Editor's Report

The January 23, 2006, issue of Rocky Mountain Construction included a cover feature on construction of a commuter rail transit line between Salt Lake City and Ogden (actually Pleasant View, just northwest of Ogden). Steadily increasing population density along the Wasatch Front may make this line

at least justifiable, though never profitable. And its construction is not being undertaken at the expense of needed highway improvements in the congested Interstate 15 corridor. Even the long delayed Legacy Parkway will be under construction again this spring.

Denver area voters last year approved a sales tax increase for the Regional Transportation District to fund FasTracks, a $1.4-billion program of transit improvements that includes commuter rail in addition to light rail and bus transit. The commuter rail, like nearly all such mass transit lines being proposed and built today, will either take the place of abandoned railroad lines or be located immediately adjacent to active rail lines. Neither of the commuter rail lines planned under FasTracks will leave the immediate Denver metro area, and they could just as easily be built at light rail lines (and in fact Aurora officials recently lost a fight to have the downtown Denver to Denver International Airport line built as light rail rather than heavy or commuter rail). Again, increasing population density in the Denver area may justify these lines, and they are not being built at the cost of highway improvements in the region.

To the south, in New Mexico, however, an interesting situation is developing. Last year, under GRIP — Gov. Richardson's Improvement Program — the state announced plans to start a commuter rail line from Belen, south of Albuquerque, up to Santa Fe, generally parallel to I-25. This is certainly the most populous corridor in the state, but it has nowhere near the population density of either the Denver metro area or Utah's Wasatch Front. And though rush hour traffic congestion certainly exists in the booming Albuquerque area, and even to a lesser extent in Santa Fe, neither area has ever made the annual listing of the nation's top 10 (or 20, or 30) most congested metropolitan areas. The question immediately arises, "Is commuter rail really warranted in New Mexico?"

Late in the year, matters took an interesting turn when Gov. Richardson announced that the state was going to buy more than 300 miles of BNSF Railway track from Belen all the way north to Raton, and across the state line to Trinidad, Colo. This would allow New Mexico to control the tracks it will use for commuter service from Belen to Santa Fe (though actually an all-new rail route is to be built between Bernalillo and Santa Fe, where the existing route is lengthy, steep and slow), and it would preserve the corridor on up to the Colorado line in the event that rail passenger service was ultimately re-established between Cheyenne, Denver and New Mexico (and an entity in Colorado has been proposing just such a service). The trackage will continue to be used for freight by BNSF (though the line sees very little freight traffic), and a daily Amtrak passenger train passes over the route in each direction. But the expense of buying the line ($50 million this year for the 51 miles of Belen-Bernalillo track, another $20 million for the 48 miles from Bernalillo to Lamy, and $5 million for the 200 miles on up to Trinidad) is being paid by GRIP, meaning the program will have $75 million less available for highway improvements. Further, the state will be responsible for the cost of maintaining the 300 miles of track to high standards and will assume the liability for accidents involving the line. Those expenses could prove to be enormous and could easily come back to bite the state — and eat into potential highway improvement funding far into the future.

Already the state attorney general has been asked for his opinion on the propriety of spending GRIP money for the track acquisition, especially of the 200 miles from Lamy to Trinidad for which the state has no immediate plans. And legislators are increasingly questioning the expenditures, with state Sen. Joe Carraro being one of the most outspoken. "People tend to think of me as a conservative Republican, but I've got news for you: We've got a lot of issues and responsibilities we've got to take care of, and we can't be going off expanding programs ... without taking care of our responsibilities first. I guess you have to always measure things like that by what the cost is. Whether we have the money to do it, first of all, and whether we have to do something else to be able to accomplish that."

As it now stands, only time will tell if the purchase is a wise acquisition.