As I was out and about with my camera taking infill project photos for DenverInfill, I noticed something different about the north end of the commuter rail station at Union Station!
Recently, workers have been putting up the poles for the catenary wire system that will be used for the EMU trains. Electric (EMU) trains, with the overhead wire system, will be used for the Northwest, North Metro, Gold and East Line. Here are some photos!
It’s very exciting to see all of the pieces start to come together!
This is such a great picture, but it’s going to look so much better with trains.
I love that BeyondDC commented on this. One of the great blogs I miss from my time in DC. Now if we could get GGW to comment…
In the first picture, it seems weird that there is a gap between the door of Union Station and the first platform. It’s not an unreasonable distance to walk to a train, but I wonder why the architect wouldn’t put the platform directly next to the door to minimize walking time.
Because of the bus concourse underneath the platforms. To access the 20th Ave HOV lane the entry/exit to the bus concourse is to the left of Platform 1 in that picture. So, it is the bus concourse layout that dictates that the platforms are shifted slightly away from Union Station.
There has to be enough room for people to move around
I believe Denver Transit Partners is hoping to have the East Line finished by the end of this year… at least finished enough to able hand off the tracks to RTD for testing to start. They may still have miscellaneous things left and punch lists to go through but I’m thinking that was the goal.
Last I heard they were still expecting to open the East Rail Line “early” in 2016 (maybe January?).
The plan appears to be that they will finish the civil construction (bridges, earthmoving, etc), trackwork, overhead catenary, and building the maintenance facility this year. But that doesn’t mean that (for example) signals will be fully wired up this year; stuff like that may happen early next year.
On top of what Nathanael said, the West line was tested for about 6 months and is 12.1 miles compared to 23.5 for the East line. So that’s something to keep in mind.