Colorado officials say they’ve taken another big step towards launching preliminary passenger rail service between Denver and Fort Collins by 2029 — with or without approval of a new tax later this year to fund a larger Front Range rail project.

The “joint service” plan hatched by Governor Jared Polis’ administration would be a hybrid of sorts between the Regional Transportation District’s long-delayed B Line, a commuter rail service between Denver and Longmont first approved 22 years ago, and the northern leg of the newly christened Colorado Connector, a proposed intercity service overseen by the Front Range Passenger Rail District.

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A term sheet agreed to by state negotiators and BNSF, the railroad company that owns the track to be used by the joint service, calls for an initial schedule of three daily round trips between Fort Collins and Denver, with stops in Loveland, Longmont, Boulder, Louisville, Broomfield and Westminster.

“This is a big milestone, where we finally have an agreement with the host railroad on how to deliver service, the estimated cost for delivering that service, and a financial model that has the ability to finance the service with existing resources,” Lisa Kaufmann, a Polis advisor who led the negotiations, said in a briefing Thursday. “But there is still a lot of work ahead of us.”

RTD and the state, through the Colorado Transportation Investment Office, would split the estimated $333 million in one-time capital costs required to launch the service, as well as the roughly $30 million in annual operating costs.

Under the state’s plan, Amtrak, long viewed as the likely operator of the intercity Colorado Connector, would operate the preliminary joint service.

Sal Pace, general manager of the Front Range Passenger Rail District, said Thursday that while the starter service would be able to “stand on its own” financially, it would also be a springboard for a full build-out of the Colorado Connector system. Pace told lawmakers earlier this year that the district would “aim for a 2026 ballot measure” to fund the full service through a sales tax increase.

“Getting this term sheet in place allows us to go to the voters and say that rail is coming, regardless, to the northwest corridor,” said Pace. “But then if you pass Front Range Passenger Rail after this, we’ll be able to take those three round trips and turn them into 10 round trips.”

B Line delay

With its current terminus at Westminster Station, RTD’s incomplete B Line is the transit agency’s least-used rail route, averaging fewer than 400 riders a day in 2024.

The capital expenditures required to extend service further north into BNSF’s rail corridor include station infrastructure and upgraded safety mechanisms, including a so-called positive train control system, that are not required for the freight traffic that currently uses the Denver-to-Fort Collins segment.

BNSF’s price tag for the use of its tracks was a crucial factor that derailed RTD’s plans for its commuter rail line to Boulder, which voters approved as part of the FasTracks plan in 2004. Agency planners had budgeted $66 million to lease the tracks, but BNSF — one half of a duopoly, with Union Pacific, that owns virtually all U.S. railroads west of the Mississippi — quoted an upfront cost of $535 million in 2011, setting the project’s timeline back by decades.

Pace noted that in the years he’s advocated for passenger rail on the Front Range, the distrust created by the B Line’s delay has been viewed as a major obstacle to public support. Polis, a Boulder resident himself, has been sharply critical of RTD over the issue in the past, quashing efforts by some transit advocates to redirectagency resources towards boosting higher-ridership bus and light-rail service within Denver’s urban core.

“The biggest political hurdle that we’ve faced was the fact that there were constituents in the northwest metro area rightfully frustrated that they’d never received their promised rail connection,” Pace said. “I would reckon to say that we’d already have Front Range passenger rail by now, if we didn’t have that really significant political hurdle.”

The new agreement with BNSF comes with a much lower price tag — an unspecified “access fee” is included in the state’s estimated $25 to $35 million annual operating costs — but also some strict limitations on service. With minimal station infrastructure and fewer “sidings” that allow trains to pass one another, passenger trains wouldn’t be able to travel in opposite directions at the same time. A single train would shuttle back and forth from Fort Collins to Denver, completing the 108-minute journey three times a day.

Further details will be hashed out with BNSF in an access agreement to be finalized this summer, Kaufmann said. Negotiations with Amtrak over operating costs are planned to take place this year, and construction could start in January 2027, with service to begin as few as two years after that.

“Now is not the time to declare mission accomplished,” said Kaufmann. “Now is the time to continue working hard to try to deliver service by 2029.”