In time, the rail district aims for 10 round-trip trains daily along the Front Range to Pueblo, but eventually connecting to New Mexico and Wyoming. In a separate initiative, Colorado expects to begin daily passenger service through the Moffat Tunnel to Granby in November. Extension of service to Steamboat and Craig is the ultimate goal.

Do we really think 19th-century technology, if updated, can deliver answers to 21st-century challenges?

Rails proliferated across Colorado during the late 19th century. Three railroad companies competed furiously to haul Leadville silver ores. Two companies vied to tap Aspen’s wealth. Durango, Holyoke and Granby are just three of many towns created directly as a result of railroads.

Then came the internal-combustion engine. Roads were difficult but gradually improved. In 1930, the state began clearing the road over Berthoud Pass during winter, a milestone. It was Colorado’s first motorized year-round crossing of the Continental Divide.

Passenger trains began disappearing, although gas rationing caused an uptick in ridership during World War II.

In the 1950s, as a small child, I once was put on a Union Pacific train by a grandmother in Sterling for delivery to my waiting mother in Fort Morgan. Passenger trains still mattered.

Then, in the early 1960s, bulldozers arrived at Fort Morgan to blade a route for Interstate 76. Similar work was underway along the Front Range for I-25. By the mid-1960s, the four-lane highway between Fort Collins and Denver was complete. Not coincidentally, the Colorado and Southern passenger rail service along the northern Front Range was suspended in 1967. So were passenger trains between Pueblo and Glenwood Springs. The last train between Craig and Denver ran in 1968.

What has changed? Why might people want to ride passenger trains along the Front Range?

First, if FasTracks has been far from perfect, it has strong moments in metropolitan Denver. A home run — or hat trick, if you will — has been the ease these trains have provided in getting to Avalanche, Nuggets, and Rockies games.

Bustang, the state-funded bus service that now connects Colorado from Durango to Sterling, Lamar to Craig, has also been a big success. It����ap a cheap way to travel if, for example, you are in Salida and need to get to Denver to see a doctor. The buses are comfortable and efficient – as long as there are no traffic jams.

We do have traffic jams. We keep expanding I-25 and other highways, and it never seems enough. Highway expansion is also costly.

State transportation planners at first assumed new and expensive infrastructure would be needed for Front Range rail transit. “Fifteen years ago, when we were thinking about Front Range rail, we were thinking about virgin track. It was $15 or $20 billion, and it was pie in the sky,” said Herman Stockinger, deputy director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, at a Denver meeting last Saturday. “It was never going to happen.”

The cost of adding rail to the I-70 corridor from Denver westward to Vail and beyond was estimated at $21 billion, also a deal killer.

The agreement announced last week allows passenger trains to use BNSF Rail tracks. Freight traffic, including coal trains, has declined. The still-plentiful coal trains south from Denver will subside as the coal plants at Pueblo, Fountain and other places retire in coming years.

Passenger rail has many skeptics. Once you get to Fort Collins, for example, how do you get to your ultimate destination if it����ap three, five or however many miles away? And can you really get to your destination city, say Longmont, as fast or almost as fast as driving? Rail advocates have answers, none completely satisfying.

Intriguing is the potential for new technology. Will self-driving cars allow us to use existing highway and road infrastructure more efficiently?

We may never see passenger trains between Aspen and Glenwood Springs again, or to Crested Butte, Minturn, or Limon. But who knows? Colorado’s population growth is slowing, but nobody is leaving.

Some rail fans are driven by nostalgia. My interest is more practical. I have experience taking the trains from Olde Town Arvada to DIA. It����ap vastly cheaper than driving and about as fast. You can enjoy the trip, read your phone, or chat it up with a companion. Plus, nobody will careen past you at 110 mph, scaring you spitless. That����ap worth something, too.

Allen Best publishes Big Pivots, a Colorado journal devoted to climate, energy and water matters. See bigpivots.com.

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If an anticipated state grant for $40 million doesn’t come through, RTD directors must cut “another 16% of services,” according to a before meetings Tuesday night.

Directors haven’t decided which routes to cut.

“It’s like signing your own death warrant,” Director JoyAnn Ruscha said.

A 20% service cut would reduce overall spending by about $62 million, helping balance RTD’s $1.5 billion annual budget, RTD general manager Debra Johnson and Kelly Mackey, the chief financial officer, said in a presentation to directors. Cutting service by 36% “is totally in your purview,” Johnson told directors, warning that if they don’t correct RTD’s budget deficit next year “we will be putting ourselves in a very precarious position.”

The cuts almost certainly will complicate efforts to reverse RTD’s declining ridership, down by nearly 40% since 2019 across RTD’s 2,345-square-mile service area, which spans eight counties.

RTD managers also recommended that directors pursue a ballot measure in 2028 to ask voters for funding to shore up public transit finances. The 15-member, publicly elected board of directors must make decisions by the end of May, managers added, warning that a delay would hurt the development of a balanced 2027 budget.

But Director Karen Benker, who leads RTD’s finance committee, is challenging the cuts. Benker has proposed fare increases to raise revenue, furlough days for managers, ending overtime pay for bus and train operators, corporate sponsorships, debt refinancing, and a tougher crackdown on bus and train riders who don’t pay fares by installing turnstiles at Denver International Airport.

“Cutting service by 20% is crazy. Combined with the reductions already made during COVID, these proposed cuts risk pushing RTD into a downward spiral,” Benker said in an emailed response. “I cannot support the level of cuts currently being proposed by management. RTD needs to get to work — dig in, tighten up the numbers, and identify the funding required to avoid severe service cuts. Customers come first.”

At a recent, closed executive session, agency managers revealed the scope of the service cuts they recommend, and “the entire board looked stunned,” Benker said.

RTD Director Patrick O’Keefe, chairman of the board, said no final decisions have been made but that directors know the agency faces a fundamental financial problem. “Without spending less or bringing in more money, we will be forced into far more significant impacts in the near future,” O’Keefe said.

Director Chris Nicholson said cuts in bus and train service along suburban as well as central urban routes must be considered. The smartest approach is “to cut the service people do not use,” Nicholson said. “We know how many people board each train and bus. Those passenger counts should drive our decisions.”

RTD financial planners have warned that an annual $215 million budget deficit must be corrected by 2027 to prevent credit agencies from downgrading RTD’s status. Agency planners already have worked out “non-service” cuts from departmental realignments, layoffs, and contract changes for about $84 million in savings.

Johnson told directors that measures such as raising fares won’t be sufficient, and Mackey said corrective action to balance the budget is essential for the “viability” of public transit.

For metro-Denver residents, service cuts will mean “the bus goes fewer places and less often,” said Saigopal Rangaraj, co-leader of Greater Denver Transit, a public transportation advocacy group. “It makes journeys on transit more cumbersome or entirely impossible. We will see more traffic as people who can afford to will choose to drive. … People who can’t afford to buy a car will be left using a less-useful system.”

Those toll revenues — about $62 million a year from I-25 and I-70, not including fines paid by violators caught crossing double white lines — have been earmarked mostly for highway construction projects over the next decade. The projects include the overhaul of I-70 west of Denver and the proposed expansion of Interstate 270.

But the Bustang “has become a backbone of the state’s transit operations along the interstates,” giving Coloradans “more transportation choices to get where they need to go,” Colorado Department of Transportation Director Shoshana Lew said Friday.

The at current levels costs $50 million a year, and keeping the state’s fleet of 80 buses rolling over the next five years otherwise would require annual of around $30 million, CDOT officials told state transportation commissioners at a workshop session on Wednesday.

Colorado lawmakers’ initial grant funding to support the service as an experiment runs out in July.

run as frequently as every 45 minutes on I-25 and I-70, and on numerous “Outrider” routes around Colorado. Fares for riders boarding at Denver Union Station range from $10 to downtown Fort Collins, $12 to Colorado Springs, $28 to Glenwood Springs and $43 to Grand Junction (a 230-mile route).

This week, Lew told the state transportation commissioners that CDOT can tap “excess toll revenues” from I-25 express lanes to pay for the I-25 Bustang service. CDOT can do the same along I-70, though the high cost of the Bustang service linking Denver with Grand Junction likely will also require other funds, she said.

A 2009 state law allows the use of express lane revenues for public transit, in addition to road construction projects, along the interstates.  However, the  restricts the use of the revenues to projects along the roads where the tolls were collected.

Drivers in Colorado take more than 34 million express lane trips a year, according to a CDOT .

Sustaining Colorado’s intercity bus transit is “a top priority,” Lew wrote in a letter to commissioners. Bustang provides “vital connections across our state. …a national model of success,” she said.

Over the past two months, CDOT leaders have been meeting with city and county officials, and business groups, along I-25 and I-70, looking for ways to sustain Bustang. Lew told commissioners most would support using toll revenues “as long as there was a commitment that the capital projects in the 10-year plan would get built.”

Bustang has been expanding. CDOT officials last year added a second daily run between Denver and Crested Butte. They launched a Bustang Outrider route linking Sterling in northeastern Colorado with .

A state transit connections is exploring possible new routes, such as service between Gunnison and Montrose in southwestern Colorado; Limon and Denver; and Salida and Colorado Springs.

Statewide, Bustang ridership has tripled since 2019 – a counterpoint to the lagging ridership on Regional Transportation District buses and trains within metro Denver — with 385,248 intercity bus boardings in 2025, up 24% from 2024, CDOT records show.

Adams County Fire Rescue crews , near Commerce City, at 4:23 p.m. Sunday, according to the department. Paramedics took four people to the hospital after the crash, but department officials did not specify which vehicles the victims were in.

The Jeep crashed into a concrete barrier after clipping the other car, destroying part of the barrier, Adams County Fire Rescue officials said.

Additional information about the crash was not available.

As of 6:20 p.m. Sunday, three lanes of southbound I-25 remained closed between I-76 and Colorado 53 near North Washington for the crash cleanup and investigation, .

showed several miles of backed-up traffic as five lanes of cars merged into two.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

The car, which is blocking A, B, G and N line trains from reaching Union Station, was first reported on the tracks at about 2 p.m. Sunday, RTD spokesperson Pauline Haberman said.

As of 4:15 p.m. Sunday, a tow truck was on scene to remove the vehicle, Haberman said.

Bus shuttles replaced the partially blocked light rail lines throughout the afternoon, including between:

• Union Station and 38th-Blake Station on the
• Union Station and 41st & Fox Station on the
• Union Station and 48th & Brighton National Western Center Station on the

cited a trespasser on the tracks as the cause of the closure. The tracks remained closed at 4:30 p.m. Sunday.

Information on why the car was left on the tracks was not immediately available on Sunday.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

The crash happened at 2:34 p.m. near Colfax Avenue when semitruck hauling an empty trailer crashed and rolled, according to the Colorado State Patrol.

Traffic cameras near the crash showed the truck and trailer had just crossed over a bridge when it crashed and rolled off the road, with the trailer coming to rest on a concrete embankment below the bridge.

The driver, a 58-year-old man, was not injured in the crash, state patrol officials said. The left and middle lanes of eastbound I-70 are closed for the crash investigation and recovery.

Colorado Department of Transportation cameras show traffic backed up to the

This is a developing story.

But the ‘s $331 million “starter service” trains would roll by January 2029 with three daily roundtrips, at speeds up to 79 mph, also stopping at Westminster, Broomfield, Louisville, Longmont, Loveland and Fort Collins.

And the 150 residents who attended the meeting in the East Boulder Community Center mostly applauded. The Front Range Passenger Rail District presentation was the latest in in which state officials are rallying support for a tax increase to eventually fund an expanded Colorado Connector rail service with 10 daily roundtrips linking cities from Fort Collins to Pueblo.

“Boulder is ready for rail. We have been for 20 years,” said Kristofer Johnson, the city’s comprehensive planning manager, referring to the voter approval of a tax hike in 2004 to fund a FasTracks train linking Denver and Boulder, which the Regional Transportation District has failed to deliver.

That����ap been a sore spot in northwest metro Denver. RTD collected sales tax revenues that residents paid over the past two decades, setting aside about $190 million in an agency savings account. Johnson pointed out that Boulder developed a “transit village,” including apartments and shops near an existing RTD bus station, in anticipation of trains to Denver.

Boulder County Commissioner Claire Levy, who also serves on the rail district board, addressed questions from residents about what happened to the sales taxes they paid for two decades.

“The actual costs of FasTracks just far exceed the revenue that was raised. You cannot change that,” Levy said.

“We’re hoping to tap a substantial amount of that money that RTD has put away,” and RTD is expected to pay a share of the annual operating costs, around $25 million, she said. “For more than that, we just have to be realistic about the funding that is available.”

The starter service trains would run on existing RTD B-Line tracks to Westminster, then shift to Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway freight tracks. RTD directors and several state boards must first approve funding.

At Wednesday’s meeting, residents wanted to know the train timetables. Where could riders park their vehicles at stations? What’s the potential for an expanded system eventually to bring all-electric fast trains at higher frequencies?

“I was underwhelmed,” said Indira Pranabudi, who moved to Boulder from Boston, where she relied only on public transit. “I came in here quite hopeful. Then I heard ‘three daily round-trips.’ That����ap not enough.”

Afterwards, she sat with fellow Boulder resident Andrew Robinson, who embraced the plans. “It����ap definitely a start.”

The turnout on a weeknight, following crowds of up to 300 at meetings in Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Denver and Longmont, shows that “people really want this service,” Front Range Passenger Rail District director Sal Pace said.

He and attorney John Putnam, chairman of the rail district’s board and former general counsel for the U.S. Department of Transportation, also acknowledged residents’ desires for higher-frequency, faster trains in the future.

“I want that, too,” Putnam said. “Ultimately, we want to be there. If we want that, how do we get there?”

Updated 1:15 p.m. April 16, 2026: This story has been updated to correct Kristofer Johnson’s title. He is Boulder’s comprehensive planning manager.

Colorado State Patrol troopers responded to the crash involving two semitrailers near milepost 275, just south of Wellington, at 5:24 a.m., according to a news release from the agency.

Both commercial trucks were traveling in the same direction, and it’s not yet known what caused the crash, state patrol officials said in the release.

The crash sparked a small brush fire in the center median of I-25 that was quickly extinguished, investigators said. No vehicles caught fire, and no injuries were reported.

Both directions of I-25 were briefly closed because of the crash, and all southbound lanes reopened just before 7 a.m., according to the state patrol. The northbound lanes fully reopened at 10:40 a.m.

The Broomfield Housing Alliance had been pressing RTD to provide Access-a-Ride mini-bus service at this nearly completed 40-unit affordable housing complex for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. But RTD officials on March 31 rejected BHA’s appeal, refusing to grant an exception to extend their service area boundary by 1,800 feet to reach that housing.

The decision will discourage move-ins and tempt residents to hike more than a mile to a regular RTD bus stop, which can be risky, especially in severe weather, BHA executive director Kristin Hyser said. “This population has historically and continues to be disproportionately impacted by these kinds of decisions. They’re impacting the most vulnerable people.”

It followed RTD’s decision to impose a base fare of $4.50 ($9 round-trip) and lower per-trip allotments from $25 to $20 for people with disabilities who ride the agency’s other paratransit service – Access-on-Demand. Launched in 2021, Access-on-Demand gave thousands of blind and other disabled residents low-cost rideshare (Uber/Lyft) and taxi service. But RTD’s annual bill ballooned to more than $12 million. When agency managers began pushing for cuts to make the service financially sustainable, RTD received hundreds of complaints from people with disabilities.

With the Jan. 1 change, Access-on-Demand’s growth reversed. Ridership decreased to 43,000 in January 2026, down by 31% from 62,000 in January 2025, according to agency data obtained through the Colorado Open Records Act.

Now RTD officials need to cut costs more and find new sources of revenue to correct the annual deficit of $215 million. The agency’s chief financial officer, Kelly Mackey, recently told directors they must balance RTD’s 2027 budget to prevent credit agencies from downgrading RTD’s due to elevated expenses.

Directors exploring how best to cut costs while preserving core services say they are looking again at Access-on-Demand, or a restructuring to meld it with Access-a-Ride, which is required under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, along with other options.

Other options listed in a document for a recent directors’ study session included fare hikes for all riders, leasing or selling RTD properties for housing development, selling more space for advertising on buses and trains, seeking corporate sponsors for transit stops, and eliminating low-traffic routes.

“We are working on many options,” said RTD Director Karen Benker, who chairs the agency’s finance committee and has experience balancing state government budgets. “We cannot balance the budget with just one thing.  We’re looking at over 40 options.  Some are very small, and some are larger.”

Benker doubted that a majority of directors would approve the elimination of Access-On-Demand, she said. “What would be helpful is if we could combine services with Access-a-Ride and FlexRide, to find efficiencies – especially when it comes to arranging the ride,” she said. “Do we need dispatch services? Or should they be a smaller part of the program? It seems like an Uber-type app could be developed.”

RTD Director Patrick O’Keefe, who chairs the 15-member elected board, voted against the imposition of base fares for Access-on-Demand. “Paratransit programs are the last place we should look for reductions,” O’Keefe said this week. “However, RTD’s budget challenges are very real.  The longer we go without a change in our financial reality, the more impactful and broader those impacts will be on all of our riders.”

RTD’s budget deficit surfaced in December, surprising directors, after previous leaders had declared RTD financially healthy. The directors have been struggling to manage higher-than-expected rail maintenance costs and promote ridership. Revenues come mainly from sales taxes paid by residents in eight counties around metro Denver. RTD’s overall annual ridership has decreased by nearly 40% from 105.8 million boardings in 2019 to around 65 million, according to agency records.

“We have to scale the agency to the amount of revenue we have,” Director Chris Nicholson said, warning that this will force difficult decisions, including service cuts. “Everything is on the table,” Nicholson said.

“We have made a commitment to the entire community to provide transit service. The worst thing we could do is make major decisions out of fear of political blowback,” he said.

State lawmakers who have introduced legislation to reform RTD governance included a requirement for an independent study of the agency’s paratransit programs. Disability rights groups have been advocating for a comprehensive review for more than a year. A peer review commissioned by RTD managers recommended base fares and other measures to make Access-on-Demand financially sustainable.

“We’ve heard concerns from the disability community about RTD conducting its own paratransit study,” said State Sen. Matt Ball, D-Denver. Whether to cut or reduce paratransit for disabled residents to help balance RTD’s budget “is a decision that RTD will ultimately have to make,” Ball said.  “We’re just interested in making sure the study is done right and given the attention it deserves.”

People with disabilities represent a small but growing group of riders, many of them low-income residents who otherwise cannot easily leave their homes, accounting for roughly 100,000 paratransit trips a month in addition to trips on fixed-route buses and trains, which are equipped to accommodate wheelchairs.

“It would not be wise for RTD to cut systems like paratransit because of the positive ridership numbers,” said Jaime Lewis, transit advisor for the (CCDC) and a former RTD director.

Access-on-Demand riders “already put skin in the game” of cutting costs as fees were imposed, and “any further cuts to this program, or a rise in costs to riders, would render it useless for most riders,” said Lewis, who had urged his former RTD colleagues to make an exception and extend Access-a-Ride service to the housing complex in Broomfield.

RTD directors should focus on other ways of reducing the deficit, including a hiring freeze, postponing non-essential construction projects, an 18-month freeze on wages, reassessing low-use routes, reducing out-of-town training, and cutting the frequency of RTD’s 16th Street FreeRide mall buses from five minutes to 10 minutes, Lewis said.

“RTD is denying people with developmental disabilities an opportunity to use a transit service that most others have access to. This is a perfect example of RTD forgetting its mission, which is moving more people,” he said. CCDC will “fight any changes to paratransit fares or subsidies.”

Denver residents have a history of standing up for disability rights. In 1978, a “Gang of 19” blocked RTD buses downtown at Colfax and Broadway — protests that helped launch a nationwide movement that led to the passage of the ADA in 1990 and the installation of wheelchair lifts. Disability rights groups in Denver, including the Atlantis Community, American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT), the cross-disability coalition, and the National Federation of the Blind, continue to monitor transit agencies for ADA compliance.

Funding for paratransit “should be off the table” in RTD budget-balancing, said Joe Beaver, a quadraplegic retired accountant who lives in an apartment off West Colfax Avenue and relies on RTD to reach friends, doctors and downtown activities.

“We fought 50 years ago to have access to public transportation,” Beaver said, arguing that fees on RTD’s 16th Street FreeRide should come before cuts to services for people with disabilities. “Imagine if you couldn’t drive a car. You could, basically, be stranded.”

The westbound highway was closed between Exit 167 for Avon and Exit 163 for Edwards, . The left lane of was also temporarily closed between those exits.

All lanes had reopened by 3 p.m. Monday. Additional information about the crash was not available.

This is a developing story and may be updated.