Regional Boards > Mountain West
I-70 Central Project in Northeast Denver
zzcarp:
--- Quote from: brad2971 on February 18, 2023, 12:14:46 AM ---
--- Quote from: thenetwork on February 17, 2023, 09:32:09 PM ---
--- Quote from: Bobby5280 on February 16, 2023, 09:07:08 PM ---I didn't know there was a federal regulation banning dogs on mass transit trains. I'm sure they would have to allow exceptions; when I lived in NYC I remember seeing blind people with companion dogs riding the subway. Then there's all the various people with support animals.
It would take one hell of an engineering achievement to create a true high speed rail line that cut thru the Rockies from Denver to the Grand Junction area. I'm not sure if such a thing would even be possible. I know it would not be financially feasible.
There is only one slow speed rail line that manages to cross all of Colorado East-and-West. That's the line entering the Rockies to the West of Pueblo, using the path cut by the Arkansas River.
Denver has a "thru" rail line that has to cut a very crooked path thru the Front Range. The line passes through at least a dozen tunnels, including the 6 mile long Moffat Tunnel, whose West Portal is in Winter Park. The line goes up to Granby. Then it follows alongside the Colorado River down to Dotsero. There it merges with the rail line coming up from Pueblo. Silverthorne is cut off from any rail service at all due to all the big mountains surrounding it.
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^^ That Dotsero to Pueblo rail line you mention of has not been in use for decades. However, there are people who want to reopen that line for transport of oil from Utah to the south and east. Tree huggers and NIMBYS are trying to prevent it from happening.
Regardless, there would need to be considerable money needed to bring that rail line back to operational status. If they could upgrade it to high speed at the same time, more power to them, but there would still be a lot of hurdles (an all purpose trail currently parallels much of the westernmost portion).
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At some point and time, the people who want to develop the thick, waxy crude that comes from the Uintah Basin are going to realize that geographic areas like the Bakken formation and the Denver-Julesburg Basin exist. When they do, they will realize that the Return on Investment for rebuilding the line through Tennessee Pass and/or building a direct road from the Uintah Basin to I-70 is, to put it kindly, abysmal.
The tree-huggers and the NIMBYs are very much in the right on this one.
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There are other reasons to reopen the Pueblo to Dotsero line. It's an easier grade in general and less curvy than the Moffat tunnel. Also the Moffat tunnel has a major capacity/frequency limitation-it has to cool down between each train that passes through, so they can only put through 2 trains an hour, freight or passenger.. This idea for using Pueblo route for increasing freight trains through the Rockies has been talked about long before the Uintah shale existed in the public consciousness. That it hasn't been opened shows either a lack of demand, and/or that the railroad is waiting for government grants to assist in the rebuild.
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