From what I've seen in other videos RTD is doing what they can to build a good transit system, especially with the commuter rail. The uphill battle is convincing more of the public that it's a worthwhile option over cars. If you haven't lived here you don't realize just how car dependent our urban areas are, and getting people out of that mindset is the biggest challenge. Kudos to Denver for implementing these trains.
I think a "carrot and stick" model would help get folks on local trains. Cheap fares, frequent trains, increased housing near stations, and buses that assist moving folks to stations and expand system is the carrot. While increased parking fees, smaller parking lots is the stick.
I took RTD for a lot of years, even when I had a car because I liked doing a little extra walking and it was good for the environment. I think a lot of their problems are from people who run things not using it and not listening to the people who do. Also from a customer service department that assumes you wouldn't be taking RTD if you had any other options.
@@lisadioguardi5742 There have been a couple of studies that show when elected officials agree to use public transportation (only public transportation) for one month within the next year ridership improves. Walking in another's shoes or riding in another's train/bus seat opens avenues for improving service. Additionally, doing so sets an example.
Frequencies are too poor. Our agencies never have the will to understand that you induce transit demand the same way you do for cars. Higher frequencies, higher frequencies, higher frequencies. And of course good coverage. But the biggest thing that will give people faith in public transit as an option will be keeping frequencies at 10 minutes and fast at all costs. The visual presence of transit, and the belief that it is always available FAST. Improve rapid transit coverage and maintain constantly high frequencies. You have to earn the faith of your riders, they will not engage with transit in the hopes that it one day gets better.
Living in Denver, there's a lot of shortcomings. Though this video was on a fast section, for much of the network these trains are absurdly slow, plus the frequency issues mentioned. The way things are in the suburbs these serve, you pretty much have to drive to the station anyway (I've ridden my bicycle a few times). It rarely comes out ahead of driving in terms of door-to-door time or cost, usually far worse, so as much as I like taking the train it's often hard to justify and I probably use it once a month at best. I pretty much only use it when parking at the destination (downtown Denver) would be a hassle or expensive, but pretty much any other destination it's not worth it.
The most useful part of the system might be the line to Denver International Airport. Before that was built, it wasn't very convenient to get to the airport which is located way outside of the city.
I used to live in Denver, and I frequently visit there now. Some thoughts: Denver has some of the highest basic transit fares in the country. This needs to come down significantly. The pandemic really put a spanner in everything. The G Line was a pet project of the board member who represented Arvada, where the line ends. Recently, Union Station became a magnet for crime and drug users. They temporarily closed the restrooms, and people are afraid to go into the station now.
I had revisited Denver twice since I left in 2006 and both times I used public transportation regularly and I paid $52 for a regional weekly pass as I also used Light Rail 🚈. 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2014 and 2018 awards for best public transportation system in the country.
This train appeared to be well filled. Nothing wrong with it for a commuter rail. With gasoline over $4/gal. I'd be on this pronto. Used to live in Massachusetts and would ride the "T" Greenline to BC college football games as well as basketball with the Celtics, baseball with Red Sox. Well designed line to many event venues. Save $$ in parking fees in Boston, no traffic jam leaving town to the suburbs after a game. Now live in Tampa Bay FL area... no commuter train service at all, only buses that get stuck in commuter traffic. I really miss the rail service. Americans need a paradigm change... forget electric cars, give me electrified rails any day.
Why are almost all US commuter trains so damn ugly? This rectangle on rails was built in 2015 but its exterior design makes a Coradia , Desiro or a Flirt look like some futuristic train from the year 2050.
Texrail, Arrow, and the future DART Silver Line are using the Stadler FLIRT. Caltrain is electrifying and using the KISS as part of the modernization program.
To Europeans it might seem that way. But to Americans it’s the standard. You may have noticed, everything looks different in America. The cars, busses, literally everything. It’s more about culture at this point. Also Stainless Steel is easier to clean and reduces maintenance cost because… well, it’s stainless.
Very good overview of a short segment of the RTD regional/commuter rail routes. With EMUs, all-day/7-day clockface schedules, level boarding and Proof of Payment fares, it's the closest U.S. system to a S-Bahn/RER format. The lack of run-through capacity to the south of Union Station is an issue, but the A Line is an outstanding operation already with 15-min service most of the day and the G & N Lines at 30-min intervals. The short B Line hasn't reached its full promise, not reaching Boulder and Longmont as planned. But will say describing the system as only completed a couple lines out of the FasTracks plan is bit of a misnomer. Everything is built but the Boulder/Longmont portion of the B Line and the connection of the D Line to 38th & Blake.
My parents live in Boulder, and my brother used to live in Longmont, now in Berthoud. He takes the bus into town from one of the park and rides along I25 when he was commuting. He's a computer programmer, and now mostly telecommutes. But not everyone can do that. I've heard about the idea of having that line between Denver and Boulder out to Longmont, seems perfect, the track is already there, just would need to be upgraded. Are they ever going to extend that B line out to Boulder/Longmont? A ton of traffic along 36, maybe able to ease some of that if they had good regular service to Denver. The buses are halfway decent, I usually take the AB bus to Boulder when I fly in. Takes about the same amount of time as if someone were to pick me up at the airport. I've taken the train from Denver airport before to downtown directly, and that was fine, however at the time the crossing guards were not working properly so they had to have people at each crossing to make sure they went down. Odd I thought,. Why they didn't build that line with separate grade's, i.e. use viaducts and bridges to separate train traffic from crossing vehicle traffic, then they wouldn't have had to deal with so many crossing guards failing.
People are just to car-centric in this country, more cities need to be promoting this... Also, some sort of front-range regional rail line would be great. Trains running from Cheyenne to Colorado Springs or Pueblo could help ease the heavy traffic on I-25...
Only if you can get people out of their cars. Car dependency and lack of public transit or negativity towards using it is a prime reason for US's obesity epidemic.
I use RTD quite often and honestly the longer the trains are around, the busier they get. The light rail trains that people love to hate on are actually packed in the middle of the day around lunch, no matter if it’s the weekday or weekend. They are obviously packed in the rush hour commute times as well. The transit oriented development has been slow to arrive but I think it’s coming soon. There’s a lot around the first couple stations on the A and N lines, as well as around some of the light rail stations, especially between Osage and Broadway. Denver city council recently approved new zoning around train stations in the city limit, and they might do the same around busy bus route stations as well! Denver will be a much different city in 15 years. If we build an intercity train from Pueblo-Denver-Fort Collins, it would probably follow the B line corridor to Boulder and Longmont, meaning Fastracks will probably be finished way before 2050. The infrastructure bill will probably help a bit with all that as well. I’m glad you seem to be enjoying some time around the Denver area!
@@joememphis1571 there’s actually some major planning underway for a 90-125 mph intercity train between Pueblo and Fort Collins, and there’s even talks about connecting it all the way to Cheyenne and maybe even Albuquerque someday. That would probably be a different service than what the initial Pueblo-Fort Collins would be to be fair, but they are also even planning on making a connection with the SW Chief via a spur from Pueblo to La Junta for a transfer service with the front range service. There’s a lot Colorado is planning for at the moment, and it’s just not very known because of the fact that it’s just planning I reckon
I dont know how anyone could possibly criticise this system with a straight face either, it is now the 7th busiest commuter rail system in the US and every single system above it has between 7x and 11x the track mileage - in fact the only commuter rail system that get similar riders per mile are the two main New York city systems (Long Island RR and MetroNorth RR). Could it be better? Sure, and there are cities Denver could look to like Sydney or Perth in Australia. But the system has some decent bones, you mention the upzoning to come, and then what would really be missing is through-running under the city.
When I lived in Denver for a few years I took this train as my regular commuter to my job, when I wanted to go downtown or to the stadiums, when I visited places in the city near a station, and out to the airport. It saved me a ton of miles on my car and was was always my preferred form of transportation, but I still had to have a car to to grocery shopping and anything else. I really loved RTD while I was there, it's way better than other rail transit systems I have seen in the US. But until these cities stop building themselves for cars only the rail won't be as effective as it could be.
A lot of these cities used to have rail based public transport such as Streetcars, or trolley buses, as well as some suburban Rail services. I firmly believe that America's reliance on the Auto industry contributed to a mass reliance on cars and little interest in rail.
Good subject, crappy video. Stay on the shot, ¼ sec is not enough, you need a steady cam, leave the text up long enough to read it and check your spelling.
I’ve found The routes are mostly ok on the commuter lines. The G takes you to some interesting and useful places and the A of course is going to the most useful place of all. The A is also one of the only ones with some real noticeable development occurring along it. I’m hoping more can happen with the others. The trains are so much nicer to ride on for the long routes and the speed is so appreciated. I’m extremely grateful we didn’t just get more LRT expanding far and wide. Very frustrated that we’ve been waiting years for anything to improve Colfax and so many other very well used bus routes though. The issues with costs and lack of operators is really feeling like a massive weight on the progress of RTD. So many cancelled buses and trains just in my part of the city alone. But I still use it and really try to help others learn about it and hopefully feel comfortable using it too.
You say that this station looks as tidy as any European station... No, it looks way better. In Europe there is filthy graffiti and vandalism of all sorts everywhere, I'm impressed by how well kept US stations are. Also 2:12 was that a loud burp?? Jesus christ be more careful man, you freaked me out
I live in Denver now and take RTD to work sometimes. I work a hybrid schedule and work in office only 2 days a week. My biggest problem with RTD is frequency and reliability. Trains are regularly canceled without notice and with 15/30 minute headways you suddenly can be delayed an hour. The train nearest to my house runs on a 30 minute headway but pre-covid it ran 15 minutes. It takes 27 minutes to go 11 miles. There are speed limit signs for 79 miles an hour that the train passes doing 20 (I've paced the train with my truck). I know they're having a hard time finding operators with how genuinely bad the pay is for the cost of living in Denver. This morning I realized I wasn't going to make my train for my 1.5 hour trip to the office (I chose to live far away from my office so I know it's going to be a trot)(The actual train portion of my journey is about 1 hour but I need to walk 20 minutes from the light rail station to my office because the tech center is an automobile based hellscape straight out of office space). So I decided to drive today and got to work about 30 minutes before I would have by transit. RTD is slow, unreliable, and infrequent. I use it as much as it makes sense to but it's frustrating to support the organization which seems to continuously miss the mark.
The problem with most new/planned lines is getting people out of their cars and funding!! Politicians can also be a big problem. Most of them have cars. A great many big city people do not have cars and have always depended on public transit. I give Denver kudos for trying to expand their rail system. Thank you Thibault for this review😀😀💚💚
Hopefully the ridership goes up with the soaring gas prices. Might want to check out the FrontRunner train in Utah. It runs from Ogden to Provo, UT. It also connects to Salt Lake City's street rail system.
@@Fidel_cashflo time to upzone the city then. Dsnsify the suburbs, especially in the areas around the stations. Abolish R-1 single family zoning and parking minimums as well.
I live in the Philadelphia suburbs and we have as noted the same type of rail cars that Denver is using. However it does look like Denver has a few things better tan our SEPTA system. Most of our suburban stations only have low level stations making boarding slower and harder for handicapped passengers. The frequencies mentioned in Denver also beat ours. Almost all our lines only have hourly service off peak and night time. Our last trains from the city also usually stop around midnight. Your trains also have the dedicated space for packages and bicycles while SEPTA trains only have the old traditional baggage racks running over the seats. We do have the advantage that most of our lines have had passenger service on lines the private railroads used for local freight service as well as commuters. Most of our stations are also usually near town centers or nearby residential areas. Your system even if the stations are not close to residences or other traffic centers can work if they have good coordinated bus service. Our newest commuter rail system was the Lindenwald high speed line that was built in New Jersey. Most of their stations have large parking lots around them but they also usually have connecting bus service to shopping, health or educational facilities somewhat near the stations that help drive ridership. It also does run 24 hours a day with very frequent service most of the day. So you have the bones for a great service with some room for improvement.
Better frequencies everyone. People do not want to wait or be unsure of when a bus or train is coming. It doesn't happen overnight, the faith of riders must be earned. Then better coverage, as it serves as a force multiplier. More riders accessed and more destinations available. With high frequencies across the board the riders will come, but they won't come while the transit sucks in hopes it improves.
Hi, not an expert on transit, but building stations in industrial areas isnt a great way to attract ridership. That is one reason why some newer light rail suffer from low ridership. A large portion of the northern leg of the Metrorail Green line in Miami is an example to that. It's not light rail, but same principle. I think for a spread out metro area like Denver, perhaps more street running light rail in other core areas outside of downtown and proper BRT would get attract more riders and maybe connect them to these far flung commuter train stations.
Hmmm depends on the place. Industrial areas tend to have a LOT of foot traffic, and workers need connections from their homes to stations near their workplace. Try checking out how they do these kinds of connections in Asia. There are quite a lot of new lines that have these kinds of connections.
Stop bashing RTD and the FasTrack project! It is already amazing for North American standards! The A Line that goes to the airport has a daily ridership of 20k pre-pandemic and 15-minute frequencies!
Passenger trains and buses are not measured in economic terms, as in Europe. They are seen as a expense, a public luxury that express the ability of a city to afford them. No one expects public transit to sustain itself in the US.
My dear, listen to me carefully: *NOT everything relies in direct profitability. Americans NEED to understand that!* I don not have anything with you or them! Thank you.
That’s socialist agenda! Everything in the land of the free NEEDS to make profits! We also don’t want to pay ANY taxes and expect government handouts, too!
As someone who operated the the a b and g line for a pairing company with rtd called denver transit operators there is a dark side to rtd that many people don't know about like under pay and a 10 and a half hour day in the b line sucks but they were trying to take away are tso and there are times we don't even have them and right now with it being free there will be more homeless people and more drug addicted people and what we do for being fra regulated and the every other run you would have someone jump in front of your train yell at you or ask you to wait so they can get on and go do something but the company and people around us suck and we need more money for what we do
More than most it really depends on whether people will give up their cars and all that come with it for a well designed commuter system. I hope they succeed!
The problem in the US is they fess over ENVIRONMENTAL crap to no end .. and it always takes DECADES to finish a project. Can you believe they built the Empire state Building in , I think it was just over 12 months ... Things are getting so ridiculous that people dont even want to propose a project as the hurtles are too much and to long ..China is building up in s flash and things aren't falling down ... Thanks to the obsess on environment .. MORE damage is done as the project is nearly ever finished or started ...
There's also a ton of NIMBYism, where people are vehemently against any rail being constructed within an x-mile radius of them, where x is as far as their perception goes. As well as a ton of pearl-clutching with people believing trains just move the dirty poors or whatever closer to them
Your introductory description of the RTD suggests to me that Denver rail enthusiasts used similar arguments to the ones used in Los Angeles to get public support for its Metrolink commuter rail system. This was promoted by railroads to utilize already existing lines or the rights of way alongside to save money and obtain a system quickly. The railroads owning that right of way were eager to sell their urban properties to the newly formed public transport agency in a deal where they get the right to move freight late at night, but no longer have to pay property taxes on their suburban and urban right or way. This is perhaps why that Pecos Junction station was in a less desirable location. So many years have passed since those railroad companies have carried passengers themselves and suburban housing meant for people who own cars, were not built near noisy rail lines for nearly a hundred years now in American western cities. It will take time for transit oriented housing to be built closer to those outer stations.
MetroLink operates better where the system is supported at the city level. The Ventura line isn't well supported with transportation sales tax funding thus it suffers a sparce schedule. While other MetroLink routes have frequent service - the Ventura line lacks evening and weekend service.
Pecos Junction is where it is because the B and G Lines intersect there. Pecos Street itself has connecting bus service. An alternative LRT route between Downtown Denver and Arvada was considered, but suburban interests found it too slow and residents of the Denver neighborhoods in between included NIMBYs. The commuter rail line was studied in the late 1980's as a DMU operation and the compromise between the LRT idea and the commuter rail idea became the G-Line. Property taxes have nothing to do with it. Colorado has centrally-assessed utilities (Oregon also has these). The entire G-Line still has freight service next to it and assessment values are based on traffic, not the amount of ROW.
As a planner I love what Denver and its residents are trying to do here. Public transit really is the solution to fixing traffic. I think what Denver shows however is the difference between alternatives to driving versus viable alternatives to driving. If people have to give something up, usually time, to take public transit instead of driving why would they? While in a vacuum RTD is a great system, a real leader in North America especially, until the mode share of the entire metro area of Denver is more equal, the ridership will remain low and the system won't meet its full potential. It's the same issue a lot of mass transit projects have in Canada and the USA. They're great individually, but they aren't integrated into the urban fabric.
I think the B Line's proposed extension to Boulder is what would drive things for FasTraks in the future. Right now, only the A Line is proving it's worth but the potential is there. I do think though, the idea should have been constructing to DIA (as they did); North to Boulder and south to Colorado Springs to truly get FastTrak to top tier
RTD didn't experience the Silverliner V cracks & fatigue that SEPTA did because RTD ordered all their cars high-level boarding only. The steps for low-level platforms apparently added extra weight, leading to the issues SEPTA found.
Nice to see how electrification in the USA plays out as well as electrification in other parts of the world including the UK. As electrification is the best way to cut Co2 emissions and bring down global warming.
🚶👍🚂 ✋ Extra, good job 👏👌🤝 Wow nice view, I like to see new places ✌ Great movie 👍 Bravo 👋 And I have a new movie from a walk around the city 😊 Regards, DJ Janusz from Warsaw Poland ✌ 🇵🇱✋
I like this system and I am from the East Coast. The line to the airport is especially useful and delivers you right downtown. Every city in the US should be that easy!
The next station up the B line, and also the terminus, is very idyllic. The station is on a platform surrounded by a new park. Unfortunately, only hourly service to that station, since it's kind of a stub until the rest of the B line is finished. Pecos Junction is served by two lines, so it's the best place to catch a train coming into downtown from the north. The views into the railyards are a nice benefit for railfans too.
We always take the airport train in Denver. The other use for the train would be to get to the gym. For that I need to take a bus, to a train, to another train, to another train. Whole trip, 90 minutes each way, 25 minutes by car. When you say western US cities were planned around cars, you are so right. If we get the system more built out, it would be a lot easier to use. Chicago has a much better system, much more useful, so it is much busier. NYC too.
“to get to the gym”. That highlights the issue with most US cities right there. Gyms, and really all amenities shouldn't be all consolidated in a single/few locations. US zoning regulations is what makes it so difficult for pedestrians. A properly planned city would allow amenities to be located where they need to be, so people travel as little as possible to get to where they need to go.
RTD stations always tend to be rather clean. Quite impressive. They do a good job with maintenance and cleanliness but I think they're just trying to compensate for not having FasTracks done on time... Their trains are almost always on time! I suggest you review their light rail service too!
Interesting thing about FasTracks. The B line extension (the most delayed and important part of the program).Will not be electrified like the rest of the system and instead RTD will run diesel trains on BNSF's tracks. It is cheaper than building new electrified tracks but the project still cant be finished because BNSF jacked up the price for sharing tracks above the Fastracks budget. And even if it is done, the frequency will suck because the BNSF corridor is single and class 2-3 track for most of the extension and because of slow freight trains.
Much cleaner than filthy french and portuguese stations I have been to. Decent video. Shows how land use is atrocious in Denver. Must replace park and rides with housing and increase busses. Additionally, much better frequency than GO in Toronto.
RTD is a good start, but man do they need to bring those fares down. The A line is so expensive that it's not really a viable alternative for workers at the airport (A HUGE employer in the region). Bringing this fare down, increasing frequency (another truly necessary improvement, mostly on the commuter lines), and continuing to advocate for infill development around RTD stops will bring people to the train. It's a ways off but I think as RTD continues to make improvements the riders will follow. They're a pretty young transit system that's taking on the monumental task of building and running a regional rail system in the Car-addicted United States - something that's really ambitious in this day and age, and a lot of the finer points of running such a system have been forgotten. I think if the city chose small goals to make improvements and delivered on them successfully, coupled with pandemic ridership rebound (hopefully), some trust will be restored to the system. Also, your point in showing how isolated and difficult to access the Pecos Junction station is is very important, and I think it's part of what RTD is targeting deliberately for future growth. It seems silly now, but as property values continue to increase in Denver, many of these (currently) light industrial areas are going to be targeted for redevelopment into residential and commercial areas. Anchoring them with a commuter rail line NOW is absolutely vital, it will only be more expensive later, and without the zoning changes and advocacy for Transit-oriented development at and around these stops, all of that housing would end up sprawling out into the car-dependent Denver suburbia. It's definitely forward-thinking and seems like a pipe-dream now, but transit projects are enormous infrastructure projects that affect our cities not only for decades, but for generations. The front-range metropolitan area is primed to keep growing and it's going to need places to put all of those new net residents, and it's clear the status quo is not working.
After the line to DIA, the focus should have been the line to Boulder, these are definitely the highest utility lines when the system is complete since the actually serve major destinations. I dont get all these short lines to suburban park-and-rides with zero within walking distance outside of Union Station. I visited in 2016 and rode the line from DIA and explored Union Station, I was blown away at how fantastic the rail line from the airport was and Union Station. Unfortunately it sounds like Union Station has become infested with drug riddled homeless, they have to fix that problem ASAP or they will destroy this RTD system.
A 30 minute frequency on a short journey will not encourage many passengers. Every 10 minutes would be getting to the point where you don't need a timetable, you just turn up and go. When I visited Denver in 1977 I seem to recall that 2/3 of the downtown area was parking lots. I suspect that won't have changed much, so no encouragement to use public transport that way either. Build on the parking lots and you could be in business. It needs a joined up approach to make it work. I'm not convinced that the will is there.
Thinking of the seats, no power outlets, no WiFi, and lack of bathrooms, these trains are designed for short rides of a half hour or less, they're not designed for long-haul. Which makes sense on the current network, but with plans of expanding as far as Longmont and maybe further yet someday in the future, these might become bigger problems. Maybe they'll have different trains for those longer routes with better facilities. Though I don't think that's too much of a consideration considering the "2044" timeline, in my experience, really means sometime between the Sun going Red Giant and swallowing the Earth and the Heat Death of the Universe. Or at the very least so long from now that these cars will be at least due for renovation if not replacement. It is possible to go between cars though, those doors are unlocked and people do so regularly (I was a little confused at first when I realized we're actually allowed to do that), sometimes the doors are even propped open. When two married pairs are coupled together (only done on the A Line to the airport) you can't go from one to the other due to the driver cabs though. Though like said, the other car looks exactly the same so you didn't miss anything, really the only reason to go car-to-car is if one is more crowded than the other. Agree with a lot of this analysis. Another major problem is that, while it goes reasonably fast on the section shown here, for much of the network these trains are really slow. So in terms of cost and door-to-door time they're rarely competitive with driving, usually much worse, so they're only really useful if going somewhere that parking is difficult, impossible, or expensive, or if traffic is going to be terrible. The whole commuter and light rail systems are mostly designed and useful for going between downtown and suburbs, or going to the airport. Makes a ton of sense for people going to the Baseball game for these reasons though, I've had a few evening rides that were packed because of that on what would usually be empty trains.
I love the trains in Denver. They have a few issues but all of these are improving and the ridership, transit oriented development, and system are all increasing because of fastracks with now colfax brt on deck. Good job Denver!
First of all, not sure what the motivation is behind the podcast however while I am not familiar with the current ridership on the commuter rails I can say every time I ride the light rail lines they are very busy. However, there are problems with the light rail lines such as the lines that head southeast is alongside a freeway and the ones that branch off to head east and the line to Aurora is in the center of the freeway, there has been very little Transit-Oriented Development along the routes (see the freeway issue) and there are few things outside the core that can be accessed on foot and connecting bus service in many of the suburban areas sucks. To judge the Gold Line right now is a little difficult since it only opened right before the pandemic hit and it was late opening due to issues with the crossing signals not being activated by the trains. Also, the redesign of the Union Station area made it more difficult for people to transfer from commuter trains to light rail. Before the changes, the light rail line station was adjacent to the station platforms however RTD put in a new underground bus plaza and moved the light rail trains two blocks away. So now instead of having been able to make a direct transfer which I did several times coming off the California Zephyr and heading to my motel which is on one of the light rails, you have to walk two long blocks which isn't bad unless you are carrying luggage from your flight or Amtrak and if the weather cooperates. Of course, if the weather is bad you can walk across the street, go down into the bus terminal, walk through the bus terminal, and come back up on the other side.
I think it's because of development in the area that they had to move the light rail lines over by the freight lines, and my understanding is they had to seek an exemption to run light rail adjacent to freight lines. I agree that it is problematic to have the Light Rail station a few blocks from the rest of Union Station, but they couldn't keep it there while making a connection to the South when other roads and buildings were in the way. So I'd say that old and new development caused them to make such a drastic change.
Wow, RTD! Thank you for your videos! When I was living in Colorado, I only managed to ride on the commuter train once but I took the Light Rail several times. I hope you can visit Indonesia in the future, we have some brand new commuter trains and rapid transit here, as well as improved long-distance trains!
I see a lot of comments about electrification. What most do not realize is that it takes a fair amount of power to electrify a train line. Where does this power come from? Coal, nuclear, hydroelectric or fairy dust? You cannot provide sufficient electric power from wind or solar. A commuter train has to run on a regular schedule. You cannot run a train without a fair amount of co2 being generated. Electricity has to come one those 3 sources mentioned.
Wind and solar provide 35% of Colorado's electrical use today and it's only going to increase. Coal provides 37% statewide, but that will decrease rapidly as plants are shut down and wind and solar's per kilowatt costs continue to decrease. They're already lower than coal's and natural gas.
Im from Denver and I use these trains and busses constantly, the biggest problem for me is the bathroom situation. And it's because of the drug users and homeless people. They don't want to put bathrooms on the train because people will use drugs in them. They don't even put them at stations. So if you have to use the bathroom you're pretty much screwed until you can get to your stop and find a spot to use the bathroom away from the station
RTD needs to extend their trains beyond union station and run them at high frequency. And replace the light rail trains with automated metro trains on the E and D lines then separate them from the W
Great video as usual, thanks. I leant a lot in a few min utes! However, is it a train, a tram, an LRV, or an EMU? Oh, why do US trains have that bell ringing when they enter stations? It must be a nuisance if you live close to the tracks? Stay safe.
An EMU just means that the traction is distributed throughout the carriages rather than being locomotive haul. Trams in general are EMUs, and so are Trams, but there have been loco-hualed trams (specially in the steam era)
2:02 I’m not gonna lie, the entire Denver commuter network went from nothing, to a lot of track in a very short period of time. I’m surprised it got this far! I’m Orr surprised that more lines are planned and that it won’t be completed by 2050
I want to believe that they're saying 2050 as a buffer so they don't set aggressive unachievable milestones after getting rocked by the pandemic. I'm hopeful it won't really take that long, but a transformative rail transformation can take generations for a city to fully fund and build out, so even if it does, it will ultimately be worth it. At least all of these low-density stops have acres of vacant and under-used lots to upzone for dense transit-oriented development. I think there's a bright future ahead for RTD they just need to get some of the fine tuning down with fare prices and frequency increases.
RTD has a lot of ambitions, but the problem is that they're in Denver, which is near San Francisco-levels of NIMBY hell. Lines have either had to realign, funding has gotten cut, projects are stuck in near indefinite deadlock. And what is there, is not very useful. No one is taking a train to an industrial area, let alone waiting at a station near it. RTD needs to go CalTrain and say "fuck you" to the "property developers" (read: money laundering schemes) and put their own housing and mixed-use developments near stations, along with lines for the suburbs that reach the inner core, with additional reuse of land for that likewise. Denver is hell to drive in, worse than Sacramento and thats saying something. Using land for actual human needs and scale would help bring this city to a life it may have never seen before, a real vibrant and harmonious community.
The battle cry in the Northeast is Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). Redeveloping existing rights-of-way since they're never going to build new lines in the megalopolis. A number of towns in CT have completely rezoned and redone their downtowns around the new Hartford line stations.
I can see some distinct differences between RTD SILVERLINER Vs vs SEPTA SILVERLINER Vs. First the floor is navy blue on SEPTA. Second, the bike racks are clearly filling the gaps of the original Silverliner 1+1 door design on SEPTA. And there’s no conductors. Septa Silverliner Vs have a control panel for conductors next to the doors which in my opinion is convenient for them but there are some buttons on the panel that still work even if the panel is deactivated. So if someone accidentally pushes the buzzer, the train engineer could stop the train by accident.
The assembly plant in South Philadelphia (Weccacoe & Wolf Street) has since closed, with its last car delivered in 2015 (MBTA coaches were also built here). Now an Amazon distribution terminal.
I rode the RTD W line in 2017, which is a light rail line using Siemens cars from the 1990s with high floors and fabric seats. There were quite a few people on the train, but enough room to pick which car and which bench I wanted to sit on. The frequency on that line was about every 15-30 minutes while the B line commuter train had a frequency of about an hour. The G line was completed, but crossing problems kept the line from being opened. While I do like Denver's Union Station, I don't like that the light rail platforms are a couple of blocks from the commuter rail and amtrak platforms
The line to the airport was a game-changer. You can take the train to downtown and get a rental car there for 1/3 the price at the airport. The line to Golden is great too, but disappointed it is a couple miles from the city center with few good options from the station to downtown. I've been visiting CO every year since 2004 and the growth has been astounding. The city and metro have grown so fast it is impossible for transit to keep up. A few years ago they said almost 10,000 people were moving to Denver each month. People are commuting from the mountains on I-70, Castle Rock to the south, and east from Aurora. I-70 west has become a logjam all the way out to Idaho Springs. When I'd fly into DEN airport in 2000s, there wasn't a building in sight for miles. Now housing has crept up to the airport boundary. West of Union Station was a huge vacant lot barely 8 years ago, now it is all buildings and streets. Even my favorite respite of Durango is getting too big and built-up. A shame really.
From what I've seen in other videos RTD is doing what they can to build a good transit system, especially with the commuter rail. The uphill battle is convincing more of the public that it's a worthwhile option over cars. If you haven't lived here you don't realize just how car dependent our urban areas are, and getting people out of that mindset is the biggest challenge. Kudos to Denver for implementing these trains.
I think a "carrot and stick" model would help get folks on local trains. Cheap fares, frequent trains, increased housing near stations, and buses that assist moving folks to stations and expand system is the carrot. While increased parking fees, smaller parking lots is the stick.
I took RTD for a lot of years, even when I had a car because I liked doing a little extra walking and it was good for the environment. I think a lot of their problems are from people who run things not using it and not listening to the people who do. Also from a customer service department that assumes you wouldn't be taking RTD if you had any other options.
@@lisadioguardi5742 There have been a couple of studies that show when elected officials agree to use public transportation (only public transportation) for one month within the next year ridership improves. Walking in another's shoes or riding in another's train/bus seat opens avenues for improving service.
Additionally, doing so sets an example.
Frequencies are too poor. Our agencies never have the will to understand that you induce transit demand the same way you do for cars.
Higher frequencies, higher frequencies, higher frequencies. And of course good coverage. But the biggest thing that will give people faith in public transit as an option will be keeping frequencies at 10 minutes and fast at all costs. The visual presence of transit, and the belief that it is always available FAST.
Improve rapid transit coverage and maintain constantly high frequencies. You have to earn the faith of your riders, they will not engage with transit in the hopes that it one day gets better.
Living in Denver, there's a lot of shortcomings. Though this video was on a fast section, for much of the network these trains are absurdly slow, plus the frequency issues mentioned. The way things are in the suburbs these serve, you pretty much have to drive to the station anyway (I've ridden my bicycle a few times). It rarely comes out ahead of driving in terms of door-to-door time or cost, usually far worse, so as much as I like taking the train it's often hard to justify and I probably use it once a month at best. I pretty much only use it when parking at the destination (downtown Denver) would be a hassle or expensive, but pretty much any other destination it's not worth it.
you lost me at the burp
ME TOO
okay but can we talk about that noise at 2:15 lmao
LMAO
@2:14, did someone open a can of soda?......or did some ignoramus belch?
LMAOOOOO
The most useful part of the system might be the line to Denver International Airport. Before that was built, it wasn't very convenient to get to the airport which is located way outside of the city.
I used to live in Denver, and I frequently visit there now. Some thoughts:
Denver has some of the highest basic transit fares in the country. This needs to come down significantly.
The pandemic really put a spanner in everything.
The G Line was a pet project of the board member who represented Arvada, where the line ends.
Recently, Union Station became a magnet for crime and drug users. They temporarily closed the restrooms, and people are afraid to go into the station now.
What's bringing them in?
@@QuarioQuario54321 probably the lack of other places to go (due to criminalization)
I had revisited Denver twice since I left in 2006 and both times I used public transportation regularly and I paid $52 for a regional weekly pass as I also used Light Rail 🚈. 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2014 and 2018 awards for best public transportation system in the country.
As of October 17th, the restrooms are reopened.
Also RTD is doing what they can to make Union Station safer
@@QuarioQuario54321 other cities they were always there you forgot to remove them before building your trains.
I really wish RTD good luck in its expansion plans. Such delays might turn off voters into not funding similar projects.
This video gets a like just for the epic burp!
No one’s talking about 2:13 ??? Lmao
This train appeared to be well filled. Nothing wrong with it for a commuter rail. With gasoline over $4/gal. I'd be on this pronto. Used to live in Massachusetts and would ride the "T" Greenline to BC college football games as well as basketball with the Celtics, baseball with Red Sox. Well designed line to many event venues. Save $$ in parking fees in Boston, no traffic jam leaving town to the suburbs after a game. Now live in Tampa Bay FL area... no commuter train service at all, only buses that get stuck in commuter traffic. I really miss the rail service. Americans need a paradigm change... forget electric cars, give me electrified rails any day.
Why are almost all US commuter trains so damn ugly? This rectangle on rails was built in 2015 but its exterior design makes a Coradia , Desiro or a Flirt look like some futuristic train from the year 2050.
They all love those silvers for some reason, especially the foamers.
Texrail, Arrow, and the future DART Silver Line are using the Stadler FLIRT. Caltrain is electrifying and using the KISS as part of the modernization program.
To Europeans it might seem that way. But to Americans it’s the standard. You may have noticed, everything looks different in America. The cars, busses, literally everything. It’s more about culture at this point.
Also Stainless Steel is easier to clean and reduces maintenance cost because… well, it’s stainless.
I think they look neat. They have a bulky look that is reminiscent of older EMU's
Very good overview of a short segment of the RTD regional/commuter rail routes. With EMUs, all-day/7-day clockface schedules, level boarding and Proof of Payment fares, it's the closest U.S. system to a S-Bahn/RER format. The lack of run-through capacity to the south of Union Station is an issue, but the A Line is an outstanding operation already with 15-min service most of the day and the G & N Lines at 30-min intervals. The short B Line hasn't reached its full promise, not reaching Boulder and Longmont as planned. But will say describing the system as only completed a couple lines out of the FasTracks plan is bit of a misnomer. Everything is built but the Boulder/Longmont portion of the B Line and the connection of the D Line to 38th & Blake.
My parents live in Boulder, and my brother used to live in Longmont, now in Berthoud. He takes the bus into town from one of the park and rides along I25 when he was commuting. He's a computer programmer, and now mostly telecommutes. But not everyone can do that. I've heard about the idea of having that line between Denver and Boulder out to Longmont, seems perfect, the track is already there, just would need to be upgraded. Are they ever going to extend that B line out to Boulder/Longmont?
A ton of traffic along 36, maybe able to ease some of that if they had good regular service to Denver. The buses are halfway decent, I usually take the AB bus to Boulder when I fly in. Takes about the same amount of time as if someone were to pick me up at the airport. I've taken the train from Denver airport before to downtown directly, and that was fine, however at the time the crossing guards were not working properly so they had to have people at each crossing to make sure they went down. Odd I thought,. Why they didn't build that line with separate grade's, i.e. use viaducts and bridges to separate train traffic from crossing vehicle traffic, then they wouldn't have had to deal with so many crossing guards failing.
People are just to car-centric in this country, more cities need to be promoting this...
Also, some sort of front-range regional rail line would be great. Trains running from Cheyenne to Colorado Springs or Pueblo could help ease the heavy traffic on I-25...
Only if you can get people out of their cars. Car dependency and lack of public transit or negativity towards using it is a prime reason for US's obesity epidemic.
But the trains have to be FREQUENT AND FAST
@@qjtvaddicthows 90 MPH or in a few places 125 mph
I use RTD quite often and honestly the longer the trains are around, the busier they get. The light rail trains that people love to hate on are actually packed in the middle of the day around lunch, no matter if it’s the weekday or weekend. They are obviously packed in the rush hour commute times as well. The transit oriented development has been slow to arrive but I think it’s coming soon. There’s a lot around the first couple stations on the A and N lines, as well as around some of the light rail stations, especially between Osage and Broadway. Denver city council recently approved new zoning around train stations in the city limit, and they might do the same around busy bus route stations as well! Denver will be a much different city in 15 years. If we build an intercity train from Pueblo-Denver-Fort Collins, it would probably follow the B line corridor to Boulder and Longmont, meaning Fastracks will probably be finished way before 2050. The infrastructure bill will probably help a bit with all that as well. I’m glad you seem to be enjoying some time around the Denver area!
They need to a Fort Collins to Pueblo commuter rail or light rail project of some sort.
@@joememphis1571 there’s actually some major planning underway for a 90-125 mph intercity train between Pueblo and Fort Collins, and there’s even talks about connecting it all the way to Cheyenne and maybe even Albuquerque someday. That would probably be a different service than what the initial Pueblo-Fort Collins would be to be fair, but they are also even planning on making a connection with the SW Chief via a spur from Pueblo to La Junta for a transfer service with the front range service. There’s a lot Colorado is planning for at the moment, and it’s just not very known because of the fact that it’s just planning I reckon
I dont know how anyone could possibly criticise this system with a straight face either, it is now the 7th busiest commuter rail system in the US and every single system above it has between 7x and 11x the track mileage - in fact the only commuter rail system that get similar riders per mile are the two main New York city systems (Long Island RR and MetroNorth RR). Could it be better? Sure, and there are cities Denver could look to like Sydney or Perth in Australia. But the system has some decent bones, you mention the upzoning to come, and then what would really be missing is through-running under the city.
When I lived in Denver for a few years I took this train as my regular commuter to my job, when I wanted to go downtown or to the stadiums, when I visited places in the city near a station, and out to the airport. It saved me a ton of miles on my car and was was always my preferred form of transportation, but I still had to have a car to to grocery shopping and anything else. I really loved RTD while I was there, it's way better than other rail transit systems I have seen in the US. But until these cities stop building themselves for cars only the rail won't be as effective as it could be.
A lot of these cities used to have rail based public transport such as Streetcars, or trolley buses, as well as some suburban Rail services. I firmly believe that America's reliance on the Auto industry contributed to a mass reliance on cars and little interest in rail.
2:14 ’Number Eight’ - BURP
Good subject, crappy video. Stay on the shot, ¼ sec is not enough, you need a steady cam, leave the text up long enough to read it and check your spelling.
I was able to read it even at 1 : 25 speed.
Who cares if taxpayers are annoyed? I am annoyed at money spent on highways i never use too!
But most of the stuff that you buy was transported on those highways!
I’ve found The routes are mostly ok on the commuter lines. The G takes you to some interesting and useful places and the A of course is going to the most useful place of all. The A is also one of the only ones with some real noticeable development occurring along it. I’m hoping more can happen with the others. The trains are so much nicer to ride on for the long routes and the speed is so appreciated. I’m extremely grateful we didn’t just get more LRT expanding far and wide. Very frustrated that we’ve been waiting years for anything to improve Colfax and so many other very well used bus routes though. The issues with costs and lack of operators is really feeling like a massive weight on the progress of RTD. So many cancelled buses and trains just in my part of the city alone. But I still use it and really try to help others learn about it and hopefully feel comfortable using it too.
Denver in the 1980's it was nice better than today
You say that this station looks as tidy as any European station... No, it looks way better. In Europe there is filthy graffiti and vandalism of all sorts everywhere, I'm impressed by how well kept US stations are.
Also 2:12 was that a loud burp?? Jesus christ be more careful man, you freaked me out
2:14 yo seriously? Hahaaa
I live in Denver now and take RTD to work sometimes. I work a hybrid schedule and work in office only 2 days a week. My biggest problem with RTD is frequency and reliability. Trains are regularly canceled without notice and with 15/30 minute headways you suddenly can be delayed an hour. The train nearest to my house runs on a 30 minute headway but pre-covid it ran 15 minutes. It takes 27 minutes to go 11 miles. There are speed limit signs for 79 miles an hour that the train passes doing 20 (I've paced the train with my truck). I know they're having a hard time finding operators with how genuinely bad the pay is for the cost of living in Denver. This morning I realized I wasn't going to make my train for my 1.5 hour trip to the office (I chose to live far away from my office so I know it's going to be a trot)(The actual train portion of my journey is about 1 hour but I need to walk 20 minutes from the light rail station to my office because the tech center is an automobile based hellscape straight out of office space). So I decided to drive today and got to work about 30 minutes before I would have by transit. RTD is slow, unreliable, and infrequent. I use it as much as it makes sense to but it's frustrating to support the organization which seems to continuously miss the mark.
And it's still the best light rail system in the western US 🗿
@@truedarklander that's how low the bar here in the West lol
man they should really extend the rail system all the way to FoCo.
@@Banom7a transform that into an S-Bahn
That burp tho! 🤣💪💯
As for Denver's public transport difficulty, I blame the evil car-addicted suburbanite NIMBY Jason Spelts.
Not only the surprise electrification but even the fact that RTD went with a full fledged heavy rail rapid transit EMU as opposed to a LRV trolley.
They had to use heavier gauge equipment where it shares right-of-way with freight railroads.
The problem with most new/planned lines is getting people out of their cars and funding!! Politicians can also be a big problem. Most of them have cars. A great many big city people do not have cars and have always depended on public transit.
I give Denver kudos for trying to expand their rail system.
Thank you Thibault for this review😀😀💚💚
Hopefully the ridership goes up with the soaring gas prices. Might want to check out the FrontRunner train in Utah. It runs from Ogden to Provo, UT. It also connects to Salt Lake City's street rail system.
Denver’s just too sprawly of a city for rail to really work. FrontRunner in SLC is a more successful build IMO
@@Fidel_cashflo time to upzone the city then. Dsnsify the suburbs, especially in the areas around the stations. Abolish R-1 single family zoning and parking minimums as well.
I live in the Philadelphia suburbs and we have as noted the same type of rail cars that Denver is using. However it does look like Denver has a few things better tan our SEPTA system. Most of our suburban stations only have low level stations making boarding slower and harder for handicapped passengers. The frequencies mentioned in Denver also beat ours. Almost all our lines only have hourly service off peak and night time. Our last trains from the city also usually stop around midnight. Your trains also have the dedicated space for packages and bicycles while SEPTA trains only have the old traditional baggage racks running over the seats. We do have the advantage that most of our lines have had passenger service on lines the private railroads used for local freight service as well as commuters. Most of our stations are also usually near town centers or nearby residential areas. Your system even if the stations are not close to residences or other traffic centers can work if they have good coordinated bus service. Our newest commuter rail system was the Lindenwald high speed line that was built in New Jersey. Most of their stations have large parking lots around them but they also usually have connecting bus service to shopping, health or educational facilities somewhat near the stations that help drive ridership. It also does run 24 hours a day with very frequent service most of the day. So you have the bones for a great service with some room for improvement.
dude wtf was up with the burp lmao
Hyundai rotem EMU are good
Better frequencies everyone. People do not want to wait or be unsure of when a bus or train is coming. It doesn't happen overnight, the faith of riders must be earned.
Then better coverage, as it serves as a force multiplier. More riders accessed and more destinations available. With high frequencies across the board the riders will come, but they won't come while the transit sucks in hopes it improves.
burrp 2:14
Hi, not an expert on transit, but building stations in industrial areas isnt a great way to attract ridership. That is one reason why some newer light rail suffer from low ridership. A large portion of the northern leg of the Metrorail Green line in Miami is an example to that. It's not light rail, but same principle. I think for a spread out metro area like Denver, perhaps more street running light rail in other core areas outside of downtown and proper BRT would get attract more riders and maybe connect them to these far flung commuter train stations.
Hmmm depends on the place. Industrial areas tend to have a LOT of foot traffic, and workers need connections from their homes to stations near their workplace.
Try checking out how they do these kinds of connections in Asia. There are quite a lot of new lines that have these kinds of connections.
Stop bashing RTD and the FasTrack project! It is already amazing for North American standards! The A Line that goes to the airport has a daily ridership of 20k pre-pandemic and 15-minute frequencies!
Passenger trains and buses are not measured in economic terms, as in Europe. They are seen as a expense, a public luxury that express the ability of a city to afford them. No one expects public transit to sustain itself in the US.
My dear, listen to me carefully: *NOT everything relies in direct profitability. Americans NEED to understand that!* I don not have anything with you or them! Thank you.
That’s socialist agenda! Everything in the land of the free NEEDS to make profits!
We also don’t want to pay ANY taxes and expect government handouts, too!
@@Love2Cruise you will have to, sooner or later! 😅😉
As someone who operated the the a b and g line for a pairing company with rtd called denver transit operators there is a dark side to rtd that many people don't know about like under pay and a 10 and a half hour day in the b line sucks but they were trying to take away are tso and there are times we don't even have them and right now with it being free there will be more homeless people and more drug addicted people and what we do for being fra regulated and the every other run you would have someone jump in front of your train yell at you or ask you to wait so they can get on and go do something but the company and people around us suck and we need more money for what we do
More than most it really depends on whether people will give up their cars and all that come with it for a well designed commuter system. I hope they succeed!
The problem in the US is they fess over ENVIRONMENTAL crap to no end .. and it always takes DECADES to finish a project. Can you believe they built the Empire state Building in , I think it was just over 12 months ... Things are getting so ridiculous that people dont even want to propose a project as the hurtles are too much and to long ..China is building up in s flash and things aren't falling down ... Thanks to the obsess on environment .. MORE damage is done as the project is nearly ever finished or started ...
There's also a ton of NIMBYism, where people are vehemently against any rail being constructed within an x-mile radius of them, where x is as far as their perception goes. As well as a ton of pearl-clutching with people believing trains just move the dirty poors or whatever closer to them
I would like you to make some trips on portuguese trains, since this channel is my favorite, and of course, I'm from Portugal
Nice review! I'm hopeful for RTD, the future looks bright so far!
2:10is a burp
Your introductory description of the RTD suggests to me that Denver rail enthusiasts used similar arguments to the ones used in Los Angeles to get public support for its Metrolink commuter rail system. This was promoted by railroads to utilize already existing lines or the rights of way alongside to save money and obtain a system quickly. The railroads owning that right of way were eager to sell their urban properties to the newly formed public transport agency in a deal where they get the right to move freight late at night, but no longer have to pay property taxes on their suburban and urban right or way. This is perhaps why that Pecos Junction station was in a less desirable location. So many years have passed since those railroad companies have carried passengers themselves and suburban housing meant for people who own cars, were not built near noisy rail lines for nearly a hundred years now in American western cities. It will take time for transit oriented housing to be built closer to those outer stations.
MetroLink operates better where the system is supported at the city level. The Ventura line isn't well supported with transportation sales tax funding thus it suffers a sparce schedule. While other MetroLink routes have frequent service - the Ventura line lacks evening and weekend service.
Pecos Junction is where it is because the B and G Lines intersect there. Pecos Street itself has connecting bus service. An alternative LRT route between Downtown Denver and Arvada was considered, but suburban interests found it too slow and residents of the Denver neighborhoods in between included NIMBYs. The commuter rail line was studied in the late 1980's as a DMU operation and the compromise between the LRT idea and the commuter rail idea became the G-Line.
Property taxes have nothing to do with it. Colorado has centrally-assessed utilities (Oregon also has these). The entire G-Line still has freight service next to it and assessment values are based on traffic, not the amount of ROW.
The burp was very american.
4:04 it should be Hyundai Rotem instead of Hunday Rotem
As a planner I love what Denver and its residents are trying to do here. Public transit really is the solution to fixing traffic. I think what Denver shows however is the difference between alternatives to driving versus viable alternatives to driving. If people have to give something up, usually time, to take public transit instead of driving why would they? While in a vacuum RTD is a great system, a real leader in North America especially, until the mode share of the entire metro area of Denver is more equal, the ridership will remain low and the system won't meet its full potential. It's the same issue a lot of mass transit projects have in Canada and the USA. They're great individually, but they aren't integrated into the urban fabric.
I think the B Line's proposed extension to Boulder is what would drive things for FasTraks in the future.
Right now, only the A Line is proving it's worth but the potential is there. I do think though, the idea should have been constructing to DIA (as they did); North to Boulder and south to Colorado Springs to truly get FastTrak to top tier
I wonder if RTD had the same issue with those trains as SEPTA did.
RTD didn't experience the Silverliner V cracks & fatigue that SEPTA did because RTD ordered all their cars high-level boarding only. The steps for low-level platforms apparently added extra weight, leading to the issues SEPTA found.
Nice to see how electrification in the USA plays out as well as electrification in other parts of the world including the UK. As electrification is the best way to cut Co2 emissions and bring down global warming.
Global warming can only be handled on an international level
Jason Spelts is pure evil
Nice video
🚶👍🚂
✋ Extra, good job 👏👌🤝
Wow nice view, I like to see new places ✌
Great movie 👍 Bravo 👋
And I have a new movie from a walk around the city 😊
Regards, DJ Janusz from Warsaw Poland ✌ 🇵🇱✋
I like this system and I am from the East Coast. The line to the airport is especially useful and delivers you right downtown. Every city in the US should be that easy!
The next station up the B line, and also the terminus, is very idyllic. The station is on a platform surrounded by a new park. Unfortunately, only hourly service to that station, since it's kind of a stub until the rest of the B line is finished. Pecos Junction is served by two lines, so it's the best place to catch a train coming into downtown from the north. The views into the railyards are a nice benefit for railfans too.
the hourly service change was made in May of 2024 so it was made recently…
Aha. That would have been good to know when I almost missed my meeting in June
Hi this is a viewer from India. Seen some of your trip reports. You got to be on Indian Railways someday. Our commuter trains dont have a toilet too
Well shit
We always take the airport train in Denver. The other use for the train would be to get to the gym. For that I need to take a bus, to a train, to another train, to another train. Whole trip, 90 minutes each way, 25 minutes by car. When you say western US cities were planned around cars, you are so right. If we get the system more built out, it would be a lot easier to use. Chicago has a much better system, much more useful, so it is much busier. NYC too.
“to get to the gym”. That highlights the issue with most US cities right there. Gyms, and really all amenities shouldn't be all consolidated in a single/few locations. US zoning regulations is what makes it so difficult for pedestrians. A properly planned city would allow amenities to be located where they need to be, so people travel as little as possible to get to where they need to go.
I love that you do these commuter trips as well as the more glamorous long distance trains.
RTD stations always tend to be rather clean. Quite impressive. They do a good job with maintenance and cleanliness but I think they're just trying to compensate for not having FasTracks done on time... Their trains are almost always on time! I suggest you review their light rail service too!
Interesting thing about FasTracks. The B line extension (the most delayed and important part of the program).Will not be electrified like the rest of the system and instead RTD will run diesel trains on BNSF's tracks. It is cheaper than building new electrified tracks but the project still cant be finished because BNSF jacked up the price for sharing tracks above the Fastracks budget. And even if it is done, the frequency will suck because the BNSF corridor is single and class 2-3 track for most of the extension and because of slow freight trains.
Thanks for the review, as always.
Much cleaner than filthy french and portuguese stations I have been to.
Decent video. Shows how land use is atrocious in Denver. Must replace park and rides with housing and increase busses. Additionally, much better frequency than GO in Toronto.
RTD is a good start, but man do they need to bring those fares down. The A line is so expensive that it's not really a viable alternative for workers at the airport (A HUGE employer in the region). Bringing this fare down, increasing frequency (another truly necessary improvement, mostly on the commuter lines), and continuing to advocate for infill development around RTD stops will bring people to the train. It's a ways off but I think as RTD continues to make improvements the riders will follow. They're a pretty young transit system that's taking on the monumental task of building and running a regional rail system in the Car-addicted United States - something that's really ambitious in this day and age, and a lot of the finer points of running such a system have been forgotten. I think if the city chose small goals to make improvements and delivered on them successfully, coupled with pandemic ridership rebound (hopefully), some trust will be restored to the system.
Also, your point in showing how isolated and difficult to access the Pecos Junction station is is very important, and I think it's part of what RTD is targeting deliberately for future growth. It seems silly now, but as property values continue to increase in Denver, many of these (currently) light industrial areas are going to be targeted for redevelopment into residential and commercial areas. Anchoring them with a commuter rail line NOW is absolutely vital, it will only be more expensive later, and without the zoning changes and advocacy for Transit-oriented development at and around these stops, all of that housing would end up sprawling out into the car-dependent Denver suburbia. It's definitely forward-thinking and seems like a pipe-dream now, but transit projects are enormous infrastructure projects that affect our cities not only for decades, but for generations. The front-range metropolitan area is primed to keep growing and it's going to need places to put all of those new net residents, and it's clear the status quo is not working.
After the line to DIA, the focus should have been the line to Boulder, these are definitely the highest utility lines when the system is complete since the actually serve major destinations. I dont get all these short lines to suburban park-and-rides with zero within walking distance outside of Union Station. I visited in 2016 and rode the line from DIA and explored Union Station, I was blown away at how fantastic the rail line from the airport was and Union Station. Unfortunately it sounds like Union Station has become infested with drug riddled homeless, they have to fix that problem ASAP or they will destroy this RTD system.
Train's at america isn't popular because no any diffreant between 2022 amtrak and prr 1940 and maybe somtimes 1940 prr look better than 2022 amtrak
A 30 minute frequency on a short journey will not encourage many passengers. Every 10 minutes would be getting to the point where you don't need a timetable, you just turn up and go.
When I visited Denver in 1977 I seem to recall that 2/3 of the downtown area was parking lots. I suspect that won't have changed much, so no encouragement to use public transport that way either. Build on the parking lots and you could be in business.
It needs a joined up approach to make it work. I'm not convinced that the will is there.
Thinking of the seats, no power outlets, no WiFi, and lack of bathrooms, these trains are designed for short rides of a half hour or less, they're not designed for long-haul. Which makes sense on the current network, but with plans of expanding as far as Longmont and maybe further yet someday in the future, these might become bigger problems. Maybe they'll have different trains for those longer routes with better facilities. Though I don't think that's too much of a consideration considering the "2044" timeline, in my experience, really means sometime between the Sun going Red Giant and swallowing the Earth and the Heat Death of the Universe. Or at the very least so long from now that these cars will be at least due for renovation if not replacement. It is possible to go between cars though, those doors are unlocked and people do so regularly (I was a little confused at first when I realized we're actually allowed to do that), sometimes the doors are even propped open. When two married pairs are coupled together (only done on the A Line to the airport) you can't go from one to the other due to the driver cabs though. Though like said, the other car looks exactly the same so you didn't miss anything, really the only reason to go car-to-car is if one is more crowded than the other.
Agree with a lot of this analysis. Another major problem is that, while it goes reasonably fast on the section shown here, for much of the network these trains are really slow. So in terms of cost and door-to-door time they're rarely competitive with driving, usually much worse, so they're only really useful if going somewhere that parking is difficult, impossible, or expensive, or if traffic is going to be terrible. The whole commuter and light rail systems are mostly designed and useful for going between downtown and suburbs, or going to the airport. Makes a ton of sense for people going to the Baseball game for these reasons though, I've had a few evening rides that were packed because of that on what would usually be empty trains.
I love the trains in Denver. They have a few issues but all of these are improving and the ridership, transit oriented development, and system are all increasing because of fastracks with now colfax brt on deck. Good job Denver!
First of all, not sure what the motivation is behind the podcast however while I am not familiar with the current ridership on the commuter rails I can say every time I ride the light rail lines they are very busy. However, there are problems with the light rail lines such as the lines that head southeast is alongside a freeway and the ones that branch off to head east and the line to Aurora is in the center of the freeway, there has been very little Transit-Oriented Development along the routes (see the freeway issue) and there are few things outside the core that can be accessed on foot and connecting bus service in many of the suburban areas sucks.
To judge the Gold Line right now is a little difficult since it only opened right before the pandemic hit and it was late opening due to issues with the crossing signals not being activated by the trains. Also, the redesign of the Union Station area made it more difficult for people to transfer from commuter trains to light rail. Before the changes, the light rail line station was adjacent to the station platforms however RTD put in a new underground bus plaza and moved the light rail trains two blocks away. So now instead of having been able to make a direct transfer which I did several times coming off the California Zephyr and heading to my motel which is on one of the light rails, you have to walk two long blocks which isn't bad unless you are carrying luggage from your flight or Amtrak and if the weather cooperates. Of course, if the weather is bad you can walk across the street, go down into the bus terminal, walk through the bus terminal, and come back up on the other side.
I think it's because of development in the area that they had to move the light rail lines over by the freight lines, and my understanding is they had to seek an exemption to run light rail adjacent to freight lines. I agree that it is problematic to have the Light Rail station a few blocks from the rest of Union Station, but they couldn't keep it there while making a connection to the South when other roads and buildings were in the way. So I'd say that old and new development caused them to make such a drastic change.
Wow, RTD! Thank you for your videos! When I was living in Colorado, I only managed to ride on the commuter train once but I took the Light Rail several times.
I hope you can visit Indonesia in the future, we have some brand new commuter trains and rapid transit here, as well as improved long-distance trains!
I see a lot of comments about electrification. What most do not realize is that it takes a fair amount of power to electrify a train line. Where does this power come from? Coal, nuclear, hydroelectric or fairy dust? You cannot provide sufficient electric power from wind or solar. A commuter train has to run on a regular schedule. You cannot run a train without a fair amount of co2 being generated. Electricity has to come one those 3 sources mentioned.
Connecticut is researching switching their Northeast Corridor zones to fuel cells.
Wind and solar provide 35% of Colorado's electrical use today and it's only going to increase. Coal provides 37% statewide, but that will decrease rapidly as plants are shut down and wind and solar's per kilowatt costs continue to decrease. They're already lower than coal's and natural gas.
I'm going to denver, carless trip, should be. Amazing
Lindo trem simply gostei 👍 boa viagem ai
This is one of the few electric commuter rails in the U. S. This has to be one of the interesting ones to me
Im from Denver and I use these trains and busses constantly, the biggest problem for me is the bathroom situation. And it's because of the drug users and homeless people. They don't want to put bathrooms on the train because people will use drugs in them. They don't even put them at stations. So if you have to use the bathroom you're pretty much screwed until you can get to your stop and find a spot to use the bathroom away from the station
It's not a ghost train if people are riding the trains. So RTD Commuter rail isn't a complete failure.
2:13 LMFAO bro XD
RTD needs to extend their trains beyond union station and run them at high frequency. And replace the light rail trains with automated metro trains on the E and D lines then separate them from the W
not a fans of the train design but looks like an enjoyable trip. hope more American will comute using train in the future
The Denver Transit Authority accepts Euros?!
Great video as usual, thanks. I leant a lot in a few min utes! However, is it a train, a tram, an LRV, or an EMU? Oh, why do US trains have that bell ringing when they enter stations? It must be a nuisance if you live close to the tracks? Stay safe.
It’s a train and an EMU.
An EMU just means that the traction is distributed throughout the carriages rather than being locomotive haul. Trams in general are EMUs, and so are Trams, but there have been loco-hualed trams (specially in the steam era)
The worst way to travel
No bathrooms drugs everywhere awful
4:03 No Hunday. It's Hyundai-Rotem.
FYI there actually is outlets but only in the front/back seats
Ah RTD! Finally!!
2:02 I’m not gonna lie, the entire Denver commuter network went from nothing, to a lot of track in a very short period of time. I’m surprised it got this far! I’m Orr surprised that more lines are planned and that it won’t be completed by 2050
I want to believe that they're saying 2050 as a buffer so they don't set aggressive unachievable milestones after getting rocked by the pandemic. I'm hopeful it won't really take that long, but a transformative rail transformation can take generations for a city to fully fund and build out, so even if it does, it will ultimately be worth it. At least all of these low-density stops have acres of vacant and under-used lots to upzone for dense transit-oriented development. I think there's a bright future ahead for RTD they just need to get some of the fine tuning down with fare prices and frequency increases.
I lived in Denver 35 years , sold my car ! Great service ! 👍
4:09 You mean Hyundai Rotem?
RTD has a lot of ambitions, but the problem is that they're in Denver, which is near San Francisco-levels of NIMBY hell. Lines have either had to realign, funding has gotten cut, projects are stuck in near indefinite deadlock. And what is there, is not very useful. No one is taking a train to an industrial area, let alone waiting at a station near it. RTD needs to go CalTrain and say "fuck you" to the "property developers" (read: money laundering schemes) and put their own housing and mixed-use developments near stations, along with lines for the suburbs that reach the inner core, with additional reuse of land for that likewise. Denver is hell to drive in, worse than Sacramento and thats saying something. Using land for actual human needs and scale would help bring this city to a life it may have never seen before, a real vibrant and harmonious community.
The battle cry in the Northeast is Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). Redeveloping existing rights-of-way since they're never going to build new lines in the megalopolis. A number of towns in CT have completely rezoned and redone their downtowns around the new Hartford line stations.
I can see some distinct differences between RTD SILVERLINER Vs vs SEPTA SILVERLINER Vs.
First the floor is navy blue on SEPTA.
Second, the bike racks are clearly filling the gaps of the original Silverliner 1+1 door design on SEPTA.
And there’s no conductors.
Septa Silverliner Vs have a control panel for conductors next to the doors which in my opinion is convenient for them but there are some buttons on the panel that still work even if the panel is deactivated. So if someone accidentally pushes the buzzer, the train engineer could stop the train by accident.
What was dangerous about walking to the station?
Hmm, if Thibault films a Simply Railway segment, and it doesn't include a Toilets Time, did it REALLY happen? :)
Omg the burp 🤣🤣
Judging by the lack of comments, people either don’t notice it or think it must be something else.
A line runs every 15! 😍😍😍😍😍😍
The assembly plant in South Philadelphia (Weccacoe & Wolf Street) has since closed, with its last car delivered in 2015 (MBTA coaches were also built here). Now an Amazon distribution terminal.
these same trains are used in Philadelphia
I rode the RTD W line in 2017, which is a light rail line using Siemens cars from the 1990s with high floors and fabric seats. There were quite a few people on the train, but enough room to pick which car and which bench I wanted to sit on. The frequency on that line was about every 15-30 minutes while the B line commuter train had a frequency of about an hour. The G line was completed, but crossing problems kept the line from being opened.
While I do like Denver's Union Station, I don't like that the light rail platforms are a couple of blocks from the commuter rail and amtrak platforms
The line to the airport was a game-changer. You can take the train to downtown and get a rental car there for 1/3 the price at the airport. The line to Golden is great too, but disappointed it is a couple miles from the city center with few good options from the station to downtown.
I've been visiting CO every year since 2004 and the growth has been astounding. The city and metro have grown so fast it is impossible for transit to keep up. A few years ago they said almost 10,000 people were moving to Denver each month. People are commuting from the mountains on I-70, Castle Rock to the south, and east from Aurora. I-70 west has become a logjam all the way out to Idaho Springs. When I'd fly into DEN airport in 2000s, there wasn't a building in sight for miles. Now housing has crept up to the airport boundary. West of Union Station was a huge vacant lot barely 8 years ago, now it is all buildings and streets.
Even my favorite respite of Durango is getting too big and built-up. A shame really.
Very differently presentaed.