18 December 2008

RTD Connects To Park Meadows

Yesterday, long after the rest of the T-Rex project was completed, the bridge from the Park Meadows Mall (near the Denver Tech Center) to the RTD light rail stop at that location opened. Prior to this point, one had to take a pedestrian bridge over the light rail line to a commuter parking lot, and then take a shuttle bus from the commuter lot, under I-25, to the mall.

RTD jurisdictional issues and disputes with prior and current owners of the mall, who don't want their parking lots to be used by commuters, held up the project. When I lived in Buffalo, New York, a similar dispute, mostly based on concens that lower income people would come to a mall if it were transit accessable, lead to the death of a young woman who took a short cut to avoid being late to her job there.

While this is a long overdue and welcome development, it has probably happened too late, coming a week before Christmas, to have much impact on this year's peak shopping season.

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