Maybe the higher costs are due to the fact that RTD was the first to order the DMU model? SEPTA only orders EMU trains, and the Silverliner V was a fleet addition. RTD's is a fleet from scratch.
I finally got a chance to take the A Line train last weekend. Some of my observations as someone who grew up in Denver but hasn't lived here in five years:
>I landed in the A concourse and walked all the way to the train. That was nice. The signs I think were trying to direct me to walk to the train and the Westin through the check-in area, but I just walked in the middle of the Great Hall above security instead.
>The Westin looks nice from inside the terminal, though I still can never forgive it for covering it up from the outside. I also thought the plaza connecting level five of the terminal with the Westin/RTD station escalator looked really cheap. I don't know why, but the juxtaposition of the nice marble of the Jeppesen Terminal with the outdoor brickwork was really jarring. That metal wind sculpture thing is...interesting.
>I was really surprised how easy the ticket machines were to use. I remember the ones on the Light Rail system always being horrible, clunky messes that took way too many steps to print a simple roundtrip/one-way ticket for 1/2/3/4 zones. At DIA last weekend, maybe it helped that I knew the fare structure ahead of time, but I think it didn't take me more than two taps of the screen and a swipe of my credit card for me to get my ticket.
>I boarded the train on the platform and waited about five minutes before it departed. I tried to find real-time departure information on my phone while I waited, but the RTD website seems to only show schedules. There doesn't seem to be a quick, drop-down menu full of stations giving real time information, let alone any convenient information. Ehh.
>The train itself is nice, spacious, and comfortable, though by no means stylish. The two-car train was standing room only from Peoria to DUS. Granted, it was 5pm, and while some people looked like Rockies fans going to the game, they were far from being the majority. Overall, it looked like most people were just headed downtown for whatever reason. That's really exciting to see.
>The train was a little slow to start because of the single tracking. Then we're about to pull into the first stop. The automated announcement chimes: "Next stop: 61st and Pen-uh." What? Pen-uh??? I get that it's a computerized voice, but I was shocked that such a major project would mispronounce the name of the man who challenged his city to imagine something great. Mr. Peña deserves to have his name pronounced correctly on the train whose final destination is the project for which he is responsible.
>The 61st and Peña and 40th and Airport stops look pointless, other than for future development purposes. But again, from Peoria and beyond, it was a standing room-only train, with sizable numbers of people getting on and off at each stop.
>There was a fare inspector on board, and he checked my ticket at two different times on my trip. I was a little surprised to see him, and I remain skeptical that proof-of-payment with fare inspectors carrying handcuffs is more cost effective than a true faregate, pay-per-mile system. But whatever.
>Overall, the train seemed to move pretty fast other than at the intersections. We were sitting for a while waiting for the fences to go down and for the flagger to stop the intersection upon departing the Central Park Station. Why it's not simply called the Stapleton station is also beyond me.
>Arriving at Union Station is arriving at a city I don't recognize. Just as our train was disembarking, there was another flock of people waiting to get on. Walking from the CRT platform to the LRT platform, I looked around and realized that I couldn't recognize any of the buildings around me. I felt very proud of my hometown.
>I then hopped onto an E line train to DU, which left just as I got on. It was a fairly brisk transfer, but again — I knew what to look for. I don't think the transfer is that intuitive, and I don't think the signage talking about various "train tracks 1/2/3/4/etc" is all that helpful, especially for those who may be taking it for the first time.
>Despite it being now close to 6pm on a Friday, the 3-car E line train wasn't close to being full. What makes the A line so packed and the LRT trains fairly light, I don't know.
So what do I think overall? I've taken various airport trains all over the US and Europe, though the one with which I'm most familiar is San Francisco's BART, which I loved, despite most people passionately hating it. When BART works, it works very well. I had it down to a rhythm when I lived there. I would check my iBART app to get real-time departures, and when I saw a train departing in 12 minutes exactly, I could walk to the station, go through the fare gates, catch the train, and enjoy a one-seat, 65-minute ride to SFO. I don't think RTD quite matches in terms of efficiency or as a comprehensive network. I also think that RTD continues to fail when it comes to branding and user experience. "The University of Colorado A Line" is a mouthful and ridiculous as opposed to, say, a train simply saying "Union Station." In some places, it's Denver Union Station. In others, it's "The Denver Union Station." In some places, the system is called "RTD Commuter Rail," while even educated members of the public continue to call it "light rail," as Denverites have been calling it for decades.
But maybe BART isn't a fair comparison. After all, San Francisco is the second densest city in America, and BART is a 50-year-old system. Maybe I should compare it to where I came from — LAX, which is likely more than a decade away from having a desperately-needed people mover system from terminal to terminal, much less a rail connection to DTLA. Now that is an embarrassment for the largest city on the west coast.
When I think about that experience, and when I think about Denver, I think we still should be very proud of what we as a region have accomplished in spite of its shortfalls. Denver now has a reasonably high speed train connecting its airport to a bustling downtown that would have been incomprehensible even at the start of the Fastracks project. Sure, we may have cut corners and made some design mistakes, but I still see many places where the A line and the system as a whole could mature into a premier mode of transportation to the airport much like what the major metro areas of the U.S. currently enjoy.
Prev
Linear Mode
