Denver to Ft. Collins?

I can't quite make sense of what that article/author is proposing. Or maybe I can and it just is not practical.

The RTD commuter rail proposal costs $1.2B (it's been a while since I've looked at those proposals, but I imagine that involves all-day, perhaps relatively frequent service?) so instead the idea is to set up Amtrak service (running just a few times a day) instead, and that will only cost $1.2M? Hmm, just a guess here, but I doubt that includes whatever level of capacity expansion that BNSF will require.

Yes, that $1.2 million figure is too low.

As much as I'd like to see the Front Range get something akin to Utah's FrontRunner or New Mexico's RailRunner, it currently feels like it's never going to happen. The costs are astronomical, and will become worse and worse as the years go by if the pace of progress remains this slow. I think a more attainable near-term solution is to instate something similar to California's San Joaquin service, with six runs a day in each direction from Denver-Ft. Collins on the BNSF tracks. Yes, the frequency is lower, but many people in Boulder (including college students) will gladly modify their plans to take a train into Denver. I have no doubt that such a service would be very successful. Also, the powers at be in Cheyenne might get envious and work towards extending the route to WY's capitol city.

On the other hand, if the Front Range really *needs* a frequent commuter service like FrontRunner in the long-term, then maybe we just need to pay the exorbitant costs now to get it underway. Regardless, it's extremely frustrating to me that I can take a train from SLC to Provo, or ABQ to Santa Fe, but not Denver to Boulder. "That just ain't right."

As I recall from my frequent travels to Loveland and Ft. Collins, that BNSF line is a really twisty turns slow line.

It is twisty and turny, but it twists and turns to get to all the population centers. (Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont, Boulder, Louisville, Broomfield). There's not a single city bypassed on the whole route, which makes sense given its early origins as the Colorado Central Railroad.

It's not ideal for longer-distance service -- and indeed, it's bad for the freight service which is currently using it. But it's just right for a commuter route.

If the state of Colorado wanted to go BIG, they'd build BNSF a new, *straight* route to the east of the UP route and trade that for the Fort Collins-Boulder-Denver route (retaining local freight service only).

RTD FasTracks already has the BNSF line slated for use of commuter service upto Longmont anyway. If Larimer district ever gets around to joining RTD it should be not that hard to extend from Longmont to Ft. Collins through Loveland. Currently the line is being built only upto Westminster, pending the availability of funding for the rest. In the meantime a substitute BRT service is in place upto Boulder, which allegedly is not terribly quick.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Line_%28RTD%29

Running Amtrak service between Denver and Ft. Collins makes no sense. If they want a cheap solution before the fully electrified system could be built, they could acquire 3 or 4 Stadler DEMUs and run them on the BNSF tracks to Longmont, or even Fort Collins. It will take way more than $1.2 million to prepare the BNSF track and build stations for running a passenger service. The guy who wrote the article is an armchair philosopher and not a transit corridor planner apparently.