The Front Range Passenger Rail District board may decide this month whether to seek voter approval this November of a new sales tax raising up to $500 million a year to jump-start rail transit to Boulder and up and down the I-25 corridor, the district general manager said at a Colorado Sun event.
But that’s only one of dozens of questions about new passenger rail left unanswered so far in Colorado, as momentum builds to use once-in-a-lifetime federal aid to expand train transit, our experts said.
Still to be determined, our experts acknowledged: How many segments, from Pueblo to Denver to Boulder to Fort Collins, get built first? Who, whether the state or RTD, is actually running the trains? Can RTD’s $190 million FasTracks savings account still be spent to finish a Boulder line? Why not run more buses instead?
All good questions, said Front Range Passenger Rail general manager Andy Karsian, and RTD general manager Debra Johnson. Yet many of them can’t be answered before realities of the political calendar force decisions on whether to ask voters for more money in 2024, or to wait until 2026, Karsian said.
And yes, people frustrated at paying FasTracks sales tax for almost 20 years in areas still not served by RTD passenger trains would also have to pay the new 13-county sales tax if it passes, Karsian said. No exemptions for grumpy taxpayers.
“So they would have to pay a new tax, right, because we’re talking about an entire corridor,” Karsian said. “We’re not just talking about the Northwest Rail (to Boulder). What they voted on before was an RTD ballot measure question for FasTracks. It has been in a savings account and is being saved for those purposes as dedicated and approved by the voters.”
“The exciting thing I’m really jazzed about,” Karsian said, “is the idea of being able to leverage those dollars” through a partnership between RTD and Front Range Passenger Rail, as well as federal officials controlling billions of dollars in infrastructure money meant for rail expansion.
There’s no guarantee, though, that RTD’s $190 million savings account will be immediately spent to finish a Boulder rail connection that the most vocal public officials seem to favor, Johnson cautioned. FasTracks was halted with a number of promised corridors unfinished, including for example an extension of the Southwest Rail Line into heavily populated Highlands Ranch. Those taxpayers, and people on other unfinished corridors, deserve a say in the next phase of rail expansion, she said.
In the hourlong panel discussion available here, Karsian and Johnson took on a number of 2024 rail policy questions:
- The maximum additional sales tax being considered for the ballot in the 13-county Front Range region would be 0.08 on the dollar, or 8 cents on $100 of spending, Karsian said. Initial funding could be supplemented by a new rental car fee under consideration at the state legislature, which would be used as “seed money” to attract far greater federal matching spending to build out the lines.
- Initial plans for the line from Denver to Boulder, and then northeast diagonally to Longmont, would run three inbound commuter trains in the morning, and three outbound trains in the evening. That corridor would have to share service on a track owned by BNSF, the freight railroad mammoth, and freight rail needs often take precedence on shared lines, Johnson said.
- How the so-called “intercity” trains imagined by Front Range Passenger Rail would interact with RTD’s light rail and existing commuter rail system is yet to be worked out. The different modes of rail employ different size cars, using various heights and lengths of platforms, and running at far different speeds and gaps between stops.
- While RTD has had success creating better rapid transit to Boulder with the Flatiron Flyer frequent bus service, bus versus rail should not be an either-or choice, Johnson said. If only a few trains are running, and only in one direction, then buses need to fill in all the gaps and run late into the night. “The bus service actually is supplemental,” Johnson said.
- Front Range proponents are doing “quantitative and qualitative” research on what train service people will pay for, Karsian said. But definitive numerical studies on how many Pueblo or Fort Collins residents would take a train daily, or how much they’re willing to pay in fares, won’t be finished until after the board must decide on a 2024 vote, he added.