(The following story by Trevor Hughes appeared on The Coloradoan website on May 17, 2009.)
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Passenger rail advocates are pushing to reroute the historic, but defunct, Amtrak Pioneer train service through Fort Collins, Boulder and Longmont.
Under congressional mandate, Amtrak is studying whether to restart the Pioneer route, which until 1997 ran from Denver to near Cheyenne, Wyo. and then onto Portland, Ore., and Seattle.
Rail advocates say Amtrak should consider altering the historic route to add stops along the Front Range, which they suggest would increase ridership and make sense financially.
“We’re all part of the same system of transportation. Having an option to go up and down the Front Range would seem attractive,” said Darren Rudloff, president of the Cheyenne Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We’re just trying to raise awareness of everyone up and down the line.”
Rudloff has been working with other train backers to build support for the proposal.
City of Boulder officials are expected to discuss the plan at a hearing Tuesday.
Rudloff said he and other Cheyenne-area supporters have begun reaching out to their counterparts in Fort Collins.
According to a study by longtime passenger rail enthusiast C. B. Hall, adding a Pioneer stop in Fort Collins could help draw riders from Loveland.
Loveland may one day be connected to Fort Collins and Longmont through local commuter rail.
“The traveler would then be about to get on a local train at a stop that Amtrak does not serve, in say, Loveland, ride to Fort Collins, then get on the Pioneer there,” Hall wrote in his seven-page statistic-packed report. “In short, routing Pioneer via Fort Collins would exploit both the synergies and economies of scale.”
Hall noted a series of drawbacks to changing the route, not the least is that it would take more than three hours to travel the 119 miles from Denver to Cheyenne via Fort Collins, compared with about two hours for the Greeley route. Hall’s analysis looks at three station options for Fort Collins.
Marc Magliari, a Chicago-based spokesman for Amtrak, said he doesn’t know whether ongoing study will incorporate suggestions to change the Pioneer route, if the train is brought back at all. Magliari was on the last eastbound Pioneer from Seattle.
He said the train ran from Denver to Borie, Wyo., near Cheyenne, then to Rawlins, and Rock Springs in Wyoming, Ogden, Utah, Boise, Idaho, and then to Portland, Ore., along the south side of the Columbia River, before turning north to Seattle.
The train followed the original route of the first transcontinental railroad, he said.
Amtrak discontinued the route due to a series of challenges, including low ridership, conflicts with Union Pacific, which owns the rails, and a lack of funding.
Last year, Congress ordered Amtrack, also known as the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, to study whether to restart the Pioneer route and two others. The report is due in October.
Rudloff said he and others are using the new study as an opportunity to at least discuss the possibility of restoring passenger service.
Rudloff noted that Cheyenne “grew up” as a railroad town and it makes sense to use the existing infrastructure to serve a growing population by decreasing dependence on foreign fossil fuels.
Rudloff said the Obama administration’s interest in high-speed rail is heartening Pioneer supporters. Also, Vice President Joseph Biden’s son serves on Amtrak’s board of directors.
There’s no pricetag associated with altering the route. Nationwide, Amtrak carried 28.7 million passengers in 2008, an 11 percent increase over 2007.
According to its annual report, Amtrack in fiscal year 2008 earned approximately $2.45 billion in revenue and incurred about $3.41 billion in expenses.
“There are definite challenges. This route lost quite a lot of money when it was in operation,” Rudloff said. “It’s unclear exactly how serious Amtrak would be in accepting our recommendations.”