DENVER — Tall buildings are part of the reason for Denver RTD’s ongoing grade-crossing problems on two commuter rail lines, the transit agency told federal regulators.
The Denver Post reports that the RTD told the Federal Railroad Administration a software patch is coming to soon to fix the problems, in which the tall buildings block GPS signals the system needs to allow crossing gates to operate on the A Line to the Denver Airport, and the yet-to-open G Line to western suburbs.
The issue was revealed in an action plan the RTD was required to file with the FRA by Dec. 15 to show its efforts to resolve the crossing-gate issues, which have existed since the airport line opened in April 2016. In a November letter, the FRA had said it might revoke the waiver which allows the airport route to operate if it did not receive the RTD’s plan by the deadline. [See “FRA could shut down Denver airport line because of crossing-gate issues,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 7, 2018.]
The RTD plan also asks the FRA to grant a similar waiver to allow the start of operations on the G Line, which was originally supposed to open in October 2016.
The complete RTD plan is available here.
