The Regional Transportation District's long-awaited N Line from downtown Denver to Thornton and Northglenn is on schedule to open in September.
"Everything is on track, pun intended, for September," Paul Ballard, RTD's interim general manager and CEO told the agency's board of directors Tuesday evening.
The line was supposed to open in 2018 but hit delays that resulted in lawsuits and RTD paying out a multi-million-dollar settlement. More recently, RTD threatened to fire that contractor for missed deadlines.
But work has progressed since then. RTD will now start to plan a grand opening event, Ballard said, with an eye toward social distancing requirements.
Once the N Line opens, RTD will have completed about 70 percent of its 2004 FasTracks plan. The bulk of the remaining unfinished work is an extension of the B Line to Boulder and Longmont. But at an estimated $1.5 billion, it won't become reality for at least three decades under current funding scenarios — if at all.
