordered 54 new commuter trains for three FasTracks lines being built in metro Denver.
"Oh, this is the coolest thing, I tell you what -- when the rail cars start arriving in Denver the people are really going to find out that this is commuter rail, this is not light rail," RTD spokesman Kevin Flynn said.
The Gold Line runs from Wheat Ridge to Union Station, the Northwest Line goes from Westminster to Union Station, and the East Line will take fliers to Denver International Airport from Union Station.
"We're just about 60 percent complete with all three commuter lines together. The airport line, the East Rail line slightly ahead; we had a one-year head start on that," Flynn said.
The next major phase of construction is finishing and adding track. That's what will happen on the newly built bridge for the Gold Line. It sits above Federal Boulevard near 60th Avenue. Final work on the bridge will create a late-night-only closure of Federal between Monday and Thursday.
By the middle of 2016 tens of thousands of commuters are expected to start riding FasTracks every day.
"We're going to open the airport line first, that looks like the first half of 2016. Then Northwest Rail comes second. A few months later, followed probably in the fall by the Gold Line.
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