W Line (RTD)
Denver light rail line
The W Line is a Regional Transportation District (RTD) light rail line that serves stations in Denver, Lakewood, and Golden, Colorado. The line began service on April 26, 2013, with the completion of the West Line of the FasTracks project. The W Line was the first part of FasTracks to break ground and begin operations. It is colored teal on system maps.
History
The Denver, Lakewood and Golden Railroad started operations in the area in 1893, switching to electric traction by 1909 as the Denver and Intermountain Railroad. The route ran from the downtown Denver interurban loop, along Lakewood Gulch and 13th Avenue, continuing out to Golden. Interurban service continued until 1950, when all Denver area trolley and interurban service ceased.
Plans to resurrect a railway line from Denver to Golden were advanced in the mid-1970s and in the 1980s RTD purchased the right-of-way to an unused rail corridor between the two cities. A study conducted in 1997 stated the need for a rapid transit corridor through the region, and settled on 13th Avenue as the locally preferred alternative. An environmental impact statement was started in 2001 and finished with a record of decision in 2004.
“W Line (RTD)” enters the record as denver light rail line. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Line, Denver and light can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“W Line (RTD)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Line, Denver and light provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7958496. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013, 1893, 1909 and 1950.
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This entry incorporates text from “W Line (RTD)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.