Diesel-powered trains will thunder west from Denver through the Continental Divide to Granby starting late next year, marking the first stage in a multi-year effort to launch inter-city passenger rail service in Colorado.
The state-funded Mountain Rail trains will run year-round to Granby and soon after to Steamboat Springs and Craig. Colorado leaders say their rollout — including trains linking metro Denver with Boulder, Longmont, and Fort Collins by the end of this decade — will give residents and visitors non-driving options for moving around amid worsening traffic congestion.
These won’t be the high-speed bullet trains that dart across Europe and Asia.
Colorado is committing to a fundamentally different approach: re-purposing 2,545 miles of existing track on century-old routes that crisscross the state and sharing them with freight trains. The speeds of Colorado’s new passenger trains won’t exceed 70 miles per hour. The first trains will be hard-pressed to hit 50 mph as they climb at elevations up to 9,239 feet above sea level.
But this approach has forward momentum at a time when the U.S. government isn’t prepared to invest the billions of dollars required to keep pace with Asia and Europe.
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