Front range high speed rail plans
Briargate to Denver International Airport in around 50 minutes at 26-cents per mile for riders, that’s a real possibility promised by an Interregional Connectivity Study regarding high speed rail.
“Individuals would be able to travel twice as fast as in a car,” said David Krutsinger, CDOT project manager. “We’re designing for about 150 miles per hour with some of the straighter sections going up to 180-220 miles per hour.”
A preferred high-speed rail plan is from Colorado Springs to DIA and then north to Fort Collins at a cost of about $9.8 billion and is estimated to carry over 13 million passengers a year, according to planners.
The study also looked at scenarios where high speed rail would extend west along the I-70 corridor to the Eagle County Airport, and south to Pueblo.
“We were just charged to put a plan together to put Colorado in a position to claim any possible Federal dollars,” Krusinger said.
A plan is still being finalized to present to the Transportation Commission. No decision has been made on even what type of high-speed rail technology will be utilized.
If this plan is popular politically and publicly, an optimistic assessment would be that construction could start in 2020 and passengers could begin riding in 2026.
