Local passenger rail study still on track

Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) officials have left the door slightly cracked to some possible funding for a local passenger rail study, according to Eagle County Commissioner Jeanne McQueeney, who heads up a local rail steering committee.

McQueeney told the Vail Daily that last month, at the recommendation of passenger rail advocates who secured expanded Mountain Rail service between Denver and Granby this year, she spoke to the CDOT commissioner for Eagle County and wasn’t met with an outright “no”.

“So, I thought that it was a very positive conversation. I didn’t go in there thinking there’s a whole lot of money on the table and we could get some of it and that there is a rosy picture federally and statewide and it’ll all be roses,” McQueeney said.

“But we had a very realistic conversation and I tried to impress upon her that … what we have is a desire to get a study done so we can really lay out and start to talk to the public about what it would mean when we say passenger rail (in Eagle County). It was a good conversation.”

CDOT rail officials didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Since the fall of 2024, passenger rail advocates have been garnering local support and reaching out the office of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis in hopes of securing state funding to revive passenger rail service on the dormant Tennessee Pass rail line between Glenwood Springs and Leadville, with stops near the Eagle County Regional Airport and at the Avon Station transit center.

Just last year, with economic uncertainty swirling and looming state budget cuts, McQueeney indicated it was unlikely Eagle County would be included in a state rail study — at least in the near term. Now she says it appears CDOT officials may be more open to the idea.

“That it is so encouraging to hear and the timing is perfect because right now we have a federal program that is reopening called Corridor ID, which makes it extremely easy for states to kind of throw spaghetti at the wall in terms of putting together just a list of … different rail corridors that may have potential for passenger rail,” said James Flattum, co-founder of Greater Denver Transit and a supporter of the Western Rail Coalition and its Tennessee Pass study plan.

The local passenger rail steering committee includes stakeholders from Glenwood to Red Cliff, and now, according to both McQueeney and Flattum, Leadville and Lake County. Flattum said his group presented to both the city council and county commissioners over the summer.

“They were enthusiastic about this opportunity. There are a lot of questions about what it’s going to cost and what it would take to actually get the rail expertise that we need to study this properly,” Flattum said. “But the value was palpable (to them) just because you have so many folks who live up in Leadville and Lake County who have to do those drives over those mountain passes and the harrowing conditions that exist during the wintertime.”

Besides a commuter train for the local workforce, a Tennessee Pass passenger line would be one of the most scenic rail routes in the nation for tourists, rivaling Amtrak’s California Zephyr, which passes through Eagle County on its way into Glenwood Canyon without stopping locally.

Jack Wheeler-Barajas, president of the ColoRail passenger rail advocacy group, said in a phone interview in the fall that his group is largely focused on starting daily Grand Junction to Denver service in terms of extending passenger service beyond Mountain Rail on the Western Slope.

Wheeler-Barajas does see value in passenger service between the Eagle Valley Regional Airport and Glenwood to the west or Avon or Minturn in the east by reviving that stretch of the Tennessee Pass line that runs along the Eagle River.

“That line is flat. It’s OK. But beyond Minturn up to Leadville, I just think is a non-starter because it’s so much money,” Wheeler-Barajas said. “And we have dedicated funding streams now for passenger rail so a Denver-to-Grand Junction train could be operating tomorrow because it has positive train control and there are train crews because Grand Junction and Denver are crew bases for Amtrak engineers, conductors and servicing.”

Wheeler-Barajas added Eagle County should pursue local stops in the western part of the county. Both the Zephyr and high-end Rocky Mountaineer pass through both Bond and Dotsero without stopping, but a daily “Colorado Zephyr” between Grand Junction and Denver on currently active tracks (the dormant Tennessee Pass Line connects to those tracks at Dotsero) could stop locally.

Wheeler-Barajas isn’t the only one skeptical of reviving passenger rail over Tennessee Pass to Leadville — a steep, winding 3-percent grade that saw several derailments in the past. The majority of the Minturn Town Council opposes the idea, and one local group is pushing an old rails-to-trails idea that is unlikely to happen because of fierce railroad company competition.

State Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Steamboat Springs native who has long supported Mountain Rail as it pushes toward his hometown and on west to Hayden and Craig, said that despite the state’s financial woes, Polis is in office through the end of the year and recently touted his accomplishments in public transit in his final State of the State address.

“So I take that as a signal that Bustang is not going to be one of the first places we cut and that we’re going to do whatever we can to protect that service and Mountain Rail as well,” Roberts said. “We’re starting to see local funding sources. He won’t want to do anything that impairs the legacy of rail.”