At a projected cost of more than $4.7 billion, a Front Range passenger train would be breathtakingly expensive. Yet it would provide almost no benefits to the region: no congestion relief, no reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and no transportation that could not be provided by buses at a far lower cost. 

Despite this, the Front Range Passenger Rail District recently released its “delivery plan,” a slick document that makes all sorts of vague promises that the district will never be able to keep. Traffic congestion is getting worse, says the document, and the only solution it offers is for taxpayers to pay through the nose funding a handful of trains between Fort Collins and Pueblo.  

We’ve heard this before. Back in 2004, Denver’s Regional Transit District said that the only solution to increasing traffic congestion was FasTracks, which was supposed to cost a coincidental $4.7 billion for 148 miles of new rail transit lines in the Denver metro area. Advocates promised that FasTracks would be completed by 2016 and would take more than 240,000 cars off the road each day. 

We all know how that turned out. FasTracks suffered 80% cost overruns; some of the lines are still unfinished; and a review of ridership numbers reveals that, as of 2019, RTD’s new trains took no more than about 8,000 cars off the road per day. In a region where people drive 10 million trips per day, removing 8,000 had no effect on congestion, which in fact is far worse today than it was in 2004. 

Similarly, there is no possibility that Front Range passenger trains could significantly reduce the region’s traffic congestion. The district says that, after spending $4.7 billion, it will spend another $100 million per year operating 10 trains a day each way between Fort Collins and Pueblo. Each train is likely to hold only about 500 to 600 passengers. At most, that’s 10,000 to 12,000 cars off the road per day—not enough to have an impact on congestion. 

The district also promises that people will be able to take the trains to Broncos games or other events at Mile High Stadium. The district will own only about five train sets that can potentially bring about 2,500 to 3,000 people to the stadium — not enough to fill more than a small fraction of the 76,000 seats for football games and 85,000 seats for concerts. 

The district claims that trains produce 80% less pollution than driving. That’s based heavily on trains in New York City, not ones in peers to the Front Range area. Generating the electricity powering Denver’s light rail produces more greenhouse gases per passenger-mile than the average SUV. So does New Mexico’s Rail Runner, which is a Diesel-powered intercity train like Front Range rail would be.  

The Front Range District’s recent “plan” is not really a plan; it is a sales brochure. A genuine plan would consider alternatives, evaluate the benefits and costs of each alternative, and monitor the results so that it could make mid-course corrections as new information came in. The district’s document does none of these things. 

The simplest alternative would be to dramatically increase bus service between Fort Collins and Pueblo. Running six buses an hour during the day plus a few at night could move more than ten trainloads of people per day at a far lower cost.  

CDOT could address congestion by extending the I-25 Bus/HOV lanes further north and south. The revenues from tolls would help pay for these lanes, which can do far more to relieve congestion than trains that would spend most of their time in relatively uncongested areas south of Denver. 

Maybe you truly believe cars are evil and we should give people alternatives to driving. Wouldn’t you rather spend your money on something that will actually do that? Or maybe you like driving but would rather do it on uncongested roads. Wouldn’t you rather spend your money on something that will relieve congestion? 

Front Range Rail will almost certainly cost more and do less than the district claims. Even if it suffered no cost overruns, it would be a waste of money. Front Range taxpayers should demand more sensible proposals out of their government. 

Randal O’Toole is the director of the Independence Institute’s transportation center and author of “Romance of the Rails: Why the Passenger Trains We Love Are Not the Transportation We Need.”