VVMTA asks Eagle County to revive rails-to-trail plan as Union Pacific seeks support for merger

A local trails advocacy nonprofit is channeling a massive 1990s railroad merger in an effort to revive a popular rails-to-trails plan from that era as the same out-of-state railroad conglomerate now seeks local support for yet another mega-merger application.

The Vail Valley Mountain Trails Alliance (VVMTA), long a proponent of the award-winning, 1990s-era Heart of the Rockies rails-to-trails project, recently sent a letter to the Eagle County commissioners seeking support for reviving the trails plan after the Class 1 railroad giant Union Pacific contacted the county hoping for backing in its proposed merger with Norfolk Southern Railroad.

Union Pacific’s inactive 220-mile Tennessee Pass Line (TPL) between Pueblo and Dotsero, where it links up with the active Central Corridor Moffat Tunnel line between Grand Junction and Denver, hasn’t seen freight trains since Union Pacific merged with Southern Pacific in 1997. The TPL bisects Eagle County west to east before heading southeast toward Leadville at Dowd Junction.

VVMTA Executive Director Ernest Saeger wrote the commissioners to “encourage Eagle County to use this timely moment to help revive the Heart of the Rockies Rail to Trail project along the Tennessee Pass rail corridor. This opportunity has a clear historical precedent.”

When the federal government approved the Union Pacific (UP) merger with oil, entertainment and transportation tycoon Phil Anschutz’s Southern Pacific in 1996, the state requested a rails-to-trails study. UP agreed and appeared poised to abandon the TPL for that purpose. For a variety of reasons, that abandonment and trail plan never happened.

Support Local Journalism

Donate

“Railbanking the Tennessee Pass corridor would mean far more than advancing a rail-to-trail project,” Saeger wrote in his letter. “It would create an opportunity for local and state partners to secure greater public control over a strategic corridor that could support future transportation, recreation, safety and infrastructure needs, including improved crossings, potential future I-70 interchange projects, completion of the Eagle Valley Trail and other community priorities.

“This merger creates a rare moment to ask Union Pacific to preserve the corridor for public benefit rather than allowing decisions about its future to remain entirely outside local influence,” Saeger added in the letter, which points out that comments are due on the merger application, which has been accepted by the federal Surface Transportation Board (STB), by Sept. 25.

Railbanking is a federal process that legally preserves inactive rail corridors for possible future rail use by utilizing them for public trails in the meantime. Eagle County Commissioner Matt Scherr, in a phone interview Thursday, said the county is taking VVMTA’s request into consideration and drafting a letter to the STB.

“Our questions are, what is the real impact of this merger to Eagle County, and what do we think our real ability to influence anything is?” Scherr said. “It doesn’t get into specifics about anything because there are a number of things that we could specifically say we’re interested in talking about. But our problem is there’s no one to talk to about anything. So what our letter is trying to do is say, ‘Hey, this is a huge problem that you guys can easily solve. Just talk to us.'”

Lack of local communication by the Omaha, Nebraska-based railroad giant, which mostly runs freight in the western half of the country, has been a longstanding issue for towns and counties all along the line in Colorado. A Union Pacific spokesperson did not return an email request for comment for this article.

Interest in the inactive Tennessee Pass Line was rekindled in 2020 by a billionaire landowner and developer named Stefan Soloviev, who made a $10 million offer to buy the line for grain shipments from his vast farm holdings after buying a rail line in southeastern Colorado. He has since bought another Colorado rail line and remains a thorn in the side of UP over antitrust issues. His interest in the line was followed by a number of other stakeholders.

A local rail steering committee formed in recent years, with county and local municipality participation, and one advocacy group has been pushing hard for a state study of passenger service between Glenwood Springs and Leadville.

Another short line railroad, Rio Grande Pacific, holds a lease with UP to study passenger and light freight on the line, and UP rival Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) is watching the UP-Norfolk Southern merger proceedings with interest and clear opposition. Norfolk Southern is mostly an eastern U.S. carrier, and is infamous in recent years for its Palestine, Ohio, disaster.

Eagle County twice has sued federal regulators over a proposed expansion of oil train traffic from Utah along the endangered Colorado River in Eagle County on the active Moffat Line, which heads northeast at Dotsero. While UP to some degree is required to transport hazardous materials, county officials would like more communication on that front as well, fearing the potential for oil spills into the river and an increase in wildfire danger.

“This is what we want to put it on the record and want to express is that (communication is) an issue,” Scherr said. “Everybody always says our merger will make things better. Not usually — at least not usually for anybody but those who are merging.”

VVMTA’s Saeger, in a phone interview, said that’s why railbanking and local control makes more sense.

“Up and down the valley, all I hear is the same headaches that all of our land managers, municipalities go through to deal with UP. They don’t get responses. They don’t get answers,” Saeger said. “We hear that they’re hard to work with when they need a simple crossing for like the EagleVail Trail or some project that may be going on. So the opportunity here is to look at railbanking, and what it can provide is the corridor being set aside for local control or state, county, regional, whatever it may be.”

Saeger added his group, given its mission, is primarily focused on growing the valley’s trail network, but they are being openminded and would like to see feasibility studies of the options.

“Is that rail to trail? Maybe it’s passenger rail and you don’t do rail to trail from Gypsum to Minturn because of the idea of future passenger rail from the (Eagle County Regional) airport to Minturn or Vail. But maybe it makes more sense to do rail to trail in the section from Minturn to Leadville. Not as high as the demand of passenger rail there. It’s a beautiful area. If it goes through the (Camp Hale) national monument, it’d be an incredible rail-to-trail opportunity.”

VVMTA has teamed up with Bicycle Colorado for a “take action” alert to garner public support.