Federal transit officials today named the Regional Transportation District’s West Corridor light-rail line as one of only two new rail projects in the nation set to get major federal multiyear funding.
The Federal Transit Administration said RTD will receive $60 million in federal money for the West Corridor project in the government’s fiscal 2009 budget.
The 2009 grant is part of an anticipated total of $290.6 million in federal money that will come to the FasTracks project if the FTA completes a Full Funding Grant Agreement with RTD later this year.
The total cost of the 12.1-mile West Corridor line, which will run from central Denver to the Jefferson County Government Center, has jumped significantly, to $635 million from $508 million in 2004, in part because of a rise in construction costs.
In announcing federal transit grants to RTD and more than a dozen other transit agencies across the country, FTA Deputy Administrator Sherry Little said her agency is aware of “cost escalation” in the West Corridor light-rail budget.
The FTA is monitoring RTD’s cost-containment efforts and conducting its own “risk assessment” of the project, Little said.
The West Corridor is the first of six new rail lines that will be built as part of RTD’s $6.1 billion FasTracks transit expansion.
Seattle’s $1.8 billion light-rail extension is the only other new transit project in the country in line for a full-funding grant, federal officials said.
The FTA pledged $100 million to that project next fiscal year.
Little also announced funding for 13 smaller transit projects across the nation, including federal support for the Mason Corridor bus rapid transit project in Fort Collins.
For a total of $74 million, Fort Collins plans to build a 5-mile right of way in which buses will offer high-frequency transit service in dedicated lanes that link the city’s downtown with major university, retail and commercial locations to the south .
Little said the FTA’s tentative commitment — pending final agreement on the project — is to cover 80 percent of the cost of the Mason Corridor bus line, or about $59 million.
The federal agency pledged $11.2 million to the project the coming year.
Little and other FTA officials in Washington announced this year’s federal transit awards in a conference call with reporters across the country this morning.
