Lots and lots of progress is being made along the East Rail Line between Union Station and DIA!
For those who haven’t been to the airport lately, you’re in for a shock. The elevator shafts for the new Westin Hotel are rising into the sky with only a few floors left to go. It looked like crews were working on the third or forth floors as well.
As for the new DIA Station, crews have laid the platforms and the canopy pieces are on-site. These pictures are a few days old, so they may have already moved some of them into place! It’s hard to get a picture from the road without the cops yelling, so I apologize for the picture. A few pieces of the rail station canopy cover are directly behind the wood bracing.
A lesser known, but albeit important, piece of the East Rail Line lies just south of the future DIA Station. Known as the “Triple Stack,” this tunnel/bridge combination will stack two modes of transportation into three levels – inbound and outbound East Rail Line trains, inbound west side terminal traffic as well as outbound east side terminal traffic. Two levels existed prior to the East Rail Line construction, but crews have been out digging the bottom layer for the trains. The pictures below don’t do it justice, but this was a complex piece of the project.
Also, keep in mind most of Peña Boulevard east of E-470 is a construction zone with speed limits dropped to 55 mph. Denver PD is notorious for clocking drivers along that segment of road, so give yourself a little extra time to avoid a speeding ticket and help keep construction crews safe.
I know the hotel and transit center are scheduled to open by Fall 2015. I wonder if the east rail line completion date is moved up a few months to open the entire complex all at once? Especially since it would be the year DIA celebrates its 20th Anniversary. Having the hotel and rail link has been a goal since the airport was first planned in the late 1980’s.
While I think we’d all welcome an earlier completion date for the East Rail Line, it is most likely not in the cards. It’d definitely have agreeable symmetry with the 20 year anniversary of the airport, but it’s all dependent upon the construction schedule. Right now, all signs are pointing to 2016. I’ll keep you posted if I hear anything different.
I’m curious what the “critical path” is on the East Rail Line project.
It looks like the DIA station will be physically finished in 2014 (at this rate), and it looks like Denver Union Station will be ready in 2014. And the vehicles are being delivered starting in 2014. And it looks like all the bridges are under construction, with many of them nearly complete. (The hard part of bridges is the support pillars. With the sort of bridges they’re using, the decks are quick work.)
With that all done, it doesn’t take that much work to lay track and pull catenary wire.
The CRMF is still just a hole in the ground, and it doesn’t even look like all the demolitions are done… but the claim on the RTD website is that it will open in 2014 too.
I know that it can take a year for “systems integration” and testing, but I still don’t see what would delay the opening date into 2016. I begin to suspect that the announced 2016 date is “schedule slack” in case something goes wrong and causes unforeseen delays — in short, I’m betting that if everything goes perfectly the line will open in 2015. (Of course, it’s always *good* to have slack time in your construction schedules — this is not a criticism.) I’d love to see the Gantt chart to confirm my suspicions.
There absolutely is a “critical path” for the East Rail Line, and while both DIA and DUS are progressing nicely, there is still A LOT of work to do. The CRMF is more than a hole ground as crews are erecting structural steel and it should be done late next year. Construction is progressing well, but keep in mind this is a 23 mile corridor – it’s going to take a lot of work to get it done.
Testing will be more complex than other RTD lines for two reasons. One, commuter rail is a new RTD technology. Crews will need to ensure that the corridor functions, but operators will also have extensive training as well. This is a new train with new controls, new maintenance requirements, and new stations. Two, RTD will not be operating these trains (although they will have all RTD logos). Denver Transit Partners (DTP) will operate these trains. There is a lot of integration work – schedules, cameras, grade crossings, etc. to make sure that the trains function as a part of the transportation network in place but also that it corresponds and functions well as part of the RTD network.
We’d all love to see the line open in 2015, but all signs as of right now are pointing to 2016. As we get closer to that late 2015/early 2016 time frame, we will all have a better idea as to when the corridor will open. My money is on 2016.