Picture it: You arrive at Denver Union Station to take the A Line to the airport — and you can check your bag to its destination before even stepping on the train.
Six years before the train to the plane began its daily marathons between Lower Downtown and Denver International Airport, DEN’s then-CEO Kim Day proposed that very concept.
“The idea that you can just dump your bag at Union Station, get on this train, relax, not have to deal with the ice and snow and rain and all that … I think it will encourage a lot of people to use it,” she told Colorado Matters in 2010.
For Colorado Wonders, Denverite looked into why this never came to fruition. One man with a lot of institutional memory was key to finding the answer: Phil Washington.
Today, Washington leads DIA. (Yes, we’re using DEN and DIA interchangeably, or we’ll never hear the end of it from the #AvGeeks.) But in 2010, as Day blueskied, Washington led Denver’s Regional Transportation District, which owns the A Line.
For myriad reasons, a Union Station bagdrop became unfeasible, according to Washington.
Money.
“The airlines thought it was too costly for such a small group of passengers that would pay for it [themselves],” he explained.
Timing.
“Passengers would have to drop their bags off so much earlier than their flight … three or four hours early at Union Station.”
Security.
“To get [luggage] processed without the traveler there makes it challenging from a TSA point of view as well,” Washington added.
RTD’s current leadership has no plan to resurrect the proposal, according to a statement from the transit agency.
But the idea isn’t permanently grounded as far as Washington is concerned.
“Listen, we would love to do it. All of those were not showstoppers, but they were concerns,” he said.
For now, though, A Line passengers will have to keep lugging.
