As RTD's project manager for the Gold Line Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), I appreciate YourHub.com's offer to respond to a recent article submitted by Tom Graham about the Gold Line. The article included many statements that the thousands of stakeholders who have been involved in our efforts over the last 10-plus years may find to be misleading and inaccurate.
The Gold Line is an 11.2 mile electric commuter rail corridor that will connect downtown Denver with neighborhoods and businesses in northwest Denver, Adams County, Arvada and Wheat Ridge. Over the last decade, RTD has seen overwhelming community excitement and support for the Gold Line.
In the last three and a half years, we have conducted an environmental study of the corridor to secure federal approval for the project. During that time we developed, refined and evaluated the Gold Line project based on technical and environmental considerations as well as input from the public.
Thousands of individuals have attended our meetings. Tens of thousands of people have participated in our study through our project web site. The input and reactions we've seen from these individuals is a sharp contrast to the singular perspective shared in the recent article.
The article positions the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) technology as a perfect solution for this corridor that was never given serious consideration.
In fact, BRT was one of many alternatives evaluated in a previous Gold Line study. That analysis found that, while the BRT options were cost effective, the options had detrimental impacts to parks, residential neighborhoods and minority/low-income communities along I-70.
In contrast, the Gold Line project requires the purchase of no homes. As for parks, our project has a slight, but easily mitigated impact to an access road around one park and will require the temporary closure of two bicycle trails during portions of our construction.
That doesn't even begin to get into the issues of speed and reliability. It will take riders 19 minutes to ride the Gold Line from end-to-end, Ward Road in Wheat Ridge to Denver Union Station downtown. That is 30 percent faster than it will take to travel between those two points by car or bus. Add in traffic congestion from accidents or weather and that time savings will only increase.
Throughout the planning process for the Gold Line, we have worked very hard to create an open and honest dialogue about the project. If you were to ask any of the thousands of stakeholders that have participated with us, I think you will find them supportive of both our process and the project.
We are looking forward to receiving the final approval of the Gold Line from the federal government later this fall. Following that, we will complete the engineering design and construction of the Gold Line to have it open and ready to serve the metro area in 2016.
Liz Telford
Gold Line Project Manager
RTD