Voters in communities across the Front Range will be asked in November to approve a sales tax increase to pay for a passenger train route from Fort Collins to Pueblo.
The Front Range Passenger Rail District’s board of directors voted 14-1 on Friday to ask for a 33 cent sales tax increase on every $100 spent to raise $295 million a year for the Colorado Connector passenger train.
The district’s board made the decision during a meeting at the Transportation Technology Center, a federal railroad equipment testing facility near Pueblo.
For now, the plan is to get the train running between Denver and Fort Collins by 2029 with existing funds. The train service would be extended to Colorado Springs and Pueblo if voters in the district approve the tax increase.
The district includes cities in which at least 20% of their population is five miles from one of the train’s planned stations. That includes Denver, Westminster, Louisville, Boulder, Loveland, Fort Collins, Pueblo, Colorado Springs and the Sterling Ranch subdivision in Douglas County.
Voters who live in the district will vote on the tax hike. Colorado’s statewide sales tax rate is 2.9 cents per dollar, though most local communities pay more for city government, local transit or other services.
Passenger Rail District General Manager Sal Pace has said that limited service between Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins would still start in three years even if voters reject the sales tax hike. Initially, three round-trip trains a day would run between Denver and Fort Collins. The route would head northwest to Boulder and Longmont from Denver on the way to Larimer County.
The initial limited phase would cost $332 million, which would come from a state transportation innovation fund fed by various fees and RTD money that was set aside for FasTracks rail lines north of Denver that were never built. The state and RTD would split the $30 million to $36 million needed to operate the trains each year.
Expanding train service to Colorado Springs and Pueblo with the newly named Colorado Connector, or CoCo for short, would cost $2.7 billion and take five years from the vote to complete. If fully built out, the expanded system would cost $85 million to $116 million a year to operate.
The main cost of the buildout stems from the stations needed along the route. The district plans to use existing track owned by the freight carrier BNSF under an agreement the state has already signed with the company.
Rail District Board member Cory Applegate, who represents the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments, was the only no vote on Friday.
This is a developing story that will be updated.