WALKING THE LINE: Day 6

We stashed one of our cars at the Cold Spring park-n-Ride on Union Boulevard and began the final day of our hike along the West Corridor light-rail line.

We had four miles to go, straight along the Sixth Avenue Freeway to the Jefferson County government center in Golden. It is on this segment of the route that the $634 million project will most closely resemble the T-REX venture on Interstate 25, the trains running in the open alongside a busy freeway.

Or, perhaps, more like T-REX's baby brother.

The highway-hugging segment has been trimmed down to a single track from the Denver Federal Center to Golden, much to the consternation of Jeffco, the third-most-populous county in the state.

Leaving the federal center, RTD will dig a tunnel that will allow the light-rail trains to go under the intersection where traffic on Union mixes with that from the eastbound freeway ramps.

Since that tunnel doesn't yet exist, we hiked across Union and headed up the grassy hill next to the off-ramp. When we reached the south frontage road that curves around and parallels the freeway, we climbed through a break in the right-of-way fence, being careful to hug the side of the road as Sixth Avenue traffic roared just past us.

The housing here is mostly apartments and condos up the hill and through the gullies on the slopes of Green Mountain.

Across on the north side of the freeway is Lakewood's Daniels Welchester neighborhood. RTD's original plan was to run the trains on the north shoulder, with access through a big tunnel under the Simms-Union interchange.

But having to cut costs, RTD found it less expensive to build a smaller tunnel from the park-n- Ride to the south shoulder, then cross over the highway on a bridge farther west.

Prairie dog town

We crested the hill and began heading downward, crossing Lakewood Gulch for the fifth and last time on our journey and coming to Arbutus Street, the entrance to Red Rocks Community College.

There will be a light-rail station here and a pedestrian bridge over the freeway. In the field where the road from the college meets the frontage road, there is a thriving prairie dog town. RTD is legally obligated to relocate these critters if any of its construction impacts their homestead.

While watching them stand sentinel over their burrows and scurry across the baked dirt, we noted the fact that, in comparison, the law gave short shrift to the makeshift homeless village we encountered under I-25 on Day 1. Unlike the prairie dogs, those folks were given three days to vamoose.

Just beyond the college is the Sixth Avenue West neighborhood. We knocked on the first door and met Robert and Betty Bailon. They're looking forward to the project because they think RTD's construction of a retaining wall next to the train track will help deflect existing traffic noise, too.

"As long as the kids leave it alone," Robert Bailon said, thinking of the graffiti canvas it will present.

RTD had planned to cross the freeway on a long diagonal bridge at Eldridge Street, then go over Indiana Street on a second bridge, but found it could save money by combining those two crossings in a long, single bridge that will top the Indiana interchange itself.

And how did RTD come up with the idea? From a citizen at a meeting who asked why build two bridges, when one would do.

Crossing at Indiana and backtracking into the Daniels Welchester neighborhood, we went to see the woman who gave RTD that suggestion. We learned that she has more.

Sue McMahon moved here in 1980 and her backyard is right up against the freeway and frontage road. She has been working with the Colorado Department of Transportation for at least five years to try to lessen the noise she says got markedly louder when the state increased the speed limit from 55 to 65 mph.

McMahon isn't happy now that RTD is coming through with a design she thinks will make that noise worse again.

She helped persuade CDOT to use an upgraded type of asphalt that produces less tire noise when it repaved the freeway here last year. She is now working on a proposal to fund a noise wall along the frontage road. She wants it to use sound absorbing materials such as shredded tires.

"They need to think more about the people who are here 2 4/7 and not the ones who zip by for two seconds," McMahon said, sitting at a small table in her sun room, which faces the highway.

If RTD builds the light-rail line high up on the freeway's south shoulder, she's afraid the retaining wall built to support it will reflect highway noise right back into her neighborhood.

One idea: Lower the elevation of the tracks so less of a wall is needed.

McMahon also has another proposal for RTD. When the federal center sees more development, including the new St. Anthony Hospital, traffic from the west will be funneling through the Simms- Union exit ramp and trying to make an immediate left into the site. Why not put a new exit ramp from eastbound Sixth just beyond Union-Simms, feeding directly into the federal center and eliminating a mess on Union?

Right about now, we're thinking the consultants ought to be sitting here visiting with McMahon, not us.

'A really cool one'

RTD's bridge over Indiana and the freeway will be a dramatic structure for sure. RTD project manager Dennis Cole, who gets excited about such things, said, "This is a really cool one."

It will have 11 spans in total, including one 270 feet long, crossing dead center over both Sixth and Indiana. The steel girders required to hold this up will be 12 feet thick. The entire length of the bridge from takeoff to touchdown will be 1,574 feet as it makes an elongated reverse "S" shape.

Now on the north side, we wandered through the Pleasant View neighborhood. The first person we met was Shirley Bolejack, sitting in her yard letting her toy poodle, Jasmine, enjoy the sunny day.

She came here 45 years ago when, at the end of her block, Joyce Street intersected with Sixth Avenue at a stop sign.

"Sixth was a little two-lane thing when we moved in," she said. Now there's a dead end and the freeway. That big bridge will still be coming to ground at Joyce Street, between Bolejack's house and the westbound entrance ramp from Indiana.

"I don't really know what to expect," she said.

The evolution of Sixth as a freeway can be traced on old state road maps dating from the 1940s. A gravel road in the 1920s, the war years saw it improved to create better access for workers and supplies going to the ordnance plant that predated the federal center.

When the state opened the Valley Highway through Denver in 1958, it extended Sixth down the hill from Federal Boulevard with a short freeway section. Gradually working west, it widened the road and made it limited access.

In 1959, it got up the hill to Knox Court. In 1960, it built the interchanges at Sheridan and Wadsworth boulevards. A year later, the freeway links between them were opened and the ramps at Garrison Street were added.

By 1964, Sixth was a freeway all the way to Kipling. Two years later, it made it to the Union-Simms interchange. It wasn't built past Bolejack's house on Joyce Street until 1972.

RTD studied putting light rail all the way into Denver on this freeway, as people during our walk suggested it should have. It looked at using Colfax or Alameda avenues as well. But in a 1997 study, an advisory committee of community representatives endorsed the choice of the old rail line through west Denver and Lakewood neighborhoods.

Using Sixth Avenue would have required condemning 150 or more homes from Kipling east because the freeway narrows in Denver. Using Colfax would have required taking out businesses on one entire side of the street.

Tough walking

We donned reflective orange vests for the part of the walk we had been dreading the most, along the shoulder of the freeway, with traffic coming up from behind us at 65 mph or better.

We planned to wear them until we got to Colfax Avenue up ahead. The walking was tough because we were either in brush or broken soil most of the way, only occasionally (and dangerously) venturing out onto the paved shoulder on the traffic side of the guardrail.

I-70 goes over Sixth on two bridges slanting southwest to northeast. We couldn't follow the light-rail path exactly here because it will also go through a tunnel yet be bored under the interstate just north of the overpass.

So the only way to get to the other side was to squeeze through the space between the guardrail and the bridge abutments along Sixth's westbound shoulder.

In front of us was the looping flyover ramp from Sixth to westbound I-70. We tried to stay on level ground to skirt the dirt embankment on which it rises, but there was no level ground. We ended up ascending the ramp like mountain goats, gingerly sidestepping down the steep drop on the other side.

The light-rail bridge over Colfax will have six spans because there is a lot of roadway to get over.

We walked by Golden Cemetery on the right, and just beyond was Johnson Road. Crossing that, we arrived at the end of the West Corridor.

The station will be on the south lawn of the Jefferson County government center, what people out here like to call the Taj Mahal.

We walked up through the parking area to the doors of the domed atrium, where we had arranged ahead of time to meet Chief District Court Judge Brooke Jackson.

When first conceived, the light rail wasn't going to come here, ending instead at the federal center. The 1997 major investment study that laid out the parameters of the West Corridor said an extension to Golden could come later.

But when the formal environmental impact study got under way a few years later and FasTracks went to a vote in 2004, the extra four miles was added to complete the line - and to curry political support in Jefferson County.

Now that the FasTracks budget crisis has RTD looking to cut any costs possible, it decided to reduce service on this last leg from five-minute trains at rush hour to 15-minute departures. Trains will still leave the federal center for downtown every five minutes.

County officials don't like that. They saw what happened at Littleton's Mineral Station on the Southwest Corridor light rail, and how Aurora's Nine Mile Station was crammed over capacity when T-REX opened last fall.

Being the farthest station out can act like a magnet drawing riders from beyond. County officials think folks from Genesee, Evergreen, Idaho Springs and the rest of the foothills will overcrowd this end-of-line station.

Judge Jackson thinks this will cause problems.

"I have very strong feelings (about) how desperately needed public transportation is at this courthouse," he told us. "To be honest, the bus service out here has never been ideal."

Only one bus route serves the complex that hosts not only county administration and courts, but the jail, human services, work release and other buildings that draw visitors.

The Route 17 runs every half hour during the week until 6:30 p.m. eastbound, 7 p.m. into Golden. It runs hourly on Saturday, with no service at all on Sunday.

RTD says Route 17 takes riders to Cold Spring park-n-Ride, where 15 other routes meet - the most of any park-n-Ride in the RTD system. But Jackson said he would like to see service added directly at the courthouse site. And light rail was a big part of that.

"We've seen it in southeast Denver: You build light rail and people will knock your door down," said the judge. "It'll be full the first day.

"Light rail would be a godsend to this building and any reduction in the original plan will detract from that."

Up in the county offices, we met with Commissioner Kevin McCasky, who has been spearheading the county's push to have RTD restore some of the cuts. He took us up on the roof of the Taj, where we had a full view of most of the West Corridor.

"Light rail changes commuting behavior," McCasky said. "Our consultant believes we need 800 (parking) spaces."

RTD originally planned 700, but has cut it to 400.

"Their past history is underestimating that pent-up demand," he said.

The West Corridor budget in 2004 was $512 million. It ballooned to $744 million within two years because of a huge spike in the cost of construction nationwide. RTD cut $110 million to get to the current $634 million estimate.

RTD did that by deciding to build just a single track with one passing siding near Red Rocks Station, and reducing service so that it didn't have to buy as many train cars. That saved nearly $50 million.

McCasky said it's unfair to the Golden end of the line to have it absorb that much of the reductions. In addition, having only one track will prevent service from increasing to more than every 15 minutes.

"Any project that uses concrete, asphalt and rebar is going up tremendously, we know that. We are feeling it, too," McCasky said. "But once the vote was taken, we have our marching orders from the voters. We heard that loud and clear. We need to make sure service is delivered as promised."

RTD says it can meet the projected ridership demand on that segment with 15-minute trains, and if demand grows, it will run three cars per trip instead of two.

But the county wants RTD to build a second passing track around I-70, which would permit 10-minute frequency trips. It also wants the parking beefed up, concerned that commuters will try to park in lots reserved for county visitors.

RTD and the county have cooperated as far as looking for additional funding. They went to CDOT, which administers grants for transit projects. But the project has to start before anyone will know if the grant will be awarded.

Uneasiness remains

Jeffco's concerns are just part of the uneasiness that has enveloped the communities along the West Corridor on the eve of construction. That in itself is not unusual for projects of this scope.

While a great number of folks are eager to see the trains running and have few concerns other than what the fare will be, people who were dead set against it at the start are even more set now. FasTracks passed with just under 60 percent of the vote. That means in any group of five people, two voted no.

But even some who want light rail and the rest of the FasTracks system are having pangs of buyer's remorse as they look down the barrel of four years of construction and the details, big and small, that aren't turning out as they hoped or expected.

We set out to walk every foot of the line to find out how people felt about it. With our late summer journey over, we headed into fall poised for early construction to start on some of the bridges, a harbinger of major work coming next summer.

Getting to meet residents along the way in their homes, to be greeted and welcomed by each one we approached without exception, made us even more aware of how anxious they were to be heard.

Each living room, backyard and kitchen we were invited into was different, but the families there all had the same concerns: They want to preserve what they have, while much around them is changing.

Hearing their concerns gave us a broader understanding of the project, and will help inform our coverage as construction pro- gresses.

The neighborhoods fairly resonate with issues - ranging from property condemnation and business relocations, to home values, to walls through the communities, even down to the disruption of the train bells and horns.

The other FasTracks corridors are anywhere from one to five years behind this, the first. There are numerous planning meetings, open to the public, for all of them as RTD tries to nail down the details for 125 additional miles of FasTracks.

How construction unfolds along the West Corridor will set the tone, for better or for worse, for hundreds of other metro neighborhoods and communities where the trains are still a ways down the line.

About the series

FasTracks kicks off in earnest next year when crews start building the 12-mile light-rail West Corridor line through diverse and history-rich neighborhoods from downtown to Golden.

All eyes are on this first line, as it will set the tone for the nine other corridors to be built in the massive $6 billion transit system approved by voters in 2004.

To begin telling this story, the Rocky's team of reporter Kevin Flynn, above center, photographer Darin McGregor and videographer Laressa Bachelor trekked the length of the West Corridor. We invite you to come along, and experience our amazing urban journey of discovery.

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