The Front Range Passenger Rail District is asking Coloradans to weigh in on what a train from Fort Collins to Pueblo should be named ahead of a potential November vote on a sales tax increase that would fund the route.
The district wants the public to vote on their favorite of four finalists:
- Colorado Connector, or CoCo for short
- Colorado Ranger, a play on words since the train runs along the Front Range
- Front Range Express Destinations, or FRED for short
- RangeLink
About 100 names were considered by the district, and the finalists were chosen after vetting for trademark and other conflicts. The public can vote here through March 23.
“We thought it’d be a good idea and smart to include the constituents of the district and in Colorado in this naming exercise,” said Sal Pace, a former state lawmaker and Pueblo County commissioner who leads the district.
People who vote will be entered into a drawing for two tickets on the inaugural Front Range passenger train trip, right now slated for 2029.
The district wants to settle on a name before deciding by early August whether to put a measure on the November ballot that would increase sales taxes along the Front Range by up to a half-cent per dollar — or 5 cents per $10 — to fund the route.
Gov. Jared Polis, a big proponent of the train, would like to see the measure on the ballot sooner than later.
“We have some go, no-go inflection points coming up,” Pace said.
The first will be in April or May, when RTD is set to vote on approving the financing plan for joint passenger train service between Denver and Longmont.
Then, the passenger rail district wants to wrap up town hall meetings across the service area, launch an online platform to educate the public, and collect feedback and gather support from businesses and local civil leaders by the end of July.
If all those boxes are checked, the district will decide in early August whether to put a sales tax measure on the ballot.
If those milestones aren’t met, Pace said the district will wait until 2028 to ask voters to consider the sales tax increase.
The district is pursuing a route that would wind west of Interstate 25 starting in Fort Collins and stopping in Loveland, Longmont and Boulder before following U.S. 36 to Denver. There would then be a stop in the Lone Tree area and Castle Rock before passengers would reach stations in Colorado Springs and Pueblo.
The line would follow the existing BNSF track.
Originally, the plan was for the southern end of the route to terminate in Trinidad. That’s been abandoned.
“That last 100 miles is expensive,” Pace said. “In the long term, I think there are connectivity possibilities.”
Instead, Pace said the plan is to send money to Trinidad to help them build a new train station for the Southwest Chief, Amtrak’s Chicago-to-Los Angeles route that stops in the border town.
The Front Range train would first offer service from Denver to Fort Collins, with RTD bearing the financial load for the stretch from Denver to Longmont — where it has long been collecting taxes for passenger train travel but not delivered on its service promises — and the state picking up the tab for service from Longmont to Fort Collins.
Pace said he expects the legislature to take up a bill this year tweaking the special taxation district created along the proposed route to reflect changes since the district was created through a measure passed at the Capitol in 2021.
The district was tailored to Front Range communities that are more friendly to tax increases. Now it appears proponents want to increase their chances of passing a sales tax increase even more.
The tax would only be collected in parts of the state that are in the district.
“When we created the district in ’21 we didn’t know our route alignment,” Pace said. “We think it’s a good idea to have tighter district boundaries.”