Reporting by Rebecca Powell, Fort Collins Coloradoan
There is both hope and skepticism about a plan to bring passenger rail service from Denver and through Boulder up to Fort Collins in the next 2½ years.
The Front Range Passenger Rail District has said a starter service of the Colorado Connector, which it has nicknamed CoCo, will make three daily round trips between Fort Collins and Denver’s Union Station.
The district contends it can be done with existing funds and says service will begin by January 2029.
“This isn’t a proposal waiting for a green light: it is being implemented right now — the work has already begun — and because of it, CoCo will be ready to ride in 2029,” the district’s draft delivery plan states.
And during the passenger rail district’s town hall in Fort Collins on July 30, Rep. Andy Boesenecker told the crowd: “What an incredible privilege it is to talk about this project no longer under the lens of ‘what if it were to happen.’ But now we’re saying, ‘When it happens, here’s what it looks like.’”
The vision for the Colorado Connector extends well beyond the Fort Collins to Denver segment.
A 0.333% sales tax, if the district opts to send it to voters who live in the Front Range Passenger Rail District boundaries and if those voters OK it, could fund a proposed expansion of the service from Denver to Pueblo and eventually offer three times as many daily round trips.
The proposed tax would amount to 3.33 cents on a $10 purchase.
Setting aside those expansion plans, there have been positive steps toward starter service, also known as joint service. This includes reaching a nonbinding agreement with the BNSF Railway. But to get things off the ground will require funding from the Denver metro area’s already cash-strapped transportation district.
Joint service will cost $332 million to implement, with 53% of that money, $176 million, coming from the Colorado Transportation Investment Office (CTIO) within the Colorado Department of Transportation. The rest, $156 million, would come from RTD, Denver’s Regional Transportation District, which is in the midst of a budget crisis.
In addition to the initial buildout, operations for the Colorado Connector are expected to cost those partners $30 million to $36 million annually.
Those costs would be split evenly by CTIO, RTD and the Colorado Clean Transit Enterprise, also a part of CDOT.
Tickets would also produce revenue. The district was modeling fares in the range of $14 each way from Fort Collins to Denver, according to information presented during Fort Collins’ March town hall with district representatives. The fare will depend on where the passenger boards and disembarks, according to information presented during the town hall, and is meant to be in line with Bustang and Winter Park Express tickets.
The state, for its share of costs, would use funds from state oil and gas production fees and from car rental fees implemented by the legislature in 2024.
RTD’s share would come from its FasTracks savings account, funded by a 0.4% sales tax passed in 2004 to build the district’s light rail system. Much of the proposed rail lines were completed, but not the Northwest Rail segment, which was planned to run between Longmont and Denver.
Front Range Passenger Rail is one way RTD can provide rail service for the northwest metro area.
The FasTracks savings account is a reserve account set aside specifically for FasTracks projects, so RTD can’t use it for general operations.
But not everybody is on board with that plan.
RTD is in a ‘sticky situation’ with Front Range Passenger Rail
JoyAnn Ruscha, one of 15 RTD elected directors, told the Coloradoan that RTD’s financial forecast shows that the agency does not currently have the resources to support joint service.
RTD’s board of directors voted on July 28 to pursue service cuts that will save it $20 million, as it faces a potential budget deficit of $150 million in 2027.
“At the current projected rate of spending, there is not enough money available for the joint service while also meeting RTD’s existing obligations,” Ruscha said in an email prior to that vote.
“Contributing to Front Range Passenger Rail at the rate they are asking requires us to cut about 30%-40% of our existing services,” Ruscha wrote.
Even though the FasTracks savings account can only be spent on rail projects, the fund still represents available cash to RTD, Ruscha said.
A $156 million investment in passenger rail, plus the money needed annually to maintain it, will quickly total more than the $186 million it holds now, Ruscha said.
Meanwhile, Adams County has been granted $12 million funds from the FasTracks savings account for expansion of a another uncompleted rail line, and that further reduces the balance.
“We are in a deficit crisis and there is also a lot of pressure to do Joint Service,” Ruscha told the Coloradoan. “We can’t fund anything extra without cutting what we currently have or borrowing, so it is a sticky situation.”
Ruscha and fellow director Michael Guzman issued a joint statement noting that they represent areas of Denver “where decades of segregation, displacement, pollution, and unequal public investment continue to shape people’s lives. Cutting existing bus service in Denver’s Black and brown neighborhoods while simultaneously considering funding a new train to Boulder and Fort Collins would reinforce a longstanding pattern of unjust disinvestment from our communities.”
“I don’t believe in disinvesting from our communities to send money to other communities until we’ve taken care of what we have at home,” Ruscha said during the July 28 board meeting.
But Karen Benker, who represents cities like Longmont and Broomfield on the RTD board, said the agency has an obligation to the taxpayers who have been paying the FasTracks sales tax for more than 20 years but haven’t gotten a rail line.
“When government goes to the taxpayers and says, ‘Would you raise your taxes and this is what we will do,’ I believe the government needs to keep their promise,” Benker said. “We have a number of frustrated taxpayers waiting for this project to be completed.”
Benker said there are other ways RTD can address the deficit besides withholding money from Front Range Passenger Rail.
RTD staff have already made staffing cuts affecting 80 positions, she said, and RTD is likely to receive $44 million from CDOT’s Clean Enterprise Fund to help maintain service. The board’s pursuit of the additional $20 million in cuts means what was once a $215 million deficit is starting to get closer to $100 million, she said.
The board has also discussed, but so far rejected, fare increases, but there will be more conversations in the future, Benker said.
“Clearly we have a financing issue, but we also have to come through and be faithful to the taxpayer,” Benker said.
The board will not vote on any appropriation for joint service until late this year or early next year, after the potential sales tax question goes to voters in November.
It will need a supermajority of support, or 10 votes.
“I do firmly believe it’ll move forward, one way or another,” Benker said, adding the caveat that she couldn’t speak for other board members.
“I cannot imagine a scenario where RTD does not contribute to FRPRD or just leaves the cash sitting there,” Ruscha acknowledged in an email to the Coloradoan. Ruscha also said RTD could choose to appropriate less than the $156 million.
Why Front Range Passenger Rail thinks it can get the job done
Sal Pace, general manager of the Front Range Passenger Rail District, said during a July 20 media briefing that the district will go ahead with the plan for joint service regardless of whether a sales tax question gets voter OK.
RTD’s board has already approved the term sheet with BNSF by a margin of 13-1, Pace said, and appropriated $5 million for the 90% design phase.
The agreed-upon term sheet laid out the finance plan, though Pace acknowledged the RTD board still needs to vote to appropriate the dollars for it, he said.
So why will this plan deliver for the Northwest Rail, when FasTracks has so far not?
Instead of building an entirely new rail line, the district proposes to use the existing BNSF Railway lines. The service would be run by Amtrak.
The project not only has a signed term sheet and a proposed financing model, but a rail access agreement that rewards BNSF for on-time service, Pace said.
“Our entire model has been done differently, and it starts with the collaboration that we have with the freight railroads,” as opposed to the alternative, where governments declare their right to mainline freight lines to get passenger service, Pace said.
BNSF is becoming a partner and collaborator in delivering service, “as opposed to what’s been done in virtually every other state, which is a contentious process,” Pace said.
The district’s signed term sheet with the BNSF Railway for the starter service stipulates that BNSF will get 50% more in access fees when passenger service meets on-time metrics, Pace said.
“They’re making more money the more successful we are, which hasn’t been done in the past before.”
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan.
Related: How Colorado Connector rail passengers could get to 8 top destinations
