RTD disrupts southeast light-rail service as maintenance work starts

Riders on the Regional Transportation District’s southeast light-rail lines will face service disruptions, including less-frequent trains, for about six months as the transit agency performs retaining wall maintenance work.

Starting Monday, E-Line trains are running with normal 15-minute frequency for most of the day between Union Station and Southmoor, but service has been cut to every 30 minutes between Southmoor and RidgeGate Parkway in Lone Tree. The R-Line, which connects Aurora to south metro cities, is now running only between the Peoria and Florida stations, with service suspended to nine stations between Florida and Lincoln Station near Lone Tree.

Those disruptions to the partially overlapping lines will allow for maintenance work next to tracks that run alongside Interstate 25, according to an RTD news release.

Crews will inspect and repair coping panels, which are caps on top of retaining walls, between the I-25/Broadway and Lincoln stations. Work began at the Lincoln Station and will continue northward in coming months, RTD says, with the project wrapping up in October.

For now, the H-Line, which overlaps partially with the R-Line along Interstate 225 and the E-Line along I-25, is running normally between Florida and 18th & California Station in downtown Denver. But RTD says H-Line schedule disruptions will begin in the late spring as the maintenance work moves north.

Current disruptions will be listed on RTD’s Service Disruptions website. Schedule information also is available by calling RTD customer service at 303-299-6000.

This work is addressing retaining walls on one side of the alignment, RTD says, with similar work scheduled next year for the other side.

Another southeast corridor project that was scheduled to begin Sunday has been postponed to later this spring. The roughly monthlong project will include the repainting of surfaces at the Louisiana/Pearl Station, requiring the suspension of late-night and early morning service on the E and H lines so that power can be shut off to overhead electrical wires. That work has not yet been rescheduled.

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