Persistent troubles with safety gates along the new University of Colorado A-Line have forced transportation officials to station crews with flags for 24 hours a day at all 10 of the at-grade crossings since the airport train opened.
The problems — including gates that drop when no train is approaching an intersection and gates that didn’t fully drop before a train goes through — have been addressed, but the crossings have not yet been certified, the Regional Transportation District says.
For nearly a year before the $1.2 billion rail line opened on April 22, RTD officials knew about the crossing gate glitches, but they were determined to launch the service on time. In addition to flaggers, RTD has put together a rapid-response team — a so-called GO Team — to get to any intersection in less than 20 minutes should an issue arise.
In the Colorado Public Utilities Commission’s order dated April 15, the commission stated that until each crossing “is operating as required and the Commission Rail Staff has verified that the crossing is operating as ordered, RTD must continue to post flaggers at the crossing and have the GO Team available to mitigate continuing issues.”
The PUC, which oversees all road-rail crossings, felt that those measures were enough to ensure the crossings were safe enough to allow the A-Line to open on time.
“The rail line is operating in a completely safe manner, and the PUC would not allow us to operate unless it was safe to do so,” said Nate Currey, RTD spokesman. “We met all of the conditions of the PUC order when we entered into service April 22, and we currently meet all of the conditions contained in the PUC orders.”
RTD said it did not have enough personnel to cover all the requirements, prompting the PUC to agree to the flaggers and the GO Team.
All of those measures are being paid for by Denver Transit Partners — the contractor overseeing — with no added cost to taxpayers, Currey said. Calls to DTP seeking comment were not returned.
RTD board chair Tom Tobiassen said the new technology being used on the A-Line — including Positive Train Control (PTC) to prevent derailments or collisions — is a challenge to implement.
“We are the only transit agency that has Positive Train Control built into its system, everybody is watching what we do,” Tobiassen said Tuesday. “Everybody is going to learn a lot from this.”
“But I’m confident we will do everything we can to make the system safe,” he said.
RTD, which has been working with Denver Transit Partners to fix the PTC software problems, said it has begun its final review process for the crossings and expects that to take up to four weeks before its final update to the PUC, Currey said Tuesday.
“At this point, the crossings are safe,” said Terry Bote, spokesman for the PUC. “We believe the measures put in place ensures safety.”
Still, the crossings are not operating as RTD indicated they would by April 22, Bote said, adding “we still have concerns.”
In a PUC order dated March 30, the commission said there have been “serious operational issues with this corridor since the Phase 4 RTD/UPRR (Union Pacific Railroad) joint crossing cut-overs that started the week of May 18, 2015.”
That order also states that before getting the PUC’s final approval, RTD has to “schedule field demonstrations with Commission Staff for Staff to verify that all elements of the crossing are complete and that the crossings are operating as designed and ordered.”
The March 30 order said the problems include:
• Crossings that activate despite the absence of trains;
• Crossings that fail to activate with a high-speed commuter rail vehicle approaching and traveling through crossings;
• Commuter rail vehicles entering crossings before gates have fully dropped;
• Blank-out signs —a piece of equipment that reinforces the message that a train is coming — that are illuminated when they should not or are not illuminated when they should be;
• Traffic signals entering into a flash condition due to failure to receive gate down indications.
Union Pacific, which has trains that use the crossings, suggested in a response that the opening of the A-Line be delayed by one month, but the commission denied that request after RTD submitted its response.
RTD officials stated in March that any delay of the opening “could cause adverse economic repercussions to RTD and/or its concessionaire for the EAGLE Project. RTD claims that any delay would deprive the travelling public of the benefits of an ‘otherwise operation-ready mass transit corridor.”
Denver Post staff writer John Aguilar contributed to this report.
Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907, mwhaley@denverpost.com or @montewhaley
