Colorado HSR / Passenger Rail Corridor Studies

Anyone hear about this? Its a recent (last 3 or 4 years) idea to build a statewide train system through colorado, 1 route going north/south from Casper Wyoming tying in with the railrunner in NM to make it to Albuquerque, then another route running from the Utah border to Denver along I70. It looks like their wanting to go with DMU's or similar trainsets, possibly the Flirt models. We hopefully will be voting on this in November, I think its a great idea. All 3 states (wyoming, CO and NM) are all for it, and many towns are signed up, they received the funding to complete the feasibility study (hopefully before its too late to vote on it this year)


rangerxpress.com


rocky mountain rail authority

This is great news. Colorado is a big state with a fairly spread out population, which needs this sort of proposal. We're getting this rail infrastructure, including UTA in NW Utah just in time (before oil goes through the stratosphere). Now is the time to act!

The north-south route (i.e. along I-25 corrider) should have reasonable ridership. Bus travel from Casper to Albuquerque can be horrendous. If it can be done cost-effectively, I think people would ride.

both routes would have good ridership, the only thing I worry about is the fact that most of the front range common people (most of the voting number) view the I-70 corridor as the "rich people's playground" which in reality there are a lot of communities that would really benefit from this in the mountains.

It's a great idea, but something about the "two burritos equals better transit" slant is kinda amateurish. All the other information on the site is great, however. I'd rather show a photo of people on a train rather than the burritos...

mmm... burritos.

-otto-

What's the Aspen branch supposed to be? A segment all by itself?....or a once daily connection to Amtrak?

It depends, if they run it through glenwood canyon (very slow) on the route to grand junction, aspen would have to be a branch. If they went over cottonwood pass, it wouldn't make sense to have a branch run the extra 20 miles to aspen unless they just add it to the main route. I don't think amtrak is going to have any kind of role in the new system other than destinations to denver and from west of grand junction. Having double track and no freight trains will increase the speed of amtrak running through CO though, this depends on if the heavy amtrak trainsets can even make it up the proposed grade for the new system, which will more than likely use much lighter cars. I imagine amtrak service might just stop in grand junction and continue in denver.

I know the burritos is a silly website, they had another site that got replaced. This is a fairly new idea and no graphics or renderings are even made yet it seems. They are trying to distance themselves as far as possible from the monorail/maglev idea that go shot down on the ballot several years ago for being wayyyy to expensive.

http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_14782251
The feasibility study, which took 18 months to complete and cost $1.4 million, said the DIA-Eagle/Fort Collins-Pueblo rail network could carry up to 35 million passengers a year by 2035, generating more than $750 million in fare revenue. DIA-Denver-Colorado Springs would be the first to be built at a cost of $3.32 billion with trains every 15 to 30 minutes traveling at average speeds of 90-100 mph.

Cost to build the whole system is estimated at $21.1 billion and would require tunneling through the Continental Divide.

Of course, nothing will get very far without Federal designation as an official high speed rail corridor.

The study report is available on the web.
Executive Summary (24 pages) http://www.rockymountainrail.org/docume ... -FINAL.pdf
Final Report (362 pages) http://trainsnotlanes.com/RMRA/RMRAFinal.pdf
Appendicies (148 pages for the true insomniac) http://www.rockymountainrail.org/docume ... 032410.pdf

jstolberg wrote:http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_14782251
DIA-Denver-Colorado Springs would be the first to be built at a cost of $3.32 billion with trains every 15 to 30 minutes traveling at average speeds of 90-100 mph.

They shouldn't even bother if it's gonna be that slow.

thats a reasonably fast average speed . they would have to do at least 150 mph to average that .

jstolberg wrote:http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_14782251
The feasibility study, which took 18 months to complete and cost $1.4 million, said the DIA-Eagle/Fort Collins-Pueblo rail network could carry up to 35 million passengers a year by 2035, generating more than $750 million in fare revenue. DIA-Denver-Colorado Springs would be the first to be built at a cost of $3.32 billion with trains every 15 to 30 minutes traveling at average speeds of 90-100 mph.

Cost to build the whole system is estimated at $21.1 billion and would require tunneling through the Continental Divide.

Of course, nothing will get very far without Federal designation as an official high speed rail corridor.

Extending the passenger and fare predictions out to 2035 is quite a trick - although such slight of hand might be neccessary to justify a $21.1 billion price tag!

It's worth noting that the Ski Train was effectively killed by a misguided station renovation, which goes to show that when public money is squandered in Denver, the results are frequently counterproductive.

This silly study should be shredded, not shelved.

The study considered 26.7 miles of tunnels at an estimated cost of $44,000 per route foot = $6.2 billion. That included $2.2 billion for a tunnel on a branch route to Aspen, a high price to get to a single resort. The total cost from Denver to Copper Mountain and Breckenridge is estimated at $9.35 billion. Continuing to Vail and Eagle County Airport would cost an additional $4.15 billion. Estimated travel time from downtown Denver to Vail is 2 hours with trains at approximately 1 hour intervals 6 am to 11 pm.

Gathering the political will to spend those kind of dollars may depend on making a bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics. See David O. Williams' blog at http://www.realvail.com/TheOReport/976/ ... prize.html

Look at what Vancouver recently 2010 Olympics cost:

In 2004, the operational cost of the 2010 Winter Olympics was estimated to be Canadian $1.354 billion (USD $1,314,307,896). As of mid-2009 it was projected to be $1.76 billion, all raised from non-government sources, primarily through sponsorships and the auction of national broadcasting rights. $580 million was the taxpayer-supported budget to construct or renovate venues throughout Vancouver. $200 million was expected to be spent for security, which was organized through a special body, the Integrated Security Unit, of which the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) was the lead agency; other government agencies such as the Vancouver Police, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Canadian Forces and the Canada Border Services Agency also played a role. That number was later revealed to be in the region of $1 billion, an amount in excess of five times what was originally estimated.
As of the start of February 2010, the total cost of the Games, including all the infrastructure improvements for the region that occurred was estimated to be $6 billion, with $600 million of the spending directly related to hosting the Games.

I think it is extremely difficult to swallow an additional $21 Billion for HSR over the $6 Billion to host the Games. Cities and States might be willing to add a $ Billion or two for infrastructure improvements to have the best face possible while hosting the Games, but I think the Games is a poor excuse to spend another $21 Billion just for HSR.

electricron wrote:Cities and States might be willing to add a $ Billion or two for infrastructure improvements to have the best face possible while hosting the Games, but I think the Games is a poor excuse to spend another $21 Billion just for HSR.

Not to mention that with average speeds of only 90-100 mph this wouldn't even qualify as HSR anywhere else. If the government is in a big hurry to spend $21 billion on HSR, then put it into the NEC or some other fairly dense corridor. At least the ridership is already there.