{"id":30221,"date":"2023-12-13T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-13T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-is-well-positioned-for-big-dollars-says-top-federal-rail-official\/"},"modified":"2023-12-13T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-13T13:00:00","slug":"colorado-is-well-positioned-for-big-dollars-says-top-federal-rail-official","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-is-well-positioned-for-big-dollars-says-top-federal-rail-official\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado is \u2018well positioned\u2019 for big dollars, says top federal rail official"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gov.
Gov. Jared Polis and Amit Bose, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, speak at the carriage house at the governor's mansion in Denver, Colorado on Monday, Dec. 11, 2023. (Nathaniel Minor\/CPR News)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Federal rail officials last week said they would give the Front Range Passenger Rail District, which is planning a Pueblo-to-Fort Collins rail line, a $500,000 planning grant. State officials said the announcement was a good sign that the federal government had faith in the project and might someday send many more dollars to Colorado from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.<\/p>\n

Amit Bose, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, confirmed that belief on Monday in Denver.<\/p>\n

\u201cColorado is well positioned to take advantage,\u201d Bose said.<\/p>\n

He appeared with Gov. Jared Polis and other state leaders at an hourlong discussion at the governor\u2019s mansion centered around his administration\u2019s passenger rail priorities that was attended by a coalition of supportive legislators, local leaders, advocacy groups, and representatives of other interests that have laid the groundwork for passenger rail in the last few years.<\/p>\n

The federal government has noticed that work, Bose said, including years of planning that led to the creation of a special district to fund and further plan the Front Range rail line. Polis is pushing that district to prepare for a 2024 ballot funding measure.<\/p>\n

The federal government also noticed the transit-oriented approach to housing the governor announced last week that Polis hopes will shape future expected growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s happening in Colorado is just such a good model,\u201d Bose said, adding: \u201cThe effort that\u2019s already been demonstrated here couldn\u2019t be stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n

The federal rail agency announced last week that it had accepted about 70 projects from around the country into its Corridor Identification Program, which officials say is meant to create a \u201cpipeline\u201d that helps carry projects from ideas through planning to becoming federally funded reality.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s Front Range rail project already has a leg-up in that program, Bose said, because of the years of planning that have already happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re special,\u201d Bose said of the Front Range rail project, which he added will skip a planning step in the federal rail authority\u2019s process.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then when you move into step two there\u2019s much more funding available,\u201d he continued, \u201cWe\u2019re talking millions of dollars to advance the project even more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bose said his visit to Denver had been planned before last week\u2019s announcement, but that he had scheduled it to emphasize \u201chow important Colorado is in the national picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just about the coasts,\u201d Bose said of the federal government\u2019s rail investments. \u201cIt\u2019s also about the mountain states. It\u2019s also about a place like Colorado. We don\u2019t just want long distance trains with their sparse stops here in Colorado, whether it\u2019s the [California] Zephyr or the Southwest Chief to be the only service that Colorado has. We want to make sure that the passenger rail goes to the places where Coloradans are and want to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado transportation officials, with Polis\u2019 support, are also beginning planning efforts for a new passenger train from Denver to Steamboat Springs and Craig. They hope that project will also land big federal dollars.<\/p>\n

They also said it\u2019s vital to keep planning work moving forward. Because while there are historic sums of money in the federal infrastructure bill, it is limited.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that we have a federal administration that\u2019s committed to helping us dream up and execute a project like this is not an opportunity that we can take for granted,\u201d said Colorado Department of Transportation Executive Director Shoshana Lew. \u201cI think it shows us what kind of a moment we have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gov. Jared Polis and Amit Bose, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, speak at the carriage house at the governor’s mansion in Denver, Colorado on Monday, Dec. 11, 2023. (Nathaniel Minor\/CPR News) Federal rail officials last week said they would give the Front Range Passenger Rail District, which is planning a Pueblo-to-Fort Collins rail line, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,28,2399],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-30221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-headlines","tag-railway"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30221"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=30221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}