Having read the Pueblo Station Area Plan (Aug 2020), I think it's excellent but wish the Union Avenue advantage of covered parking were added as a "Pro" factor and the lack of it at the Civic Center as a negative. Concluding a trip (bags in hand and so on) by finding one's car covered with snow & ice (or even blazing hot in summer) is not pleasant.
Amtrak ConnectUS Announcement and Detailed Document
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jis
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As far as freight congestion issue goes apparently it could be just a short/medium term thing. Apparently the State of Colorado, BNSF and UP have been considering a long term plan to move all heavy freight traffic onto a new line to be constructed further east, away from the Front Range. There are apparently rather large operational advantages and cost savings to be had by such a move. The proposal, including maps and initial costing, is detailed in this document:
https://www.codot.gov/library/studi...lreport-2009/r2c2_final_report-full020609.pdf
I have no idea what the current state of this proposal is.
If that happens, the Front Range Line will become mostly a passenger line. If in conjunction Amtrak diverts the SWC via Pueblo then it is only Amtrak that will abandon La Junta - Trinidad. A lot of the heavy freight that now travels via Walsenberg to Trinidad will travel the route Las Animas Jct. La Junta - Trinidad instead. The upside or downside (depending on how one looks at it) of this could be that Pueblo - Walsenberg - Trinidad becomes the responsibility of Amtrak/State of Colorado, as freight mostly abandons it.
I just chanced upon this document while poking around the ColoDOT site.
Thanks for digging that up. It has been below everyone's radar on rail discussion groups, it seems. For certain, this is news to me. The re-route would be pure BNSF traffic. Brush is too far east of Denver to benefit the Union Pacific RR, though, even with trackage rights on the BNSF. The new route would not be too hard to build: the topography is basically as flat as a pancake. Avoiding Denver and running higher speed trains would benefit BNSF customers. However, the Union Pacific RR also runs trains between Denver and Pueblo.
jis
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Actually Jim Souby who chairs the Front Range Passenger Rail Commission had mentioned it to me in the passing. That is where I first heard of it. When I ran into it I immediately recognized it for what it is since it was not entirely new to me, at least conceptually.
The high plains bypass was proposed in the 1970's by an R. L. Banks study. It was done at the dawn of the coal traffic boom and when the Joint Line owners Rio Grande and Santa Fe and tenant Burlington Northern were still using helpers instead of distributed power. The very professional study showed that the new railway would pay for itself.
The problem was that most of the coal was on BN and so it would have been the main beneficiary. The owners of the Joint Line would have lost revenue. In the bigger picture they might have benefited by moving intermodal traffic better, but that was hypothetical. (Santa Fe took trailers off at La Junta for Denver at one point in the coal era.)
So nothing happened on the high plains. It was too bad for Limon, which would have been the logical place for a warehousing distribution center.
By the time the more recent study was done a lot of things had changed. RTD (my then employer) and CDOT had helped finance numerous grade separations and realignments on the Joint Line (shared now by LRT lines) which reduced the political concern about blocked crossings. BNSF was now an owner but the end of the coal boom was in sight. Helpers had joined the cabooses in the great rip track in the sky. Throughout most of the time between the two studies the highway lobby had controlled the legislature.
There was intermittent interest in the idea. In 2001 a colleague and I were asked by our general manager to determine whether the existing Front Range alignment (not infrastructure) could be used by a successful corridor service, given relocation of the coal traffic. He had heard this discussed somewhere. We concluded that it could be given continual increases in I-25 congestion resulting in a Surfliner scenario where 1950's rail speeds gradually become competitive. [Railfan note: BNSF agreed that it looked realistic with infrastructure improvements. It should have because we used their old employee timetables from Diesel streamliner days, courtesy of the hobby book shop located in Denver Union Station.]
So now the question is whether it is more cost effective in developing a Front Range corridor service to add track where necessary on the Front Range or to divert through freight to the high plains. I think the decline of coal has settled this question.
The problem was that most of the coal was on BN and so it would have been the main beneficiary. The owners of the Joint Line would have lost revenue. In the bigger picture they might have benefited by moving intermodal traffic better, but that was hypothetical. (Santa Fe took trailers off at La Junta for Denver at one point in the coal era.)
So nothing happened on the high plains. It was too bad for Limon, which would have been the logical place for a warehousing distribution center.
By the time the more recent study was done a lot of things had changed. RTD (my then employer) and CDOT had helped finance numerous grade separations and realignments on the Joint Line (shared now by LRT lines) which reduced the political concern about blocked crossings. BNSF was now an owner but the end of the coal boom was in sight. Helpers had joined the cabooses in the great rip track in the sky. Throughout most of the time between the two studies the highway lobby had controlled the legislature.
There was intermittent interest in the idea. In 2001 a colleague and I were asked by our general manager to determine whether the existing Front Range alignment (not infrastructure) could be used by a successful corridor service, given relocation of the coal traffic. He had heard this discussed somewhere. We concluded that it could be given continual increases in I-25 congestion resulting in a Surfliner scenario where 1950's rail speeds gradually become competitive. [Railfan note: BNSF agreed that it looked realistic with infrastructure improvements. It should have because we used their old employee timetables from Diesel streamliner days, courtesy of the hobby book shop located in Denver Union Station.]
So now the question is whether it is more cost effective in developing a Front Range corridor service to add track where necessary on the Front Range or to divert through freight to the high plains. I think the decline of coal has settled this question.
Thanks, Willbridge, for that piece of history!
As you probably know, the new line would not divert all freight traffic because both the UP and BNSF use what's called the Joint Line between Denver and Pueblo, where they go their separate ways. IINM, it would have been used mainly by BNSF coal trains, but the number of those is diminishing. I don't see this ever happening, as a result. We agree there.
As you probably know, the new line would not divert all freight traffic because both the UP and BNSF use what's called the Joint Line between Denver and Pueblo, where they go their separate ways. IINM, it would have been used mainly by BNSF coal trains, but the number of those is diminishing. I don't see this ever happening, as a result. We agree there.
The craziest part of the whole Joint Line history, was the abandonment of the ATSF line thru Colorado Springs, and the resulting single track bottleneck, right at the dawn of the mentioned coal boom....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atchi..._Passenger_Depot_(Colorado_Springs,_Colorado)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atchi..._Passenger_Depot_(Colorado_Springs,_Colorado)
I've been checking
Yonah Freemark Let me take off from his map, I still need to work on the counts, but here is a map with some of the details from the 2035 announcement. Tableau Public
neroden
Engineer
Indefinitely suspended for an interesting reason. Most of the north-south traffic they were planning to relocate was coal traffic, and the eastern bypass line was designed to service coal mines. The coal traffic is disappearing *entirely* as the entire coal-burning business disappears, very quickly. There isn't much else in the way of north-south traffic, so it doesn't seem worth building new lines for coal mines which are going to close soon. So the design has to be redesigned. In fact, with the coal traffic disappearing, the freight congestion is going to go away anyway...
I would love to know what non-coal freight traffic, if any, currently operates on either the Joint Line or on the BNSF line north of Denver. I haven't seen a good description of the non-coal traffic, since coal traffic was so dominant for so long.
jis
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Governor Polis has signed a bill which funds the Front Range Passenger Rail Commission to the tune of $9 Million to develop a plan for passenger service along the Front Range in Colorado.
https://denvergazette.com/news/tran...cle_47e73a9a-e695-11ec-9de0-f7dffb33b3bc.html
https://denvergazette.com/news/tran...cle_47e73a9a-e695-11ec-9de0-f7dffb33b3bc.html
The Gazette site is run by the leans-to-the-right Colorado Springs daily. It will cover this through the years to come, but will make sure that critics have a part in every story. The growth of the Springs -- on its own and as a bedroom community -- is one of the things that has resulted in renewed interest in the rail idea; in the usual pattern, CDOT completed additional lanes and the real estate developers are already selling the "easy commute".
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JamesWhitcombRiley
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Annoying, but on the other hand (if I recall correctly) they built a commuter rail station is the middle of nowhere south of Denver. It barely even has road access currently, but is slated for Transit Oriented Development.
Don't know much about Colorado, except people want north-south Amtrak, population and economic growth have been high, it's a draw for college grads from a large area of the country, people voted to spend a lot on transit a considerable time ago, and there are complaints. Visiting Denver, it's just so spread out even for a US city. Their idea of a city block would take up six blocks in NYC. Or so it seemed, big sky and all that. So suburban Transit Oriented Development, seems like just put it between Building X and Building Y downtown! But I'm sure they're already doing that. Or move the massive (and somewhat stinky) grow ops out of the central city warehouses to a desolate commuter rail stop!
The extension to aptly named Lone Tree was partly financed by that city for TOD reasons. It was RTD's intent to build it later. It was grossly overserved (E, F and R Lines) under the agreement. The pandemic provided a reason to reduce the extension to just the E-Line. Unlike other cities in that area, they are planning dense development, so eventually it will all make sense.
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P.S. My grandmother liked to mention that she knew James Whitcomb Riley. I rode that train.
This was probably the source for the story:
https://gottheimer.house.gov/posts/...ransit-park-and-ride-station-in-sussex-county
There's an official site up describing the corridors.
https://www.amtrakconnectsus.com/maps/
https://www.amtrakconnectsus.com/maps/
