DENVER — RTD has successfully made repairs to some of its light rail track that requires 10 mile per hour slowdowns through the Denver Tech Center.
The problem is, there are so many repairs needed that it could be until at least September before light rail returns to full speed over the entire southeast corridor.
RTD completed repairs to the track in one direction of one mile of track.
There have been six miles of track that require trains to go 10 miles per hour because inspections discovered railhead burn on parts of the track. Railhead burn occurs on the part of the track where the wheels touch the rail.
Without repair, the burn could turn into a crack.
The southbound track between Belleview and Orchard Stations were fixed in the last week, allowing light rail to go back to 55 miles per hour in that one mile. The northbound mile, however, and both sides between Orchard and County Line Stations and both sides between Southmoor and Colorado Stations, still require a speed of 10 miles per hour.
“When I was on the train, we were going 10 miles an hour, and I could tell the difference in relationship to how the train was traveling versus when we hit the pockets where we could assume the normal speeds,” said Debra Johnson, RTD's general manager.
Johnson rode the light rail two stops to a news conference at Orchard Station on Friday afternoon. She said the two miles took about 15 minutes.
“This is very analogous to roadway work, when you have a pothole and what needs to happen in order to get that street back into a state of good repair,” Johnson said.
She said the damage found during routine inspections had not been overlooked in the past.
“I have been leading this organization since November 2020, and I can firmly attest that we do track inspections on a quarterly basis,” Johnson said.
Last week, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) asked RTD to provide updates every 48 hours about the repair progress. The PUC also asked RTD to update its Transit Asset Management plan or TAM by Aug. 30.
In a letter to the PUC on Friday, Johnson said no.
"RTD’s next update to its TAM Plan, as outlined by the [Federal Transit Administration], is slated for 2025. It is not feasible for RTD to meet the PUC’s request that the agency modify the TAM Plan by August 30, 2024,” Johnson wrote.
“We expect to have significant progress by September, if it’s not completed altogether,” Dave Jensen, RTD Assistant General Manager, said.
He explained that fixing the rail can be replacing the rail by cutting out the bad sections and putting in new rail, putting up rail bars around the damaged sections or grinding the rail and sanding it down to be smooth.
“The schedule strategy is to work our way south. So, we’re going to get the inbound track between Belleview and Orchard, and just keep working our way south,” Jensen said.
Saying the repairs could be another three months is a long time. Jensen explained why the timeline could be drawn out.
“We’re strategically cutting the rail to make sure that it’s the right size. We have to transport the rail from our yard to the location. That, in and of itself, could take us an entire night. Then, the cutting of, replacing of -- what we’re not doing is replacing the entire track between Belleview and Orchard, so we’re doing it by piecemeal,” Jensen said.
You can see updates on the RTD light rail speed restrictions website.
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