RTD’s board of directors tonight approved 21 projects that will receive about $72 million in federal transit funding from the economic-stimulus measure passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama.
The list includes $9.8 million for the redevelopment of Denver’s Union Station as a hub for the Regional Transportation District’s FasTracks program. The Denver Regional Council of Governments is contributing another $18.6 million in stimulus money for the station overhaul.
Other RTD projects that will be funded with stimulus money include:
— $17.1 million in new computerized, pass-reading fare boxes for the agency’s fleet of more than 1,000 buses.
— $10.2 million for bus and rail vehicle maintenance.
— $7.6 million for special bus lanes on ramps to U.S. 36 that will allow buses to avoid getting slowed by crowded ramp traffic at rush hour.
— $5 million for “intrusion barriers” on the Southwest Corridor light-rail line that will alert RTD if a freight train derails on nearby, parallel tracks and spills into RTD’s right of way.
Also tonight, RTD management said it and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1001 are far apart in their final wage and benefit proposals for a new union contract.
Local 1001 represents about 1,900 RTD employees.
RTD said the union’s “last, best and final” offer includes a progression of wage increases that total 3 percent over three years, while RTD’s wage offer ties possible lump-sum bonuses and a later wage increase to the agency achieving a 2 percent growth in base-system sales-tax collections over any rolling 12-month period.
This year, RTD expects sales-tax receipts to be down at least 4.4 percent from last year.
An arbiter selected by the Colorado department of labor will decide which contract proposal will prevail.
Last month, labor department officials said that the union could not call a strike against RTD and that any unresolved issues in the labor negotiations would be submitted to binding arbitration.
