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, a service that backers say will reduce emissions and free people from wasted hours sitting in traffic on Interstate 25.
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. Ultimately, officials hope the service could run between New Mexico and Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The district, created in 2021, now 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. State lawmakers scaled the district back this year, trimming out more politically conservative-leaning areas like Castle Rock, Lone Tree, Monument, Greeley and most unincorporated areas.
Only 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.
Limited service between Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins would still start in three years even if voters reject the sales tax hike, district chair John Putnam said. 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.
Taxes and fees, not fares, will mostly fund train
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 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. Amtrak would operate the train for the district.
Taxes and fees would pay for most of the service, not fares, which won’t be set until the train is closer to operating. The district’s mission is to reduce the number of vehicles on highways so officials don’t want fares to be too high and discourage people from taking the train.
For now, the district assumes it will have the same fare rate used by Bustang, which charges riders about 19 cents a mile, which is cheaper than driving, Putnam said.
Board urged to ask for tax hike
Rail District Board member Cory Applegate, who represents the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments, was the only no vote on Friday. He did not comment before voting.
During the meeting’s public comment period, former RTD board member Natalie Menten, of Jefferson County, said she opposed paying a tax on a daily basis for a service she would rarely use.
But the vast majority of people who spoke urged the board to finally make Front Range passenger rail a reality.
Blake Simony, a Pueblo native who now lives in Aurora, said the train would make it easier for his extended family to get together for holidays and other events. Many of his relatives have left Pueblo for other parts of the Front Range and other states in the century since his great grandparents emigrated to Pueblo to work in its steel mill, he said.
He urged the district board to seize momentum for the project and move ahead with the sales tax vote.
“The fact that we’re so close to making it happen now I think is a really big deal,” Simony said.
Gary Sprung said people should be able to drive when they want but also should have other options to get around besides highways.
“The roads-only people have caused us to waste enormous amounts of time, spent unproductively on driving cars crawling on congested roads,” said Sprung, who said he likes to drive his diesel-fueled truck when traffic is flowing.
State law bars the district from spending public money or resources to promote the ballot measure. The board adopted a resolution that says that the district or its board members cannot spend any of the district’s funds or make any contributions to urge people to vote in favor or against the ballot question after voting to send the question to voters.
The district did spend $500,000 to send mailers recently to 246,600 households promoting CoCo and inviting comments on its operation plan, Passenger Rail District General Manager Sal Pace said.
The money came from a FasTracks savings account and helped the district meet the legislature’s requirement that it educate and gather input from Coloradans about the district’s rail plan without campaigning, he said. No other mailers are planned, he said.