Fastracks West Corridor 6th Ave Bridge Roll Out Next Weekend

UPDATE 4/23/2010 5:00 PM: POSTPONED ONE WEEK. Due to weather, RTD has postponed the roll-out by one week.

The RTD FasTracks West Corridor team will roll out the main span of a double-track light rail bridge across 6th Avenue just east of Simms & Union the weekend of April 23rd through April 25th, 2010. All lanes of 6th Avenue between Simms & Union and Kipling Street will close at 8:00 p.m. on Friday, April 23rd to prepare the area for the roll-out, scheduled to begin early Saturday morning. 6th Avenue and the frontage road will re-open by 5:30 a.m. Monday, April 26th.

For the past several months, crews have been assembling the steel tied arch structure along the south side of the highway. Now, crews will transport the bridge into its final position over the highway via a large dolly consisting of two 35’ platforms with eight axles each. The arch will travel on guided rollers which are pushed by hydraulic rams capable of up to 270,000 pounds per square inch of force. At speeds ranging from 10 to 25 feet per hour, the actual roll-out is expected to take up to 30 hours for the bridge to connect with the north span already in place across the north 6th Avenue Frontage Road.

Had the structure been built over 6th Avenue, traveling motorists would have endured months of lane closures and traffic congestion. This approach to bridge construction enabled West Corridor crews to work in a safe environment outside of traffic and significantly minimize impacts to commuters using the 6th Avenue freeway.

“If the bridge had been constructed in place over the highway, we would have had to impact traffic on 6th Avenue many times over the course of construction instead of just one weekend as we are doing,” said Jim Starling, RTD’s West Corridor Project Manager. “This is a much more efficient process that minimizes inconvenience to the traveling public.”

The 12.1-mile West Corridor light rail project is the first rail line of RTD’s FasTracks program to start construction. The West Corridor line will operate between Denver Union Station in downtown Denver and the Jefferson County Government Center in Golden; serving Denver, Lakewood, the Denver Federal Center, Golden and Jefferson County. The corridor is scheduled to open to the public in 2013.

(article courtesy RTD FasTracks)

More information on 

• the FasTracks West Corridor 
• Overview
• Detailed aerial map (pdf)
• the FasTracks Project
• Existing RTD Light Rail service
• Siemens Spec Sheet on Denver's SD-160 Light Rail vehicle (pdf)