2/5/24

Trinidad stalls; Front Range passenger rail still years away

Who has the power to perform an experiment: make a deal with the Santa Fe Southern Railroad to Lamy, put a locomotive on each end of three or four coaches and put the Rail Runner into Trinidad, Colorado from New Mexico’s capital city?

In 2015 Peaceful Herbs on the historic Santa Fe Trail in Trinidad was our first stop in Colorado of a 3,744 road trip and Blue Widow was my first legal purchase of cannabis since that state boldly went where few had gone before.

In 2020 Game of Thrones author George RR Martin and two other New Mexico celebrities purchased the Santa Fe Southern and the depot in Lamy. Martin is a major contributor to Meow Wolf's House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe and to Omega Mart in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2021, Meow Wolf Denver opened Convergence Station in a 90,000-square-foot building at 1338 First St. 

When Democratic New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson found the money to build the Rail Runner it was intended to serve communities from El Paso to Denver but that has yet to materialize. Rail enthusiasts have been shoving the NM Legislature to equip it to operate as designed even as Colorado sorts out ways to add service between Trinidad and Denver but the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway, who owns the track, has been, to put it mildly, less than helpful. At over 8000 feet Raton Pass is a major obstacle that even Amtrak struggles to overcome.
As legal weed down the road in New Mexico dismantles the city’s once-booming marijuana industry, Trinidad residents are still waiting for the promises connected to a decade of unprecedented investment led by cannabis taxes and politicians eager to make Trinidad a model for how rural Colorado communities can join a statewide economic evolution. Kayvan Khalatbari, the founder of Denver juggernaut Sexy Pizza, in 2021 bought the historic Trinidad train depot and opened a new pizzeria. A brewery he leased space to in the building closed last summer. Last month he closed Sexy Pizza in Trinidad and left town, moving 25 miles south to Raton, New Mexico. He had a plan to build 12 units for his employees in Trinidad but did not qualify for state funding. Khalatbari estimates he spent $3.5 million to $4 million of his own money in Trinidad and he received one $10,000 grant. [More than $150M has been invested in Trinidad. Has it worked?]
Signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022 as part of the federal appropriations bill funding is available for an existing portion of US 87 to become a newly constructed I-327 connecting I-27 at Dumas, Texas with I-25 at Raton, New Mexico. According to the Ports-to-Plains Alliance I-27 would someday connect with the Heartland Expressway at Limon, Colorado at the intersection of I-70 and State Highway 71 then cross I-76 at Brush and I-80 at Kimball, Nebraska. There is already a four lane from Kimball to Scottsbluff so the proposal is to go east from there to US 385 then north through Alliance. The system would ultimately connect to the Theodore Roosevelt Expressway at Rapid City and reach the Canadian border at Raymond, Montana.

Trinidad boasts an astounding inventory of historic properties many of which are at risk to deferred maintenance but smart investments could expedite track improvements that would help showcase such an overlooked trove.
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1 comment:

  1. larry kurtzMarch 9, 2024 at 4:42 AM

    "Early estimates have put the project’s cost at between $1.7 and $2.8 billion for service from Fort Collins to Pueblo. There are further plans to extend the route to Cheyenne, Wyoming in the north and Trinidad in the south." KUNC

    ReplyDelete

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