Judge allows testing to resume immediately on issue-plagued RTD G-Line

DENVER – The Regional Transportation District’s Gold Line will be able to start some limited testing on the G-Line immediately after a judge on Tuesday granted RTD’s motion to resume tests.

Testing has been on hold since July after the last round of testing as RTD worked to fix technology issues that have plagued the system for the line’s crossing arms along both the G-Line and A-Line.

An administrative judge for the Public Utilities Commission said Tuesday though that RTD can immediately start testing again, though only along the lines of the plan it filed in March.

Flaggers will be required to be present at all crossings, and people living along the 15 G-Line stops should expect to hear blasts of train horns again as soon as testing begins.

The G-Line connects Arvada and Wheat Ridge to Union Station in downtown Denver and had been set to open in the fall of 2016 before the technical issues.

An RTD spokesman said in May the company was “100 percent” confident the G-Line would be “up and running by the end of the year.”

RTD is to provide new testimony to the PUC about crossing-arm warning times by Jan. 16, and if none of the parties that have intervened in the issue object to that testimony, another PUC hearing on the A-Line, which could have effects on the G-Line, would be set for mid-February.