RTD joins negotiating effort for rail from Denver to Fort Collins

On Tuesday, the RTD Board of Directors voted 14-0 to join an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with other Colorado agencies like the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Front Range Passenger Rail District to negotiate with the freight railroad, BNSF, to obtain the details needed to determine the true costs of establishing train service within the Northwest corridor of RTD’s region.

CoPIRG called on the RTD board to join this IGA.

It’s been over two decades since voters approved FasTracks, the last big expansion of our transit system in the Denver metro region. We are overdue for our next big expansion of service. 

At the same time, due to higher costs and lower revenue than expected, the FasTracks funding has not been sufficient to complete everything voters approved in 2004 including the full build out of NW Rail. Without additional funding, this line, which would run along BNSF tracks, will not be completed until 2050 at the earliest. 

An initial analysis indicates that approximately $83 million a year (of which RTD would contribute approximately $41 million per year), would be enough to fund 3 daily trains from Denver to Longmont and beyond to Fort Collins as early as 2029. If accurate, that could mean train service that starts decades earlier than RTD could provide on its own. It could also reduce the costs for RTD by partnering with Front Range Passenger Rail District on longer distance train service to Fort Collins. 

However, these are all just estimates. And as we learned with FasTracks in 2004, unless you have a negotiated agreement with BNSF, any costs to run train service along their tracks from Denver to Longmont could be higher than expected. 

Accelerating the progress toward completing the full FastTracks rail network approved by voters in 2004, while reducing costs to RTD to provide that service, is a critical way to enable our region to more quickly move forward to the next big expansion – an expansion that grows beyond 2019 service levels and doubles the number of people who have easy, convenient access to frequent, fast and reliable transit in the region.

We look forward to hearing back on the results of the negitiation.