The head of the Regional Transportation District will discuss the stalled northwest rail line from Denver to Boulder County on Dec. 7 at the annual membership meeting of Commuting Solutions.
RTD CEO and General Manager Debra Johnson will be one of the featured speakers at the virtual meeting of Commuting Solutions, a Louisville-based nonprofit that promotes alternative modes of transportation in Boulder and Broomfield counties.
The Dec. 7 meeting is scheduled for 9-10:30 a.m. The event is open to anyone including Commuting Solutions members, partners, transportation experts and transportation enthusiasts, according to the group’s news release.
Johnson, along with RTD Board of Director member Lynn Guissinger, will talk about the status of the northwest rail, which was planned to link Denver with Boulder and Longmont.
The RTD Board in August agreed to spend $8 million to study a scaled-back version of the original FasTracks plan to bring commuter rail to the northwest metro region. The B Line was tabled in favor of other routes when costs climbed too high.
A 2019 cost estimate put the fully developed B Line at $1.5 billion and a completion date at 2050.
Gov. Jared Polis as well as residents in the northwest region — including Longmont— pushed RTD to come up with another plan. RTD offered a rush hour only service, with three trains operating between Denver and Longmont.
RTD officials are in the process of screening bids to hire a consultant to conduct the $8 million study, Audrey DeBarros, executive director for Commuting Solutions, said in an email. “So we are in a bit of a holding pattern right now NWR (the Northwest Railline),” DeBarros said.
Deputy Director of Transportation Planning for Boulder County Kathleen Bracke and Jeff Butts, multimodal planner for Boulder County, will also discuss plans to introduce Bus Rapid Transit on the stretch of U.S. 287 from Broomfield to Longmont at the Dec. 7 meeting.
