Contributed by:
Tabitha Dial, YourHub.com
Article Contributed on: 11/20/2006 11:13:05 AM
Alex invited me to come with him to try out the new southeast light rail line Nov. 18. I was as excited as I could be until approximately 1 p.m. that day, when, somewhere between the Louisiana-Pearl stop and the Orchard stop, I overheard a fellow passenger.
"This stops at DU. That's great for the students," the unseen passenger said.
Great for the students. Great for the -- if only this light rail expansion had happened seven years earlier! I could have taken the light rail (free as a student in good standing) to
Metropolitan State College. I would've loved the ride and been able to leave for school earlier and leave
from school later, which would have been very beneficial when I worked at
The Metropolitan and had to leave for the bus home around 6 p.m. each night, which is not conducive to most any college newspaper position.
Instead, I did have a fine year or two of riding to school with my father, who insisted on driving me to campus, although it added a good twenty minutes or more to his own commute to work. We had a lot of fun talking (mostly, me talking and he listening), something no fancy light rail can take away.
The highlight of my journey on the new southeast line was the Southmoor stop. Unfortunately, I had dropped Alex's camera one too many times and the camera, which I will replace, stopped
its service, so to speak, before I could get photos of it, but there's a very fun attraction at the Southmoor stop.
It was Alex's biggest reason for checking out the new line.
Columns of light shine against the walls of the passenger tunnel at the stop, each column a different color, each column waiting to create different noises as people walk next to them, or touch their hand near their sensors.
We worked on solving a riddle about which columns to touch in which order so that all the columns would perform a song in the tunnel. We assumed that the song would be created as we touched the columns and were a little disappointed when it didn't happen.
Alex said he'd come back some day to try it again and within seconds, the song began to play (nothing that we recognized). It just took the tunnel a little time to register our request.
I hope you, dear readers, do enjoy the new light rail service. One word of warning, though: Don't expect to use the light rail to get you to Park Meadows Mall easily any time soon. The mall's previous owner apparently didn't want the stop there to easily connect with the mall,afraid that the mall parking lots would overflow with light rail users (and non-shoppers).
The word on the tracks is that the new owner of Park Meadows is working with light rail and passengers will be able to easily access the mall in 18-20 months.
It's not impossible to get to the mall via light rail. You can read my photo captions for the details.
Thanks for the read.
Please post your light rail and commuting stories and photos. Let me know how I can help at dialt@yourhub.com or 303-954-2362.