Judy chaired a meeting of her FasTracks committee on Monday, and it generated a little news in Tuesday’s Denver Post — an article, headlined “Union Station trench could be big savings.” Nothing wrong with the article, which accurately reported that the Union Station master developers are considering running the subgrade commuter lines into the station via open-roofed trenches, rather than fully enclosed tunnels. The latter would require expensive ventilation and circulation systems, to keep diesel exhaust from building up inside the tunnels; those costs can be avoided with an open-air-trench design. The savings could amount to as much as $50 million.
But the article didn’t report Judy’s question: if you build an open-air trench, where does the exhaust go? Two other members of the committee were asking the same question. The answer, according to Eric Anderson of the Union Station Advisory Committee, is that it simply vents into the open air — but because it’s not in a confined space (i.e., a tunnel), it dissipates naturally. ”Won’t that just add to the pollution downtown?” Judy asked, and Anderson said pollution estimates would be documented the project’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which is due about this time next year.
Denver Public Works voiced another set of concerns regarding drainage — Union Station lies at the bottom of downtown’s entire runoff network, which heads downhill toward the South Platte. That subject, too, will be covered in the EIS. The mayor’s office has a few questions of its own about the project and is trying to arrange a meeting, tentatively set for September 7. Representatives from Council, RTD, DRCOG, CDOT, and Continuum/East-West will be there.
A draft copy of the EIS is available at the Denver Union Station website. You can see the full FasTracks committee meeting via Channel 8′s Denver Online at this link.
