A study is being undertaken in Colorado that could lead to the building of a passenger rail line stretching nearly 200 miles and connecting Denver on the east to the city of Craig in the west.
Funding has been secured by the Colorado Department of Transportation to study the project, which has won support from a wide variety of state and local officials.
In a statement, Governor Jared Polis said the new rail line would represent a “just transition for communities moving away from coal production, cutting traffic and reducing pollution.”
Those outcomes are all regarded, added the Governor, as “some of my administration’s top priorities.”
Prospects for what would be a mountain rail service have improved in recent months with a decline in coal train traffic, which has, in turn, prompted the Union Pacific company to entertain other uses for its regional rail route.
“We have an unusual confluence of favorable conditions in place right now,” Shoshana Lew, CDOT’s executive director, was quoted as saying in the publication Mass Transit.
Lew added: “This is a rare opportunity for us to get significant funding for a project we know is very doable.”
According to a press release issued by the CDOT, the next step in making the project become reality will see the gathering of public input from residents living in communities along the rail route, and continued planning with Union Pacific.
A former line ran roughly along the same route, but was discontinued in 1968, during a time when the Coloradoan newspaper remarked that “passenger service is declining at a geometric rate.”
In fact, passenger rail traffic nationally declined by a remarkable 84% during the first two decades after World War II, as more and more Americans turned to automobiles as their primary means of transportation.
Passenger rail advocates, however, have noted a return to passenger rail service in the county’s largest metro areas in the last two decades. Earlier this month, the Federal Railroad Administration announced that it was targeting $1.4 billion in funds for new passenger rail line construction and upgrade projects.
By Garry Boulard
