RTD selects 41st and Fox for the Goldline station

by Elisa Cohen

GLOBEVILLE – RTD has selected 41st and Fox for the Goldline station in North Denver. Residents of Sunnyside will be able to walk across a vastly improved pedestrian bridge to access the station, and bicyclists will join them by taking an elevator up to the top of the bridge and another elevator back down. A number of factors narrowed the selection to the east side of the tracks.

According to RTD, they could not acquire the property for the station to be located at 38th Avenue and the wide expanse of tracks would make the critical pedestrian bridge at 39th Avenue prohibitively expense to build.

Students at the Regency Student Housing center will appreciate the station, as they will be able to stroll from their residence along currently existing wide sidewalks to the station. Although some residents expressed concern for their safety in crossing Fox Street, a light signal at 39th and Fox will enable safe crossing of the street for these college students.

The City and County of Denver will erect a pedestrian and bicycle bridge across 38th Avenue near Inca at some point in the future. Sunnyside residents asked RTD officials if they could widen the support structures of the rail bridge that will span 38th Avenue so that in the future the underpass could be improved. Citing costs, RTD officials said they did not think they could make the supports for the bridge wider than the current configuration.

Just three blocks to the north of the proposed station lies the Denver Post site currently being considered for the bus maintenance facility. Approximately 700 buses a day would travel to and from this site increasing the traffic on this currently sleepy industrial strip.

Elyria Neighborhood Association president Tom Anthony says this is the perfect location for the bus maintenance facility as it is in the shadow of I-25 and I-70.
“By the way, the resistance to the 44th and Fox site by certain groups which has caused RTD to seek other sites less suitable and more distant, while in some respects could be termed helpful in expanding the frontiers of thought, could also be seen as directly inimical to existing heavily burdened poverty stricken neighborhoods. If Fastracks is destined to push undesired uses into existing poor neighborhoods in order to stimulate real estate development in more politically astute areas, then it may not be doing anything but rearranging the deck furniture on the Titanic. So let’s try to stick to the facts in this discussion,” wrote Anthony in a letter to RTD.