Lakewood – Jefferson County officials said Friday that service on the 12.1-mile-long west light-rail line should not be sacrificed in construction cost-cutting efforts.
The Regional Transportation District has proposed eliminating double rail tracks between the Denver Federal Center and the end-of-the-line Jefferson County government center to save $33 million of the $574 million project.
The change would increase time between trains to 15 minutes, triple what was presented to metro voters in the 2004 FasTracks election and in the environmental impact statement, said Jefferson County Commissioner Kevin McCasky.
“I believe we’re the only entity & that is being asked to accept a service-level reduction as part of the (cost-cutting),” McCasky said at an elected officials’ meeting with RTD. “We see it as a significant change.”
Wally Pulliam, an RTD board member who represents the area, said, “I don’t see another part of the (FasTracks) system taking this kind of hit.”
McCasky cautioned that service should be the priority as RTD works to find savings totaling $112 million on the west line, which will open in 2013 as the first FasTracks line.
The county is willing to work with RTD on the issue, McCasky said, and may hire an expert to go over the west rail-corridor project to help find savings.
The RTD board is scheduled to vote Tuesday on west rail cost-cutting changes. Dennis Cole, west corridor project manager, had pushed for Jefferson County support of the changes in time for the RTD vote and to keep the corridor project on schedule.
Instead, the RTD board will pull the proposal from the package and consider it after staff members from Jefferson County, RTD and Golden meet in the next week or two to work out differences.
Staff writer Ann Schrader can be reached at 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com.
