Metro Denver’s would make a one-time payment of $156 million, plus operating expenses of $10 million to $12 million a year, under a deal that would allow Front Range Passenger Rail “starter service” to start by January 2029, state officials said Thursday.
RTD directors planned to vote later this month on whether to commit the funds for a roughly one-half share of the initial cost, around $333 million, for the trains linking Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins.
While RTD is facing a budget crisis with a $215 million annual deficit, an agency savings account holds sales tax revenues for RTD’s uncompleted FasTracks rail network, with a current balance of around $190 million, RTD records show.
Meanwhile, the three-member state team negotiating with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway to share existing Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway tracks with freight trains — a key hurdle – expects to finalize that deal by mid-June, Colorado’s chief negotiator Lisa Kaufmann told RTD directors at an agency committee meeting Wednesday night.
“Because all these public entities are working together, from RTD to the governor’s office to the Colorado Department of Transportation, we have been able to find a cost-efficient way to deliver train service from Denver to Fort Collins, Kaufmann, an adviser to Gov. Jared Polis and his former chief of staff, said.
“We will be delivering twice the service for half the cost from the previous studies,” Kaufmann said. “It means more mobility choices: to be able to take a train from Longmont to a Colorado Rockies baseball game, or from Fort Collins to Longmont to go out to dinner. You will be able to do that by 2029.”
The overall deal is contingent on the RTD board of directors and three state transportation boards approving the plan. “Assuming they approve it, the term sheet would be signed by BNSF” a couple of days later, she said.
Colorado Department of Transportation agencies would have to commit to a $176 million one-time contribution, plus a one-half share of the annual operating costs.
Previous studies have estimated the cost of train service linking Denver with Boulder and Longmont at $650 million. The lower overall cost of $333 million resulted from an agreement to run a single train on the three trips a day, reducing the need for “siding” tracks to let trains pass each other, and by taking advantage of existing parking lots in the eight cities where trains would stop.
State officials in January said that voters in 13 Front Range counties may be asked this November to approve a ballot measure for a sales tax hike to raise funds for a broader 10-round-trip-a-day “Colorado Connector” Front Range Passenger Rail service, for which ultimate costs have been estimated at more than $2 billion.
Front Range Passenger Rail District director Sal Pace, Kaufmann, and RTD chief executive and general manager Debra Johnson on Thursday briefed local government leaders on the tentative starter service deal.
FRPRD plans describe a three-trips-a-day service with trains running at speeds up to 79 miles per hour on BNSF tracks linking Denver, Boulder, Longmont, Loveland and Fort Collins. Later, train service would increase in frequency and eventually extend along the Interstate 25 corridor from Denver to Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Trinidad — depending on voter approval of funding.
The timetable that Kaufmann laid out this week envisions intensive design work through the end of this year, with construction starting in 2027. RTD’s contribution of $156 million would include $5.5 million to fund design work, she said.
CDOT and its enterprise arm would team with RTD in funding the starter service, drawing on revenues from the state’s new $3 rental car fee and fees on oil and gas production.
This summer, state officials will work with local government officials on setting up platforms and parking, Kaufmann told RTD directors at their meeting.
RTD directors expressed enthusiasm for participating in the project, part of a “joint service” approach in partnership with CDOT’s Colorado Transportation Investment Office and Clean Transit Enterprise division. RTD directors for years have wrestled with promises made to metro Denver voters who, in 2004, approved the FasTracks rail plan that included transit linking downtown Denver with Boulder and with southwest and north metro suburbs.
“I appreciate that this is a mechanism for us to meet some of our FasTracks promises,” said RTD Director Patrick O’Keefe, who chairs RTD’s 15-member elected board of directors. “This is the basis of a really good plan.”
However, Director Michael Guzman questioned how RTD could find the funds to contribute.
Director Chris Nicholson said the launch of Front Range passenger rail appears to be “within reach.” He told Kaufmann during the committee meeting that “we have the money in the FISA (FasTracks Internal Savings Account) to do this.”
BNSF officials could not immediately be reached.
State leaders’ goal of launching the Denver to Fort Collins train by January 2029 is “very ambitious, but still doable. ….. Nothing is final until these boards vote in support of this and appropriate the design costs,” Kaufmann said, emphasizing the need for RTD funds.
RTD directors in the coming years “are going to need to go back to voters” for public transit funding, she said.
“If they have not fulfilled their commitments from the 2004 vote before they go back to voters, that presents a significant barrier. What we are trying to do is partner with them….. to restore that trust, to fulfill that promise and do it in a financially sound way with the state making more than 50% of the investment.”
