The plan to build a passenger rail system along the Front Range from Trinidad to Fort Collins keeps rolling along, albeit slowly.

The project is still in the planning stages and the necessary studies, permits and applications to the federal government will likely take years to work their way through the system.

Asked when the railroad might be up and running, James Souby, chairman of the Front Range Passenger Rail Commission, said: “I wouldn’t hardly hazard a guess.”

“I would say you have to think politically as well as operationally on that question,” he added. “When would we be in a position to legitimately have enough information to ask the public to support a bond measure and some kind of a tax measure?”

Souby says the project has widespread support from the public.

“Two years ago, we did a public opinion survey,” Souby said. “And 86% of the public came out and said they wanted a passenger rail system.”

But Souby admitted that the commission is not “putting great weight” in the results because the survey didn’t include information on the amount of tax that would be required to fund the rail system.

Critics of the project say it’s a waste of money that benefits only a tiny share of the estimated 2 million daily metro area commuters and the survey is part of a “propaganda” effort.

“You know, you can always word a survey to get the answer you want,” said Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow specializing in land use and transportation issues at the Cato Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “And if you don’t tell people the costs, people will say, sure. They’re never going to take the train, but maybe it’ll get some people off the road. And then I’ll be able to drive in less congested traffic.”

“They’ve got a really good propaganda program,” O’Toole continued. “They’ve convinced people that one light rail line can carry as many people as a 12-lane freeway when actually it can’t even carry as many people as a two-lane freeway. And doesn’t come close to that. It carries about as many people as a third of a freeway lane on average.”

Souby disagrees. “Eventually I would say it would be upwards of 20%, possibly even more than that,” he said of future ridership. “I think systems that are mature and are well understood, like the one that runs into Chicago, I think it gets something like 50% or 60% of the people commuting into Chicago.”

But according to a 2020 report from the Chicago-based nonprofit Active Transportation Alliance, 77.4% of commuters in Chicago use cars, and 13.2% use any form of public transit, including buses and trains.

The Chicago Transit Authority says Chicago has been the hub of rail transportation for both freight and passengers for 150 years, and is the world’s third most active intermodal rail hub.

“What I found was in 2000, before (the Regional Transportation District) built T-Rex and before it passed FasTracks, 4.8% of commuters took RTD to work,” said O’Toole. “And in 2019, after it built all these different rail lines, it was still 4.8%. Exactly the same.”

According to the Front Range Passenger Rail Commission’s Nov. 30, 2020, Service Development Plan, the system would serve roughly 4,800 to 8,900 weekday riders.

By comparison, the average weekday commuter traffic on I-25 between Colorado Springs and Denver measured north of Larkspur averages 66,000 vehicles per day and rises to an average of 160,000 vehicles per day at Castle Pines, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation’s Online Traffic Information System.

The passenger rail system is too expensive, says one critic, who also questioned how many commuters would use it.

“I hear projections that it would be maybe $6 to $12 billion, a huge amount of time, and then it would lose money every single year,” El Paso County Commissioner Stan VanderWerf has said. “So, we have a huge initial investment, and then we would have taxpayer investment yearly to keep it functioning. It really doesn’t make any sense when you can take advantage of other forms of transportation that use the highways.”

The state legislature created the rail commission in 2017 to begin study on the development of a Front Range passenger rail system. In 2018, lawmakers appropriated $2.5 million to fund the commission and pay for preliminary studies.

The commission’s development plan estimates the capital costs for a full build-out of the railroad would be $7.8 billion to $14.2 billion, depending on where the tracks are laid, with annual operating costs estimated at $120 million to $188 million.

Since 1992, Denver metro light rail and commuter rail costs were $13.4 billion in adjusted 2020 dollars, says O’Toole.

A “starter service” with seven trains per day might cost $1 billion to $2.5 billion, said Tim Hoover, a spokesman for CDOT. “For coaches, the project team is looking at Siemens Venture coaches. Basic cars would have 72 revenue seats per car. Lounge cars would have 29 revenue seats per car with 21 non-revenue seats. Control cab cars would have 40 seats per car.”

Hoover did not specify how many cars there might be in a complete train.

In 2021, the legislature passed and Gov. Jared Polis signed the bill that created the Front Range Passenger Rail District, which extends from the Wyoming state line to the New Mexico state line and encompasses every city and town along the Front Range within roughly five miles on either side of Interstate 25.

The district would set and collect taxes within its boundaries, subject to voter approval under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. The district can also create “station area improvement districts” with a two-mile radius subject to additional taxes.

“I think the people that are interested in Front Range rail are not taking a holistic look, and they’re failing to think about these other issues, like how do you get people from the first and last mile in order to use a rail system,” said VanderWerf.

Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar is in favor of the railroad.

“I just think in the long run for us here on the south end, it would be a lot better way to get to Denver, to go and watch a ballgame, to go out and see a play, because you don’t have to drive,” Gradisar said. “You can go up, have a few drinks, sit on the train, relax, nap on the way home. I mean, you leave the drive (to) somebody else.”