Supporters of Ballot Measure 7A to fund the Front Range Passenger Rail District are claiming victory.
If passed, there would be a 0.333% sales tax in the Front Range Passenger Rail District to fund the southern portion of the Colorado Connector, also known as CoCo.
The daily regional train would serve communities up and down the Front Range from Pueblo to Fort Collins. The tax would also pay for a new station in Trinidad on Amtrak’s Southwest Chief long-distance route between Los Angeles and Chicago.
Let’s go!
Having used the commuter rail up and down the Wasatch corridor in Utah and the Lightrail in Seattle, I desperately hope Colorado will love this. Public transportation is incredible and that region needs it severely
I really hope this works out better than the light rail system does in Denver.
It’s an intercity rail system, you’re comparing apples to oranges there.
The problems with the light rail would be easily be similar issues with CoCo. If the trains aren’t often enough or comparatively fast enough to out perform driving, it won’t be successful. This is the issue with light rail being successful and will absolutely be issues that could transfer to this.
For example, last time I took the light rail, we just missed the train and had to wait 30 min for the next one. That on top of the slow travel time meant we would have been better off driving and paying for parking. Not to mention the trip to return home was so crowded we couldn’t board the train and took over an hour get the next one (one of the trains was cancelled and didn’t even show up). Compared to cities I’ve been with functional systems where you show up and can get your train within 5-10 minutes even if you just missed one.
If CoCo doesn’t have enough trips each day to prevent people being stuck waiting for the return train for hours, I don’t see it being very successful. I say this having voted for the measure because I want it to be successful, I’m just skeptical if it will be as good as it’s been sold.
It’ll probably work similarly to the Bustang with trains on the hour. Which I feel is reasonable for inter-city travel. That said, it will probably run on an alternate schedule to the Bustang, giving multiple travel options.
In general, I agree, service frequency & reliability are critical, but I just want to push back on the idea you would have been “better off driving”. For starters, you would have lost the reading or chatting time on the train to having to work driving, plus the extra time and money on parking, fuel and maybe tolls. Maybe your time is so valuable that you have no slack or downtime otherwise in your day and doing that work is worth it to save some, but often it’s just a case of dealing with the unpredictability and having spare time near a station instead of elsewhere. And of course, all it takes is another driver to crash ahead of you and you can be sat there hours while they rescue the victims, recover the vehicle and clear the queues.
It’s still better if the train service is reliable and has enough capacity, of course!
pueblo to fort collins by train would have sounded like a fantasy ten years ago. nice to see voters actually pick it
This is wonderful. Seems like there were quite a few pro-transit / pro-two wheels votes that passed yesterday, and we’re going to need them. Gas prices are never coming back down.
Do wet get a free chunk of Lead if run the line to Pueblo?
