ARVADA, Colo. — When she saw the note, Kimberly Matuszak did a little dance inside her apartment.
The message delivered by apartment management was music to her ringing ears: those G Line horns won’t be blowing in the middle of the night.
“I’ve missed my alarm wearing earplugs,” she said.
Next originally heard from Kimberly earlier this month when the train started testing on its actual schedule. The G Line will operate between 3 a.m. and 1 a.m. each day.
Because RTD hasn’t received approval for quiet zones, trains must blare at each grade crossing along the G Line, where the tracks bend near a lot of residential areas.
Matuszak said she’s left town on weekends as much as possible and gotten some pretty bad headaches from all of this.
“I did call RTD and I left a message with them,” she said.
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And apparently calls like that one Kimberly made paid off.
“We’ve reached the point where we can modify that testing so that we don’t have to operate in the very early and very late hour times,” RTD Assistant General Manager of Communications Scott Reed told us.
RTD has come to an agreement with Denver Transit Partners to test the train daily between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. to ease the noise concerns.
“We heard very loud and clear from residents along the line that the noise from the trains that have to blow their horns as they go through the train crossings was disrupting them. So we’re really trying to take that into account,” Reed said.
RTD is currently in the middle of a long stretch of testing for the train. Denver Transit Partners is required to show the train can operate effectively for a certain number of hours.
The new time constraints will likely add a few days to the testing process, Reed said.
And after the noise concerns caused this change, Reed could not say whether the train could start carrying passengers before the quiet zones are in place.
The G Line to Arvada and Wheat Ridge was originally slated to start carrying passengers in fall of 2016. It’s launch has been delayed as the agency works with federal and state regulators on issues with software at grade crossings.
RTD has not set a new opening date for the G Line.
