Currently it takes 70 min to travel from Fort Collins, CO to Denver, CO...without traffic or construction....some days the trek can take 90+ minutes. Imagine if it took, 45min, every time in all conditions.
The big idea for this episode is a brief case study of a future passenger rail initiative in Colorado. We discuss how passenger rail is planned and integrated into existing infrastructure and ponder some important planning assumptions for rail mass transit in the future.
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We recently had the opportunity to talk with Randy Grauberger, Project Director, Southwest Chief & Front Range Passenger Rail Commission about the Colorado Front Range Passenger Rail (FRPR) Initiative. He shared the attached presentation outlining the current activities and progress of the effort to bring passenger rail to the Colorado Front Range.
Topic Summary
As populations grow many areas of the country are challenged with vehicular transportation networks reaching capacity. This results in routinely heavy traffic, add in an accident and/or construction and slowdowns/stops compound from there.
Passenger rail remains one of the leading solutions to tackle this problem; to get commuters and tourist alike to their destination safely, reliably, quickly. In addition travel-related social benefits there are environmental benefits in the form of reduce carbon emissions.
The FRPR initiative in Colorado highlights many of the challenges to bring passenger rail from concept to reality.
- Real estate space and capacity for the line, stations and supporting infrastructure are required.
- Broad public support and funding are essential.
- How to best strike the balance between speed and community access when connecting with other modes and existing transportation networks.
- The COVID-19 pandemic continues to complicate mass transit in general.
- What effect autonomous vehicles will have remains to be determined. How to best model this future state of automobile traffic?
To address these challenges leaders are actively engaging communities, conducting outreach with potential future rail users, working with freight rail industry leaders to leverage existing rail ROW and excess capacity, and performing detailed modeling for engineering feasibility, fiscal viability, and safety.
In August the Commission published their demand modeling results based on alignments under consideration. They can be found at the below link.
Front Range Passenger Rail is just one of several passenger rail initiatives in the country. Below is a link to a US DOT federal Railway Administration map showing the current corridor investment strategy to include the five mega regions we mention in our discussion.
Podcast Hosts
Scott Snelling, P.E. and Jason Toth, P.E., PMP
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