Riding the rails to the mountains: congestion relief plan for I-70 likely to include train service.

• Author: Ringo, Kyle

Years of study, bickering and efforts to build consensus should finally produce a long-term vision in 2008 of what Coloradans can expect for improvements to the sometimes snarled Interstate 70 corridor. It's looking like rail service could be part of the equation.

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Russell George, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, told 25 members of the I-70 collaborative-effort team formed last fall that he would like them to come to an agreement on a proposal for the corridor by May. During a late-November meeting with members, he pledged CDOT will support their recommendations and gave each member a signed letter stating so.

"He said we've got everybody here. We've got the points of view represented. So when you come up with a decision, that's what we're going to go with," said Jon Esty, president of the Colorado Rail Passenger Association. "We'd be fools not to. He said the real problem would be if you didn't come to a decision or if you couldn't come to a compromise."

Reaching an agreement has long proved difficult and still could be in the coming months, but some of those involved say they feel more optimistic about the process now. The feeling can be partly explained by a sea change that occurred when Gov. Bill Ritter took office a year ago and removed some of the restrictions hovering over any proposed improvements.

In the past under former Gov. Bill Owens' administration, the state's funding criteria capped construction costs along the corridor at $4 billion and eliminated futuristic rail possibilities such as monorail. The new approach takes a deeper view of the problems that cause congestion on busy ski weekends in the winter and spring months and similar problems experienced by hikers and campers and fishermen in the summer.

Simply widening the highway between Golden and the Eagle Valley Airport would address the problem over the next two decades, or nearly as long as the project would likely take to complete. At the end, some say similar problems would still exist because the state's population is expected to grow, with much of the growth coming along the Front Range and I-70 corridor.

Previous ideas for rail service along the corridor met resistance because the technology was unproven on terrain such as that found in the mountains west of Denver. The expense also made many cringe. Recent research has found trains in use in similar areas in Europe that could be easily adapted for use in...