Boulder – U.S. 36 Corridor officials got an earful Tuesday night as more than 400 residents packed a conference room here to deliver a barrage of criticisms of proposed commuter-rail maintenance facilities.
The proposed commuter rail line is part of the FasTracks plan voters approved last year. But the Regional Transportation District and the Colorado Department of Transportation need to have a 90-acre maintenance site that would stretch more than a mile.
Two of the seven proposed sights are in Boulder.
“I’m still not convinced that you have explored all the different details. In effect what you are doing is taking the noise and the pollution that now are on highway 36 and bringing them into some of the most beautiful neighborhoods in Boulder,” resident Doug Warren told officials. “Essentially, this is unconscionable.”
Ridiculous, deceptive, unfathomable – speaker after speaker tried to one-up the other with adjectives of outrage.
Jonathan Bartsch, spokesman for the U.S. 36 Environmental Impact Statement, played emcee to the numerous concerns, attempting to explain the process between each speaker.
“That is exactly what we need to be hearing,” he said after a woman voiced concerns about the impact of train vibrations on Ball Aerospace. “Maybe we need to explain that further.”
The two proposed sites are at Arapahoe Road and 63rd Street and at 63rd Street and Colorado 52. The public input is part of a years-long process of planning and implementing transportation improvements from Denver to Boulder along U.S. 36. It’s still not clear Boulder will need to have a maintenance facility because of the fragmented planing for other FasTracks corridors.
If one other corridor decides on commuter rail, the maintenance facility would have to be at one of five sites in Denver around the Interstate 70 and Interstate 25 interchange.
Business owner Tim Trumble received one of the loudest ovations when he suggested that the group refuse any site.
“All of the large candidate maintenance sites are unacceptable to Boulder, Colorado,” he said. “We need to unite against the possibility at all of a large maintenance site.”
Staff writer George Merritt can be reached at 720-929-0893 or gmerritt@denverpost.com.
