Opinion: Even with the decades-long wait and $3.2 billion price, Coloradans deserve Front Range passenger rail

For a project that kicked off with $2.5 million seven years ago, there is little evidence along Interstate 25 of progress on a fast, frequent train system running from Pueblo to Fort Collins.

Endless barriers exist preventing the start of construction and there’s a $3.2 billion price tag to build a high-speed railway along the I-25 corridor. But even with the steep timeframe and cost, the benefits will far outweigh the miles of red tape and over two decades that this commuter rail project has navigated.

Constructing fast, efficient public transportation should be more than a bottomless pit our tax money falls into. With estimated rapid increases in the state’s population and global temperatures, we need high-speed railways now more than ever.

The United States is woefully behind on public transportation. Last semester, I studied abroad in Scotland, where there were multiple bus routes to campus, trains across the country, and plane tickets to most of Europe for under 100 pounds.

Coming back to Colorado was a rough transition, to say the least.

I drive from Colorado Springs to Denver and back at least once a week. Few terms besides “insane” describe how the one-hour-and-fifteen-minute commute makes me feel.

On one of my loathsome drives to Denver, I put on the Ezra Klein podcast, where he was serendipitously talking about high-speed railways. Delays in constructing railways occur across the country, not just in Colorado, I learned. Klein outlined the problems of building a train in California and how “it took the High-Speed Rail Authority four requests for possession and two and a half years of legal wrangling to get… (a) little spit of land.”

In 2004 (the year I was born), the state passed the FasTracks ballot initiative, which was intended to build a light rail or commuter rail from Denver to Longmont. In a press release last year, Gov. Jared Polis’ administration admitted that “for 20 years voters have been paying for rail service that they have not received” and “the project has stalled due to a lack of adequate funding.”

State leaders decided they wanted to get the train project back on track.

The Denver-Longmont segment could be completed by 2029, and the entire train is estimated to be completed by 2035. Even though it’s ten years away, with federal and funding hold-ups, I question whether I will see this train before I’m middle-aged.

In 2021, Colorado passed Senate Bill 238, which established the Front Range Passenger Rail District. This new transportation district has the ability to put ballot measures before voters to ask for money. A ballot measure may even come on the 2026 ballot asking Colorado voters for funding.

Former President Joe Biden passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which gives funding to projects like high-speed rail. The Infrastructure Act money could be critical to provide funding for building the train, but these grants come with stipulations that local funding has to match 10% to 20% of what the infrastructure bill gives, according to Nancy Burke, spokesperson for the Front-Range Passenger Rail District.

After that, it can take two to six years for train cars to go into operation because they need to be refurbished and meet safety standards set by the Federal Railroad Administration, Burke explained. The district will need to acquire the land needed to build stations, figure out scheduling, and do all of this while working with different local organizations and municipalities.

When it comes to actually building the train, the district is using existing freight rail tracks, which helps speed up the process, but the state will still have to build sittings — places where the train can pull over if there are multiple trains on the track at once.

Gov. Polis rode a test train from Denver to Longmont in March of 2024, a public relations stunt, promising to fulfill the 2004 promise of a train through the Front Range Passenger Rail district. It’s scheduled to be completed four years after the press and politicians crammed into a car and declared they “broke that barrier.”

The year 2029 is also the year the Colorado legislature mandates that the Service Development Plan be completed for the entire project. However, construction cannot even begin until the plan is finished, and the state must still navigate through muddy federal waters.

The district will enter the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) stage where, with public involvement, the district figures out how to minimize harm to the environment. Once that gets approved, they can enter the final planning and development stages.

By 2035, the Front-Range Passenger Railway is estimated to be completed, according to Burke. “Things are moving fast for a project of this size. We have to keep our eyes on the prize for future generations,” Burke said.

But Trump is cutting NEPA and firing a lot of the employees that would be helping approve these plans and could interfere with federal funding. This may cause the process to take even longer.

Between the current administration, government bureaucracy (that DOGE is not fixing), and America’s adoration of driving cars, a train serving the Front Range is an uphill battle.

I wish I could say I was writing this piece altruistically — that my passion about climate change, my empathy for commuters, and my love of smart growth and affordable transportation supersedes my absolute hatred for driving down I-25. It doesn’t, and I want to be able to take a train across the state.

Sofia Joucovsky studies international political economy with a minor in journalism at Colorado College.

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