The idea of a passenger rail service to Longmont is back on the Regional Transportation District’s radar.

While voters in 2004 approved a sales tax hike to build that line, the idea of taking a train from Boulder and Longmont to downtown Denver never gained any traction in the buildout of RTD’s metro area rail system.

The rail plan was beset by financial obstacles and right-of-way issues with the track owners. Meanwhile, critics said it doesn’t make fiscal sense, as the line would operate at a loss, on top of the significant infrastructure costs. 

The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railroad Company proposed a lease plan in 2012 costing $535 million, more than eight times what RTD estimated when the FasTracks plan was approved by voters in 2004.

That proposal shocked the transit district, causing the plan to be shelved.

In the ensuring two decades, Colorado residents have been paying the higher tax.  

This year, the proposal is back on the table.

At a meeting on Tuesday, the RTD Board of Directors voted to join the Joint Service Executive Oversight Committee — an intergovernmental agency comprising representatives from the state’s Front Range Passenger Rail District, the Colorado Department of Transportation, the Colorado Transportation Investment Office, and the Colorado Clean Transit Enterprise — to reexamine the notion and potentially extend the service farther north.

The committee will negotiate with BNSF to study the potential of fulfilling the two-decade-old proposal to build a passenger rail line from Denver to Longmont and, eventually, Fort Collins.

A feasibility report issued by RTD in 2024 concluded that running passenger service on BNSF freight rail tracks between Denver’s Union Station and Longmont would cost $12 to $16 million per year to operate, after spending about $650 million on infrastructure improvements.

The 2024 report estimated a daily ridership of 1,100 boardings based on running peak period service on the route: three weekday morning trips from Longmont to Denver and three weekday evening trips from Denver to Longmont.

RTD board member Julian Bouquet told The Denver Gazette on Wednesday that the northwest corridor, from Fort Collins to Broomfield, is growing quickly.

“The northwest corridor is one of the fastest growing areas in Colorado, specifically around the I-25 corridor near Longmont,” said Bouquet. “So, it’s really exciting to see potential ridership opportunities, potentially getting folks from the Denver Metro area to the north or vice versa.”

Fulfilling what voters approved in 2004 — a Northwest Rail line — is only fair, according to Gov. Jared Polis’ office.

“It’s imperative that RTD makes good on their commitment to the voters who have been paying sales tax for a train that has not yet been delivered,” gubernatorial spokesperson Shelby Weiman said in a statement in 2024. “The good news is there could be a pathway through partnerships to finance the project much faster with RTD funds, state funds and federal funding appropriated by Congress through the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act of 2021 that can contribute to a more robust service from Denver to northern communities.”

“We want to be good partners with the state,” Bouquet said. “We want to at least look at what our options are, because we’ve heard from the northwest that they are looking for the service. We just have to make sure that it makes sense for us as an agency.”

The previous plan to extend commuter rail to the northwest for $650 million is not sensible, critics said.

“Going by a standard revenue-cost ratio, this line is idiotic,” said Randal O’Toole, director of the Independence Institute’s Transportation Center, in 2024. “At $2.75 per ticket (RTD’s current ticket price), with 1,100 riders per day, the line would produce a little over a million dollars per year. This is obviously nowhere close to the $12 to $17 million annual operating cost, much less the amortized value of the $650 million in capital costs.”

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