RTD announced Thursday that the Federal Railroad Administration will allow the A Line to operate for another 90 days while the agency works with Denver Transit Partners to fix issues at crossing gates.
This was expected. RTD has said that they expected to continue operating the A Line to Denverite, CPR News, 9 News and it might have been shouted from a rooftop somewhere, I can't be sure.
I did not expect that the agency would suggest the G Line would open this year, though.
That's because the G Line can't come online until the issues with the A and B Lines are fixed, and while RTD says those problems will be fixed in 2017, the agency has declined to specify further.
But lo, at the agency's quarterly update Thursday, RTD General Manager and CEO Dave Genova said the "expectation" is to open the G Line in 2017.
"The G Line is practically fully built, the only thing that remains to be done on the G Line is to go out and make some of these improvements that we've been making on the University of Colorado A Line and B Line," he said.
"I get a lot of questions about the schedule -- 'can't you give us a date?' We don't have a date yet and it's largely because we're not sure when we're going to be able to get through our process to gain the FRA's approval."
Once the FRA signs off, Genova said RTD thinks the schedule will be easier to predict. In fact, once the FRA signs off, RTD moves closer to be able to getting quiet zones approved too.
"We can't proceed with those quiet zones until we get through the certification process with the FRA and the PUC, but once we get through that, we will work to get the quiet zones approved."