DENVER — The first project director of Colorado’s Southwest Chief and Front Range Passenger Rail Commission is ready to help move forward plans to link Denver by rail to cities north and south.
Randy Grauberger, a 28-year veteran of the Colorado Department of Transportation, joins the rail commission after a stint with WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff. He arrives at a time when a new governor, legislature, and executive director at the Colorado DOT are all supportive of the rail mission.
“This administration and this new executive director certainly have put passenger rail on much higher priority than it’s been in the past few years,” Grauberger tells Trains News Wire. He was named to his position earlier this year. [See “Colorado rail commission hires project director,” Trains News Wire, March 5, 2019.]
Jared Polis, a Democrat, was elected as governor in the 2018 election, which also gave the party control of both the state Senate and House of Representatives. Polis appointed Shoshana Lew to head CDOT. Lew comes from the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, where she was chief operating officer, and previously served several high-ranking positions in the U.S. Department of Transportation during the Obama administration.
The rail commission was established in 2017 to plan and develop passenger service along the busy I-25 corridor from Fort Collins to Pueblo and to ensure continuation of Amtrak’s Southwest Chief. One of the nation’s fastest growing states, Colorado expects its population to increase more than 50 percent by 2050. Much of that will occur along the Front Range.
“Everybody understands there needs to be more mobility choices provided to folks over time and passenger rail is an obvious one,” says Grauberger. A variety of ideas have been bandied about, from commuter rail to high speed rail. It will be up Grauberger and his team to sort those out.
“The first priority is to determine a course of action,” he explains. Grauberger expects to issue a request for proposals by June 1 to engage a consultant who would develop a service plan along with a preliminary environmental report. The commission has a $2.5 million budget, with $1.5 million available for this study.
To date, the commission hasn’t surveyed voters to gauge the level of support for the project. Grauberger says they’ll need to look at “a lot of stakeholder involvement to decide what the public wants in terms of future passenger rail service and what they might be willing to pay for.”
A 2010 study from the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority concluded that high speed rail, then defined as speeds greater than 90 mph, was feasible along the I-25 corridor. In 2014, the Colorado Department of Transportation issued its Interregional Connectivity Study, which reinforced the viability of a Fort Collins-to-Pueblo high speed line. But that does not mean that the Front Range commission is focused solely on that approach. “There’s combinations of things that we’ll be looking at,” says Grauberger.
The 2018 election also saw Colorado voters turn down two ballot measures to fund transportation projects. Proposition 110, which would have increased the sales tax to pay for highways, mass transit, and other projects, lost by a 60-40 margin.
“You’re going to have to start getting a lot of public support” for the Front Range proposal, Grauberger says, describing his role as “being the ambassador for this effort.” He’ll be meeting with Colorado transportation commissioners, as well as local community and business groups.
The clock is already ticking. Costs, funding, and governance plans, as well as full environmental reports are to be completed in six years. Voters will have to approve financing and the creation of a regional transportation district. Design and construction are to take place in years seven through 15.
Grauberger calls Colorado home and says he’s never wanted to live anywhere else. He grew up in Sterling, a small agricultural community in the northeast corner of the state. He sees himself ready to tackle the challenges of bringing passenger rail to the Front Range. “I’m excited,” he says. “This is really a passion of mine.”
