Amtrak wants to be a partner in Front Range passenger rail service

Apr. 13—Amtrak executives emphasized Monday their corporation's willingness to participate in a partnership to provide and operate passenger railroad service along the Front Range between Pueblo and Cheyenne.

That corridor "is ready" for passenger rail service, Amtrak President Stephen Gardner said during a virtual news conference. "It's long past ready."

Gardner and the other participants in the news conference — Amtrak CEO Bill Flynn; Sal Pace, the vice chairman of Colorado's Front Range Passenger Rail Commission; Jill Gaebler, a Colorado Springs City Council member who also is a member of the Front Range Passenger Rail Commission member; and Dale Steenberger, president and CEO of the Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce — described how a partnership, and the sharing of the costs of the service, could make passenger rail service a reality along the corridor through Colorado and into Wyoming.

That also could require a combination of federal, state and regional funding. The panelists did not offer any new estimates of the potential costs or what each partner's share of those costs might be, although Amtrak said last week that the news conference was being convened "to talk about a vision for passenger rail service along a Front Range corridor between Pueblo and Cheyenne, including Colorado Springs/USAF Academy, Castle Rock, Littleton, Denver, Boulder, Longmont, Loveland, Ft. Collins and Cheyenne."

Gardner said Monday that the potential Front Range corridor service being considered by Amtrak would be part of the national railroad corporation's vision of expanding rail passenger service across the country and providing that service to up to 160 communities not currently on Amtrak routes.

He said Amtrak has been working together with BNSF Railway, which provides freight train service in Colorado, on that effort, as well.

Flynn said Amtrak has the vision and the experience to provide such rail service.

The rail commission's Pace said he is excited about the possibility of having Amtrak as a partner in providing that passenger service, something Pace said the commission has been working on for four years.

Early last December, Colorado Public Radio reported that the Front Range Passenger Rail Commission had received a draft report that the first incarnation of passenger rail service along the Front Range could be a modest one, with two to six round trips a day between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs on trains traveling an average of 45 miles per hour, mostly on existing freight rail tracks.

That could cost $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion, according to the draft report to the commission. A second phase would add service between Colorado Springs and Pueblo at a cost of $200 million to $300 million.

On Monday, Gaebler said corridor residents realize that passenger rail would be a better use of transportation funding than "continuing to add lanes to I-25."

On Dec. 8, Longmont City Council members expressed support for the state commission's ongoing efforts to study and potentially establish passenger rail service along the Front Range corridor between Fort Collins and Pueblo.

However, implicit in that endorsement — according to several Longmont Council members' comments at the time — was an emphasis that any rail service main line should run through, or at least connect to, Longmont.

Longmont Mayor Brian Bagley cited in December the ongoing complaints from Longmont, Boulder and Boulder County officials and residents that RTD had failed to complete its promised Northwest Rail FasTracks passenger service between Denver and Longmont despite collecting taxes from this area for the overall FasTracks system since metro-area voters approved that system and the tax in 2004.

On Monday, Pace noted that a bill had been introduced in the Colorado Legislature on Friday that he said would "help make passenger rail a reality" through the Front Range.

Senate Bill 238 would create a new Front Range passenger rail district whose board could someday ask voters within the district to approve a sales tax to help fund passenger rail in the corridor.

According to a news release from state Senate Democrats, the bill introduced by Senate President Leroy Garcia, D-Pueblo, would "implement one of the most expansive public transportation plans in Colorado history" by laying "the groundwork for an interconnected, high-speed passenger rail system spanning from Trinidad to the Wyoming border, allowing residents all along the Front Range to travel more efficiently and effectively."

Garcia said in last Friday's news release that "for too long Colorado's transportation system has been underfunded and overburdened, leading to crumbling roads and horrible traffic congestion. We need a long-term solution that will address our growing population needs while ensuring people can get to where they need to go safely and efficiently."

Pace noted Monday that Garcia's bill, which has been assigned to the Senate Transportation and Energy Committee to be scheduled for a hearing, "doesn't specify that Amtrak will be the operator" of any Front Range passenger train service.

According to a summary of the bill on the Colorado General Assembly's website, the Front Range Passenger Rail District would be charged with "planning, designing, developing, financing, constructing, operating, and maintaining an interconnected passenger rail system (system) along the Front Range."

If the Front Range Passenger Rail District board and the Regional Transportation District board were to deem it appropriate, the Passenger Rail District could share, with the RTD, "capital costs associated with shared use of rail line infrastructure in the Northwest Rail Line corridor for passenger train service," according to the summary of the proposed law.

The bill would authorize asking voters' authorization to levy a sale and use tax of up to 0.8% and to issue bonds backed by those tax revenues. Pace said that if voters were to approve a tax question in an election over the coming few years, "we could start seeing some of the service in a decade."