Denver RTD light rail boarding

Continuing on a series of posts about light rail boarding in various cities that Sacramento area people may have experience with or interest in.

Denver RTD (regional transit district) has an extensive light rail system which is low floor but not level boarding. The photos below is from denverurbanism.com. I apparently did not take any photos of the platforms and trains when I was last in Denver (!). These are Siemens railcars, SD-100 and SD-160, but not the S700 series that SacRT is going to purchase. Visually, it looks like a 4 inch step-up, not the 6 inch of the SacRT design, but we don’t have confirmation of that. It isn’t clear if any of the RTD routes are street-running. Correction: The Siemens SD-100/SD-160 railcars are high floor with steps, similar to the existing SacRT railcars, with floor 3 ft 3 inches above top of rail. They are not low-floor railcars, normally, though they can be altered to work as high platform level boarding. Apparently the current equivalent is the Siemens S200.

RTD also operates two commuter lines, Line A Union Station to Denver International Airport, and newer Line B Union Station to Westminster. These use railcars like those used in subways, but they run on the surface rather than underground. These are level boarding, railcars and platforms, by design.

For previous posts on level boarding, see tag ‘level-boarding‘.

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