If planners put a light-rail station two blocks from Denver Union Station, passengers switching to the DIA commuter train may be walking across a busy Wewatta Street handling 25,000 vehicles a day.
One team bidding to redevelop Union Station as part of RTD’s $4.7 billion FasTracks plan is proposing to locate the light-rail platform next to freight rail tracks near 17th and Chestnut streets.
That group – Continuum Partners/East West Partners – offers a plan that it says saves tens of millions of dollars.
A rival team of developers, led by Cherokee Investment Partners and Hensel Phelps Construction, is proposing to put light-rail tracks in a tunnel under 17th Street to bring them to the station, at greater expense.
On Monday, an official leading the review of the two proposals told the Denver Regional Council of Governments that passengers will have two ways of getting from the light-rail platform to Union Station if Continuum/East West wins.
They can walk the roughly 500 feet between Chestnut and the station, possibly with the assistance of some sort of “people-mover” along a canopied 17th Street pedestrian “promenade,” said Liz Orr, executive director of the Union Station group that will select a winner.
If passengers don’t want to walk, they will have the option of taking shuttle buses between the light-rail platform and Union Station, either on 16th Street or 18th Street, Orr said.
The 16th Street Mall shuttle and another downtown bus circulator planned for 18th and 19th streets would extend to light rail, she said.
Orr’s review team, made up of the Regional Transportation District, the city and county of Denver, Colorado Department of Transportation and the regional council of governments, had said it would select the Union Station developer by October’s end.
But Orr said the review is now expected to last into November.
At Monday’s DRCOG meeting, Lakewood transportation planner Dave Baskett noted that voters who supported FasTracks were promised good, convenient access to the airport “and carrying luggage across busy streets is not convenient access.”
Ellen Ittelson, a Denver planner, acknowledged that Wewatta has ” a good deal of traffic now and will continue in the future.”
Forecasts by Denver’s public works department show 17th and Wewatta streets will handle 2,500 vehicles an hour during the afternoon peak by 2025 and 25,000 vehicles in 24 hours.
Wewatta and 15th streets will be handling up to 50,000 vehicles a day in 20 years and nearly 30,000 will use 18th and Wewatta each day, statistics indicate.
Because of such heavy traffic on Wewatta, planners eliminated Continuum/East West’s alternative of bringing light rail to Union Station on 17th at street level, Orr said.
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com.
