A new light rail line — dubbed the L-Line — launches in downtown Denver on Sunday, with transit officials touting it as a more efficient way to move passengers traveling to and from the Five Points neighborhood while also helping boost on-time performance across the Regional Transportation District’s rail system.
The L-Line, which does not use new track, takes over the existing northerly segment of the D-Line, which runs from Mineral Station in Littleton to the 30th and Downing Station in Five Points.
After Sunday’s launch, the D-Line will end at the 18th and Stout Station while the L-Line will cover the 1.7 miles between that station and the 30th and Downing station, with trains doing a turnaround loop through the heart of downtown Denver along Stout, Welton and 14th streets.
By breaking off the northernmost segment of the D-Line and making it a standalone line, service should improve for those traveling between Five Points and the 16th Street Mall, said RTD spokeswoman Lisa Trujillo.
“Currently, our D-Line trains along Welton have about an 80 percent on-time performance,” she said, noting that RTD’s light rail trains overall average a 94 percent on-time rating. “This ripples through the system — if there is a late D-Line that continues south of downtown, then other trains behind it are affected.”
The L-Line will maintain 15-minute frequencies most of the day, and trains will run at the same times they do now.
While the creation of the L-Line appears to be little more than a glorified name-change for a short section of the D-Line, it represents a step in a long-term plan to link Five Points to the A-Line’s 38th and Blake Station, Trujillo said. An extension of the L-Line to 38th and Blake Station — just under a mile in distance — would give residents in the neighborhood a quick and easy rail connection to Denver International Airport that doesn’t exist now.
“The main advantage is to provide a better destination for the northeastern end of the line and provide another connection for the Convention Center area of downtown with the airport, as well as the Five Points neighborhood,” Trujillo said.
But no funding has been identified and no timeline set for that new track, which is part of RTD’s Central Rail Extension project. The project is part of the FasTracks program approved by voters in 2004.
Tracy Winchester, executive director of the Five Points Business District, said she’s happy to see the L-Line finally start up, but she doesn’t want it to stop here.
“It’s a move in the right direction, but we can’t lose sight of connecting to 38th and Blake,” she said.
Tourism is vital to the continued vitality of Five Points, Winchester said, so allowing visitors to travel by rail from DIA down Welton Street to the Convention Center would be big for the neighborhood.
“We’re having an economic renaissance,” she said.
