Tag Archives: RTD

Rail Photo of the Month: May 2023

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Siemens SD-160 302

Location: I-25 & Broadway Station, Denver, CO
Operator of Vehicle: Regional Transportation District
Date of Photo: July 21, 2014

Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the opening of the W Line in Denver.  On April 26, 2013, this route opened between Denver Union Station and Golden, marking the completion of the first line to be part of the FasTracks program, an ambitious plan to build six new rail lines and a host of other transit infrastructure in the Denver region.  FasTracks also included the A Line to Denver International Airport and the reconstruction of Union Station in Downtown Denver for use by both RTD and Amtrak trains.  Although there were many line openings and extensions in the 2010s, FasTracks will not be officially completed until after 2050.

For more photos of RTD Light Rail, please click here.  

Bus Photo of the Month: July 2021

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Gillig Advantage 6200

Location: Lincoln Street at Colfax Avenue, Denver, CO
Operator of Vehicle: Regional Transportation District (RTD)
Date of Photo: January 24, 2020

I typically try to post the photos of the month on the first two days of each month.  The calendar flipped to July 2021 while I was in the middle of nearly three consecutive weeks of travel (for a mix of business and pleasure), and I wasn’t able to queue up a bus photo to run ahead of time.  So here is a photo from my last pre-pandemic travels, which included a weekend in Denver to celebrate a friend’s wedding.  No other stories to share on this one, just enjoy the photo (and that I/we are back to traveling again)!

For more photos of Denver RTD buses, please click here.

Enough Teases, Here’s What’s New and Updated for the Start of 2021!

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Ventura County Railway No. 2
Anyone who knows where I’ve traveled or has visited the site with some frequency over the years may have noticed that the Bus Photo of the Month for January 2021 was from a city that had not been included on Oren’s Transit Page before, and that I’ve been highlighting a number of new website sections over the past few weeks. 

The biggest and most noteworthy additions are the brand new sections for Baltimore, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Austin.  As I noted in a recent post, there was a certain amount of irony to the fact I grew up 40 miles from Baltimore and am an avid Orioles fan, yet the city had not been featured on this site until recently.  Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Austin were destinations that I traveled to in late 2019 and early 2020 before the Covid-19 pandemic, and I am thankful to have had the opportunity to make those trips when I did.  

I also took advantage of some time I had recently to move some photos that had been on the Uncaptioned Photos page for quite awhile and put them in more appropriate places on the website, most notably, the photos of the Pikes Peak Cog Railway now have their own page.  Perhaps you found the new material on your own, but if not, here is the full listing of where new photos were recently added to the site, with new sections highlighted in bold and italics.  

Rail Photo of the Month: January 2021

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Silverliner V 4064Silverliner V 4064

Location: Union Station, Denver, CO
Operator of Vehicle: Regional Transit District
Date of Photo: January 24, 2020

If you follow Oren’s Transit Page on Facebook, you may recall that back in January, I posted a then and now photo comparison from Denver Union Station.  In 2014, I took the westbound California Zephyr from Denver about two weeks after the station was rededicated.  At that time, much of the surrounding area was undergoing construction projects of various sorts and the only train serving the station was the twice daily Amtrak service to Emeryville and Chicago.  Fast forward to 2020 and this area, both inside the station and out, has changed dramatically.  Many of the buildings that were under construction in 2014 around the area of the station are now complete.  RTD Commuter Rail service began in April of 2016 with the opening of the A Line to Denver International Airport.  The completed construction combined with commuter trains coming and going every few minutes (the A Line operates every 15 minutes much of the day) means that the station area, both inside the headhouse and outside of it, is much busier than it was six years ago.  It is fascinating to see how the reconstruction of the historic terminal combined with the new, majestic train hall has revitalized this part of Denver.

The RTD Commuter Rail fleet is made up entirely of Silverliner V cars, identical to those used by SEPTA.  However, there was never a plan to have a half width cab on the RTD version of these railcars, and no front facing railfan window is available, even from a few rows back (on SEPTA, the area is blocked off due to safety concerns, but one still has a semi-decent view from the first open row).  

For more photos of RTD Commuter Rail, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: January 2017

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TransTeq EcoMark 1632

TransTeq EcoMark 1632

Location: 16th Street at Larimer Street, Denver, CO
Operator of Vehicle: Regional Transportation District
Date of Photo: July 21, 2014

 

Downtown Denver features one of the most unique transit operations in the entire United States.  The “MallRide” operates on the 16th Street Mall, a 1.25 mile long pedestrian mall in the Colorado state capital.  16th Street is closed to all motorized vehicles with the exception of the buses serving the MallRide, a free bus route that runs along the length of the street from Union Station to Civic Center.  When the MallRide launched in 1982, it was operated with a fleet of custom built buses with right hand and front wheel drive.  This was done so that bus drivers would have a better view of pedestrians who might be crossing in front of the bus’s path unexpectedly.  When it came time to replace the fleet, Neoplan offered Denver a prototype bus with left hand drive, but the bus drivers made it very clear to the RTD they preferred right hand drive for the MallRide route.  The RTD then went back to the drawing board and ultimately teamed with TransTeq to build the EcoMark buses that make up most of MallRide’s fleet today.  In addition to having the driver requested right hand drive, these buses are also hybrid-electric buses, so they operate noiselessly along the pedestrian mall.

For more photos of the TransTeq EcoMark buses, please click here.