Ok Union Station- in more of historical discussion
The primary mistake in the Union Station design was made 20 or so years ago by those people who partitioned the old rail yards that filled the bulk of the land now in various infill states north of Auraria Parkway and west of 7th Street all the way to the South Platte. IMO two factors played out:
1st: In order to get maximum, quick buildup along a line north on 14th Street, Speer viaduct (which was getting long of tooth) was brought down to ground level as close to I-25 as possible (although there is room for 6 tracks under the bridge, not just the five that are there).
2nd: McNichols Arena which was located about where Invesco field is now, was not a 'major' city venue and large landowners (at the time) had this parcel that was both very assessable by a ground level Speer Blvd and necessary to stimulate rapid urban redevelopment north of (at the time) the rather pathetic Larimer Street area.
The large scale plan to develop all that vacant space in the rail yards was to push the heavy rail towards the South Platte River, separated by a park from the River. However, this push was not complete as large scale property consortiums planned to develop a 'New Manhattan' from Speer northeast to at least 20th Street (seen today in the 'Glass House', the sagging Millennium Bridge etc).
Fast forward to when the Union Station light rail line right of way was placed.
Initially, money was to be put up by property consortiums, Denver State University and small property owners, and, the line was thus laid to maximize property development space. A result of this property patch work can be seen in the marvelously slow, highly curved section on the Union Station line from Colfax to the Invesco field station. Another result was the route north of Pepsi field under Speer Blvd, paralleling the heavy rail line.
(However, as such projects often do, the bulk of the money for building that line came from the tax payer.)
I am sure some of you old timers remember the original Union Station purchase in which RTD paid way over market rates for property. Originally, the property extended further southwest where the future train tracks were to run down what later became Wewatta. Part of that tapering property piece where the station tracks were to merge into 2 heavy rail tracks is visible in the shape of the Gates building which follows Wewatta, as originally intended.
Ok, so due to Pepsi Center and more importantly, due to lowering the Speer viaduct to ground level, the possibility of ground level through rail traffic at Union Station was eliminated.
Meanwhile, the Union Station line was completed, and, in a remarkably short time (
) the properties south of the line between 14th and Speer were built up. Remarkably short....
The resulting mediocre design was not produced by accident, rather by, being polite, 'shortsightedness.'
Remember that in 1980 there were hundreds of acres of open land between Colfax and 20th Street.
Now we are stuck with a mediocre design, upon which hundreds of talented designers and architects have been working furiously to have the development put 'it's best face forward."
So what do we do now? Any heavy rail traffic from the south will be forced into the corridor north of the light rail Union Station. First, RTD needs to buy every square centimeter of land between the legal minimum clearance south of the 3rd heavy rail track and the light rail station. As Snyderbock correctly points out, there is room for a platform for a heavy rail track (at a minimum you need two tracks).Secondly, BNSF/UP needs to put in an extra heavy rail line where ever possible north of Dartmouth Street so that in the future, coal trains can have a place to park while heavy rail commuter trains travel north and south amoung them.
In addition, all of us need to work to keep right of way northeast of the Union Station light rail clear for future light rail growth (and heavy rail too) to at least Park Avenue.
All is not lost, but, the need now is to act to insure future growth of what we have.
(I had this merging of images one night over a cool Extra Pale Ale by Dillion Dam brewery: the crowded station scenes I remembered as a boy in Shinjuku played over Union Station, and Broadway Station. Our system under the crush of hundreds of thousands of riders was more like Mumbai than Tokyo. Now, I am not saying we will get 2,000,000 people per day like Shinjuku Station does, but, what about 250,000 or 500,000 at Union Station, excluding buses? What about 250,000-350,000 at Broadway? And I thought, better to plan for this than to excuse such a possibility away.)