FasTracks East Corridor Environmental Impact Statement and Advanced Engineering, Denver and Aurora, Colorado

PBS&J and Regional Transportation District

The FasTracks East Corridor is a proposed 23-mile long commuter rail line that will link the Denver International Airport to Union Station in downtown Denver. In addition, the East Corridor will have links to the Central and I-225 light rail lines. An Environmental Impact Statement is being prepared for the corridor and as part of the work, advanced engineering is being conducted for the corridor. The advanced engineering includes site investigations by Yeh and Associates for the proposed commuter rail track, stations, retaining walls and bridges. The East Corridor parallels existing heavy rail lines, therefore, several of the structures must be designed for heavy rail loading as opposed to commuter rail.

As currently proposed, the corridor has 15 bridge crossings with several of the crossings involving multi-span and multi-structures with heavy, commuter and light rail bridges. The longest bridge is over ¾ of a mile long. Many of the bridge approaches will utilize back to back mechanically stabilized earth retaining walls.

The corridor also includes several stations, which entail small surface structures and parking lots. Yeh’s geotechnical investigations will also provide design criteria for the stations and parking lot pavement sections. At the Denver International Airport the proposed station will be 50 feet below existing grade so the alignment will require a significant amount of permanent retaining walls.

Yeh’s key personnel that worked on the project included Shan-Tai Yeh who was the principal in charge and QA/QC reviewer, Jere Strickland was the project manager and Bob LaForce was the pavement engineer.