For a project that kicked off with $2.5 million seven years ago, there is little evidence along Interstate 25 of progress on a fast, frequent train system running from Pueblo to Fort Collins.<\/p>\n
Endless barriers exist preventing the start of construction and there’s a $3.2 billion price tag to build a high-speed railway along the I-25 corridor. But even with the steep timeframe and cost, the benefits will far outweigh the miles of red tape and over two decades that this commuter rail project has navigated.<\/p>\n
Constructing fast, efficient public transportation should be more than a bottomless pit our tax money falls into. With estimated rapid increases in the state’s population and global temperatures, we need high-speed railways now more than ever.<\/p>\n
The United States is woefully behind on public transportation. Last semester, I studied abroad in Scotland, where there were multiple bus routes to campus, trains across the country, and plane tickets to most of Europe for under 100 pounds.<\/p>\n
Coming back to Colorado was a rough transition, to say the least.<\/p>\n
I drive from Colorado Springs to Denver and back at least once a week. Few terms besides “insane” describe how the one-hour-and-fifteen-minute commute makes me feel.<\/p>\n
On one of my loathsome drives to Denver, I put on the Ezra Klein podcast<\/a>, where he was serendipitously talking about high-speed railways. Delays in constructing railways occur across the country, not just in Colorado, I learned. Klein outlined the problems of building a train in California and how \u201cit took the High-Speed Rail Authority four requests for possession and two and a half years of legal wrangling to get\u2026 (a) little spit of land.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2004 (the year I was born), the state passed the FasTracks<\/a> ballot initiative, which was intended to build a light rail or commuter rail from Denver to Longmont. In a press release<\/a> last year, Gov. Jared Polis\u2019 administration admitted that \u201cfor 20 years voters have been paying for rail service that they have not received\u201d and \u201cthe project has stalled due to a lack of adequate funding.\u201d<\/p>\n State leaders decided they wanted to get the train project back on track.<\/p>\n The Denver-Longmont segment could be completed by 2029, and the entire train is estimated to be completed by 2035. Even though it\u2019s ten years away, with federal and funding hold-ups, I question whether I will see this train before I\u2019m middle-aged.<\/p>\n In 2021, Colorado passed Senate Bill 238<\/a>, which established the Front Range Passenger Rail District<\/a>. This new transportation district has the ability to put ballot measures before voters to ask for money. A ballot measure may even come on the 2026 ballot asking Colorado voters for funding.<\/p>\n Former President Joe Biden passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act<\/a>, which gives funding to projects like high-speed rail. The Infrastructure Act money could be critical to provide funding for building the train, but these grants come with stipulations that local funding has to match 10% to 20% of what the infrastructure bill gives, according to Nancy Burke, spokesperson for the Front-Range Passenger Rail District.<\/p>\n After that, it can take two to six years for train cars to go into operation because they need to be refurbished and meet safety standards set by the Federal Railroad Administration, Burke explained. The district will need to acquire the land needed to build stations, figure out scheduling, and do all of this while working with different local organizations and municipalities.<\/p>\n When it comes to actually building the train, the district is using existing freight rail tracks, which helps speed up the process, but the state will still have to build sidings — places where the train can pull over if there are multiple trains on the track at once.<\/p>\n Gov. Polis rode a test train<\/a> from Denver to Longmont in March of 2024, a public relations stunt, promising to fulfill the 2004 promise of a train through the Front Range Passenger Rail district. It\u2019s scheduled to be completed four years after the press and politicians crammed into a car and declared they \u201cbroke that barrier.\u201d<\/p>\n The year 2029 is also the year the Colorado legislature mandates that the Service Development Plan<\/a> be completed for the entire project. However, construction cannot even begin until the plan is finished, and the state must still navigate through muddy federal waters.<\/p>\n