From pandemic to prosperity: RTD reflects on five years of the N Line and the grit of its employees

2020 was a year that changed the course of history. A pandemic spurred by the COVID-19 virus brought the entire world to a screeching halt. In a few short days, roadways became empty, meetings moved from boardrooms to online chat rooms, and modern life as humanity knew it changed forever. Yet even a global health emergency could not stop RTD from opening its newest and first self-operated commuter rail line, the N Line, which opened five years ago as of Sunday, Sept. 21.

The N Line, part of the voter-approved FasTracks plan, is to eventually span 18.5 miles from Union Station to North Adams County, passing through Commerce City, Northglenn and Thornton. Construction on the current 13 miles of the N Line began in 2014, when track was installed at the newly renovated Union Station to accommodate the line. Construction took four years and included building the Skyway Bridge, the longest continuous bridge in Colorado with a length of 1.8 miles. The work also involved building stations, road and pedestrian crossings, and Park-n-Rides, and installing catenary wire, switches and relay houses.

Just as construction on the alignment was wrapping up in 2018, Deputy Chief Operations Officer of Rail Operations Dave Jensen joined the agency. His responsibilities included overseeing the new N Line. It was clear to him that much care had already been put into the project.

“I was impressed by the clear sense of direction and the operational input that had been made,” Jensen said. “Many times, in projects like this, the operations teams are brought in too late and have to live with decisions that are made.”

“In this instance,” he added, “it was very apparent that the operational elements necessary were considered.”

In 2019, trains began testing along the entire alignment, the same year Acting General Superintendent of Transportation, Commuter Rail, Phil Washington Jr. decided to make a career leap that eventually saw him becoming a leader in the project.

“In 2019, I was busy operating light rail trains when the agency announced it would operate and maintain the N Line,” he said. “I saw it as an opportunity to learn and grow in an entirely new department within RTD and jumped on it.”

Washington made a lateral career leap to become a train engineer in training. He joined the first class of N Line train engineers and helped test trains through the alignment before the line opened for revenue service.

Testing continued into 2020, with the agency eagerly beginning to set its sights on opening the line for revenue service. However, fate had other plans – which changed the course of human history.

As the entire world welcomed in a new decade, a mysterious virus causing victims to experience pneumonia-like symptoms caught the eye of Chinese health officials, as well as the World Health Organization. The virus – eventually named 2019-nCoV, or more commonly known as COVID-19 – quickly spread throughout Wuhan, one of China’s larger cities and an air travel hub to other Asian countries. Only two weeks after the virus was discovered in China, cases were identified in Thailand and Japan.

On Jan. 20, 2020, the first case was reported in the United States. The first cases of COVID-19 in Colorado were discovered on March 5. Six days later, on March 11, the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Colorado learned of its first COVID-19-related fatality on March 13.

On March 25, 2020, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis issued a statewide stay-at-home order, bringing life for all Coloradans to a halt.

The order put RTD in uncharted waters. In the span of 24 hours, buses and trains went from being full of commuters to just a handful of individuals outside of the operator’s seat. Not only did this sudden shift put RTD in a precarious position delivering service, but it also put a lot of question marks on the agency’s newest commuter rail line.

“By definition, commuter rail is for people commuting to work. The various community lockdowns and shutdowns of business brought significant concerns about who, if anyone, would ride the N Line,” Jensen said. “More importantly, how would we, as an agency, keep our employees and customers safe in the midst of the pandemic?”

There were a lot of unknowns to be figured out – and fast. Even during the global lockdown, essential employees – including those in health care, utilities, law enforcement and other critical services – kept society running while leading medical researchers, scientists, virologists and engineers worked tirelessly to develop a vaccine. Customers still needed access to groceries and medicine, and essential workers continued to use RTD services to reach their jobs.

As RTD worked to provide safe, reliable transit service, it also had to figure out how to launch a brand-new commuter rail line in the middle of a pandemic.

“There were many challenges, from train testing to hiring to figuring out internal processes and ensuring that we had a reliable service,” Washington said. “We had to figure out our network and identify the most efficient ways to route trains around issues or when situations arose, as most are not familiar with the extent of this type of complexity, especially as relates to the amount of single track on the N Line. It can make it very difficult to work around an issue on the right of way and even more difficult to recover from delay events.”

The silver lining about the pandemic was that fewer people commuting allowed N Line staff to address unexpected issues without worrying about delaying customers.

“The pandemic, in a way, took some pressure off since we were able to learn these things without packed trains of customers,” Washington said. “Building relationships with our partners at Denver Transit Operators (DTO) was also part of the process, and learning how to work with them to handle emergency situations, deliver service in the midst of issues, and collaborating on vehicle troubleshooting was an experience.”

Despite the global pandemic having shut down much of the world and cast uncertainty over the transit industry, RTD’s N Line team pressed on, adjusting on the fly while working tirelessly to keep the project on track for its 2020 debut.

The N Line opened for revenue service on Sept. 21, 2020, to a socially distanced invite-only celebration. For many attending, the event provided a much-needed taste of normalcy and a reminder that nothing, not even a pandemic, can quell the resolve of RTD and its employees.

Slowly, thanks to the rapid development and mass deployment of the COVID-19 vaccine, larger gatherings started happening. Bands and musicians returned to stages across the Denver metro area, clubs dusted off their deejay booths and Denver’s sports teams returned to stadiums with actual humans instead of cardboard cutouts of fans. Life slowly began to return to normal.

By 2022, capacity restrictions were largely reduced, and major events returned to the Mile High City, including the world-famous National Western Stock Show. The three-week livestock trade show draws over 700,000 visitors each year. After the event was canceled in 2021, stock show attendees from all around the world were welcomed back to Denver with a brand-new way to access the event grounds – by taking the N Line to 48th & Brighton•National Western Center Station. The station is located steps from the event grounds, giving customers direct access to all that the show had to offer without worrying about crossing busy streets or dealing with parking fees.

As with any major event, special considerations were needed to accommodate the large influx of customers accessing and leaving the grounds via the N Line.

“When it comes to the National Western Stock Show, there is special planning involved,” Washington said. “We will often operate larger trainsets for those events and even additional trips if events go past a certain time. Our partners at DTO have been wonderful in working with us to better accommodate our customers for that event.”

The N Line’s inaugural service to the National Western Stock Show wasn’t the team’s only accomplishment in 2022. That year, it achieved two monumental milestones: operating 13 consecutive months without a single red-signal violation by engineers, and arguably, an even more remarkable achievement in going 18 straight months without a single workplace injury, further cementing the team’s commitment to safety and efficiency.

Fast forward to 2025 and the N Line continues to set some of the highest key performance indicators across all services RTD offers, most notably the line recording an on-time performance (OTP) percentage of 96.7% since the beginning of 2023. This means that almost 97% of all service the N Line has operated since the start of 2023 has operated on time. In 2024, the N Line recorded an OTP percentage of 97%.

The results speak for themselves on the commitment N Line employees have to the agency and its customers, something that both Jensen and Washington strongly commend.

“The N Line staff never backed away from challenges and continued to press forward with great resolve to ensure the highest performance possible,” Jensen said. “In a relatively short period of time, the N Line has been able to achieve a very high level of performance with a low level of incidents while maintaining this high standard. This speaks of the safety and work cultures that have been established.

“At every level and in every craft of the N Line, the employees are committed to operational excellence and work very hard to maintain that. Five years later, the staff is still striving for continuous improvement, and it shows.”

“I have never worked with a team as deeply committed and passionate as the one we have here,” Washington said. “Those OTP numbers don’t happen without a team that values what they do and understands how their actions impact their community and our customers. From the train engineers and conductors to the dispatchers and the supervisors, every person cares about the work they do. It’s more than just a job, and the fact that we have been able to cultivate that environment is, I think, one of our greatest achievements.”

As the N Line celebrates its fifth birthday, Washington is already looking ahead to what the next five years and beyond will hold for his team and the N Line itself. He anticipates even greater things, he said, “as we continue to grow, learn and build those relationships with not only our RTD colleagues but all of our partners as well.”

“Currently, we are hard at work in moving into factory acceptance testing for the new commuter rail simulator,” Washington said. “It is coming together nicely and will offer a greatly enhanced training and retraining experience.”

Much like the current simulator Light Rail Operations uses for training operators at Elati, the new commuter rail simulator will put engineers and engineers-in-training into a replica cockpit of the same electric multiple-unit (EMU) trains that are operated on the A, B, G and N lines, down to every switch, throttle and button being operational and having the same function they do on the track. The simulator will allow engineers to hone their skills in a safe environment, allowing them to learn how to navigate a vast range of scenarios they could face on the alignment.

“We are really looking forward to implementing it into our training program and getting our folks hands-on with it as soon as we can,” Washington said. “Right now, it’s looking like the next phase of testing should be around February or March 2026.”

The N Line is not simply another rail line in RTD’s diverse portfolio of services. It is a physical testament to overcoming adversity, perseverance through dark times and not resting on one’s laurels when achieving great success, but instead working hard to maintain that success indefinitely.

Cheers to five years of the N Line! With the extremely talented team of engineers, supervisors, trainers, Maintenance of Way crews, dispatchers and leadership in control of the future of the line, the next five years look to be just as bright. All aboard!