Colorado state officials have unveiled a phased delivery plan for the Colorado Connector passenger rail service that would put two daily round trips on the full 190-mile route from Pueblo to Fort Collins within five years, provided voters approve a 0.333% sales-tax increase on the November ballot.

The tax, which the Front Range Passenger Rail District's board will vote at the end of August to refer to voters, would raise roughly $295 million annually and cover construction and operating costs for the complete Pueblo-to-Fort Collins service plan. The district's boundaries, narrowed by lawmakers earlier this year, now span approximately 30 municipalities along the Front Range near planned stations.

The plan separates what is funded from what is contingent. A "starter service" between Fort Collins and Denver remains on track to launch by 2029 with or without the additional tax revenue. The intermediate phase — two daily round trips over the full 190-mile route within five years — depends on the ballot measure passing. Service would then expand gradually to 10 daily round trips on the northern segment and eight on the southern segment, with potential line extensions to Trinidad, New Mexico and Wyoming.

The Colorado Connector would serve 12 planned permanent stops: Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont, Boulder, Louisville, Broomfield, Westminster, Denver, Littleton, Sterling Ranch, Colorado Springs and Pueblo. Special-event stops are planned at the Broncos' future home at Burnham Yards and the planned Denver Summit soccer stadium at I-25 and Broadway.

Sal Pace, the FRPR district's general manager and a former state lawmaker from Pueblo, framed the service as addressing a structural gap in north-south travel capacity along the Interstate 25 corridor. He pointed to the state's expansion of the Winter Park Express and the Bustang intercity bus service as evidence of demand.

"In Colorado, we have a unique situation where we don't have real redundancy going north-south — I-25 is a bottleneck," Pace said. "In all the anecdotal (data) and in the ridership projections, we've seen that it's going to be well-used. We expect the trains to be full."

Survey data shapes the service design. The vast majority of prospective riders said they would use the service for concerts, sporting events, outdoor recreation and day trips rather than commuting to work or school.

"We are not building a commuter rail service," Pace emphasized. "What we're talking about is connecting people between metropolitan areas for major sporting events, for weekends visiting a grandkid at college, for going to a musical for the evening in Denver."

BNSF agreement marks break from FasTracks model

Pace directly addressed the precedent that hangs over Colorado rail expansion: the Regional Transportation District's 2004 FasTracks plan, which included the long-delayed B Line to Boulder. That project's completion slipped by decades in large part because of unexpectedly high costs of leasing tracks from freight railroad BNSF.

"RTD didn't even start talking to the freight railroads until after they passed FasTracks," Pace said. "Quite to the contrary, not only do we have a signed term sheet, but we have a proposed financing model with a rail access agreement with BNSF, where they are going to be receiving 50% greater annual access fees for the passenger service meeting on-time metrics."

"That means that BNSF is becoming a partner in this," he added. "They are serving as a collaborator with the state and with the district in delivering service."

The incentive structure Pace described ties BNSF's access fees to on-time performance — an arrangement that aligns the freight operator's revenue with passenger service reliability, though the agreement remains a proposed financing model rather than a finalized deal.

Broader rail revival

The Legislature created the rail district in 2021 to oversee passenger rail's return to the Front Range. Aside from several stops on long-haul Amtrak routes, Colorado has not had regular intercity passenger rail service since the 1970s.

The Colorado Connector is one of three state rail initiatives now in motion. The Winter Park Express has already expanded, and the state plans to launch a "Mountain Rail" service between Denver and Granby by the end of this year, with future expansion planned as far as Steamboat Springs.

The immediate decision point comes at the end of August, when the FRPR board votes on whether to refer the sales-tax measure to the November ballot in the 30 municipalities within the district. If voters approve, the five-year clock starts toward full-route service; if they decline, the plan's expansion beyond the Fort Collins-Denver starter service stalls for lack of a funding source.