Denver International Airport Travel Woes Over Memorial Day Weekend
Spring thunderstorms and mechanical problems on the train connecting Denver International Airport to downtown snarled travel for countless passengers over Memorial Day weekend. A problem with the Regional Transportation District’s A Line caused long lines and left some travelers with few options for getting home late Monday and early Tuesday morning.
RTD Director Chris Nicholson first learned of problems on Reddit, where passengers posted about waiting in line with hundreds of other people to catch the bus, if they could get on at all, while rideshare companies surged prices to more than $100 for a trip downtown.
“It sucks,” Nicholson said. “We have a responsibility to get people where they need to go, especially when you’re talking about something like the airport. There are some things in life you can afford to delay, and getting to a flight is not one of them.”
The A Line started having problems with signal equipment at around 5 p.m. Monday and officials replaced the train with bus shuttles at 9 p.m., spokesperson Tina Jaquez said in a statement. RTD assigned four buses to provide shuttle service, and the train started running again just before 1 p.m. Tuesday.
RTD has very few extra bus operators right now, Nicholson said, which makes responding to service changes a challenge. The agency is hiring more people, which should alleviate some of those problems, he added.
“I’m sorry for the people who had to deal with that (Monday) night,” he said. “This is our premier public transit line and I want people to trust it.”
Todd Lauck was on one of the 1,252 flights that were delayed by severe weather at DIA on Monday and missed his connecting flight home.
Lauck was flying from Iowa to New Mexico and connecting through Denver when his plane was delayed in Iowa. He spent nearly three hours Monday night being sent back and forth between United Airlines and DIA officials, trying to get a voucher for a hotel, before he gave up and paid for it out of his own pocket. At one point, a gate agent said all they could offer him was a cot in the terminal.
“It was really careless the way they handled it and left everybody on their own,” he said. “I was around hundreds of people who were just on their own and didn’t know what to do.”
Weather woes continued at the airport Tuesday morning after federal officials ordered a ground stop after a dense fog descended on DIA Tuesday morning. Planes were grounded for about an hour before moving to a ground delay, which was lifted at around 1 p.m.
More than 800 flights were delayed and dozens were canceled at DIA on Tuesday, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.
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