Most of Denver’s light-rail system was delayed Wednesday afternoon for nearly an hour after a train struck a pedestrian at the Alameda Station.
The pedestrian was hit at about 3:30 p.m, said Regional Transportation District spokesman Scott Reed.
Police said the person — a young adult male — was taken to a hospital with critical injuries.
It was the second serious accident involving a pedestrian and a light-rail train in three weeks. Naythan Cordova, 41, was killed by a northbound train on the south edge of downtown Feb. 12.
At about the same time the pedestrian was hit Wednesday, the wheels of a light-rail train popped off the track near Broadway and Interstate 25, causing more delays, Reed said.
RTD started using buses at about 3:40 p.m. Trains were running again by 4:35 p.m. but were behind schedule for up to an hour later.
Some passengers complained about being told to leave the trains in the sub-freezing weather without adequate instructions as to when the buses would come and where they would be going.
As the delays rippled through the system, more than two dozen passengers milled about at the light-rail station at 16th and Stout streets at about 4:30 p.m.
Ed Donovan, who teaches in the criminal justice department at Metropolitan State University of Denver, said what is normally a 10-minute commute from the Auraria campus to his car had taken more than an hour Wednesday.