(The following story by Scott Rochat appeared on the Longmont Times-Call website on June 1, 2009.)
LONGMONT, Colo. — After a 12-year absence, the Pioneer passenger rail line may have a chance to get back on track.
That’s what supporters are hoping, anyway — that they can bring back the old Seattle-to-Denver line that Amtrak ran from 1977 to 1997. It’s an effort that the Longmont City Council signed onto last week, with a resolution supporting a new Pioneer route, complete with a stop in Longmont.
“If Amtrak is looking for places to add service, passenger rail through Longmont would be a good thing,” said city transportation planner Phil Greenwald.
The Pioneer route moved about 80,000 passengers a year as of 1997. However, it couldn’t derail a long series of losses. Between October 1995 and September 1996, the service lost $20 million, according to Amtrak.
That almost led to the line’s cancellation in November 1996. A $26 million federal bailout saved it for six months, but the Pioneer finally shut down service on May 10, 1997.
That was more or less the end of the story — until October 2008, when a bill signed by President George W. Bush required Amtrak to study several of its retired long-haul lines and see if they could be put back in service including the Pioneer route.
That energized supporters, including C.B. Hall , the coordinator of the Pioneer Restoration Organization. Hall, a resident of Lopez Island, Wash., has been pushing for the Pioneer’s reactivation since shortly after it closed.
“I think the chances of reviving it are pretty good,” Hall said. “But I’m not the one crunching numbers for the federal government.”
He said he still considers the route viable, especially in the Front Range, where a revived Pioneer could tie together Longmont, Boulder and Fort Collins. It’s also something that Hall thinks would be good for the Amtrak network in general.
“It certainly would fly through a very large chunk of ‘white territory’ on the Amtrak system,” he said, referring to areas unserved by passenger rail.
The original Pioneer route used the Union Pacific tracks from Greeley. The current request, according to Greenwald, is to run the new route on the Burlington Northern tracks from Denver through Boulder, Longmont, Berthoud, Loveland and Fort Collins.
It’s not a sure thing though. Even if Amtrak’s study supports the Pioneer, there’s no guarantee just how quickly the rail service would reappear.
“We have some questions, such as what kind of timeline are they looking for?” Greenwald said. “I don’t think we have answers yet.”
Amtrak has announced it will complete the study by Oct. 16.
If the push succeeds, it could result in Longmont being a stop along two passenger rail systems. The other would be the planned FasTracks commuter rail system scheduled to reach Longmont by about 2017, though cost difficulties have left its northern route uncertain.
Hall said he’s seen a lot of support for the Pioneer’s return, and urged people to push their representatives on the issue. At this moment, he said, the time appears to be right.
“I think the route’s always been viable,” he said. “What’s changed is an administration in Washington that’s more supportive of passenger rail. … And the constant worry about fuel for automobiles today has people thinking about alternatives.”