Trains Magazine is reporting that Colorado Pacific Railroad is making another bid to obtain the former Denver & Rio Grande Western Tennessee Pass line through the Colorado Rockies from Union Pacific, and this time says it will operate passenger service as one of several moves to gain support for its effort.Your guess is as good as mine as to what that will do to help their cause. Funny thing, later on it mentions that UP is in negotiations with Rio Grande Pacific. That company, it says, ...operates short line railroads, is the contract operator of Denton’s A-Train commuter rail service, and is involved in the effort to build the Uinta Basin Railway to transport crude oil from a remote part of Utah. So both CP and RGP are interested in the line from UP, but only to haul freight, initially. From what I can tell, CDOT is trying to get them to offer passenger service to help with commuters who work in the ski towns.
It's exciting to imagine how this could impact the US-24 corridor, but previous attempts with UP have failed to produce results. We can still hope and watch intently!
It would certainly be interesting. But getting past UP and courts.... Makes me doubtful.... And I hate to be a skeptic!
Most of the nearest low cost housing options for the people who work in the resorts like Vale and Beaver Creek is in Leadville which is on the other side of Tennessee Pass. They have a nasty drive over US Highway 24 when the weather gets bad.
I guess compared to the ski resort area, Leadville is probably low cost, but to the rest of us, the 2-mile-high town is probably overpriced... Even is TP was reopened, how much utilization would a commuter train really have? Enough ridership to meet costs? That said, TP is envisioned a freight railroad, so tonnage may have to share the tracks with commuter trains as well.
And just how much of a battle would be required every year, to keep it open for those commuters? ($$$$?)
Considering that most urban area commuter district that handle hundreds of trains and thousands of riders daily don't meet costs and have to be subsidized, getting a couple hundred commuter round trips a day is nowhere near enough traffic to break even. Here's something, if they make it a "commuter line", will it then require PTC to be installed at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars a mile for signal and communications equipment?
What is on the route? It doesn't seem like much, and an even longer shot for passenger traffic. What type of industries are they trying to serve?
Not much industry to serve on this route unless you count the "Tourist" industry. Leadville is kind of a tourist town that does serve the local ranching population. It is also a bedroom community of sorts for many of the low wage workers employed on the other side of the pass at the ski resorts. A lot of trailer parks and sketchy apartments. The mines have been closed down for years. Redcliff and Minturn are more tourist towns. Avon, Edwards, Wolcott and Eagle are all pretty much dependent on the ski resorts and have a very expensive residential market. So a strictly commuter line is pretty much a pipe dream. If you added tourist excursion trains, it still would not pay. It would primarily have to be a bridge route to add freight capacity to supplement the Mofatt route. And UP does not want that competition.
Your post sums it up quite well. What you point out is why I am a skeptic. It's the railroad fan side of me that wishes somehow the line would be brought back to life.
Here is another thread on this subject; https://www.trainboard.com/highball/index.php?threads/tennessee-pass-new-agreement.135595/
