Up and Away

UPDATE 11/29/06 7:45am - Indeed. It snowed a bit, traffic sucked, but the light rail whipped at 55mph all the way! Cars, ha!

I had been on vacation for the past week so I had not gone to the office. Before today I had been riding the bus to work, thanks to the wonderful people at RTD. A huge highway project - like $880 million, was completed a few weeks ago (early and under budget), and a glorious part of it directly affected my commute.

Light rail! No more buses for me! No more transfers! No more waiting! My pre-light rail commute involved 2 or 3 buses, one or two transfers, and time wasted waiting for the bus. On-to-off time about an hour. Now it's one train and 20 minutes! Very sweet!





Here is the driver's box. See that joystick knob thing on the left? I guess that's all the driver needs - pull back to BRAKE, press forward to GO.



Art was commissioned for the new light rail stations. All of the stations have these benches with stained glass backs.



It's snowing now, so it's easy to say the morning commute will suck for cars and buses. Before snow meant an hour-and-a-half commute. With the light rail, I bet it will be 20 non-affected minutes!