If so, there are open houses to inform people about the rail study that CDOT is conducting about possibilities for rail along the Front Range and to connect mountain rail to the Denver metro area. Each open house starts at 4 pm and ends at 7 pm with a thirty minute presentation that is shown twice, once at 4:30 and once at 6 pm.
Monday, July 16
Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments
15 S. Seventh Street, Colorado Springs
Bus: None (Maybe walkable from the 4 for the first presentation.)
Tuesday, July 17
Pueblo Convention Center
310 Main Street
Bus: #1 Eastside (Walkable from several other buses that go downtown.)
Wednesday, July 18
Windsor Recreation Center
250 North 11th Street
(Windsor is half way between Fort Collins and Greeley.)
Bus: I doubt it.
Thursday, July 19
Regional CDOT Office in Golden
425 Corporate Circle
Bus: 17 for the first presentation
As always, bring your bullshit detector, and mention that conventional rail does pretty well.
3 comments:
I just got back from the Windsor meeting. It appears as though there is a real consensus for using the existing rail alignments, and a few people questioned the need for such extravagant High-Speed Rail for the population and distance of our region.
I mentioned to the CDOT staff the two key elements of Swiss Rail planning, those being planning for a timetable in 2020 and Organization before Electronics before Concrete. Any improvement to the Swiss rail network is planned around how it will affect the timetable in 2020. The Swiss also use the mantra "Organization before Electronics before Concrete", meaning, get your agencies to work together first, then improve the network with simple and cheap tools such as better signalling or faster switches, and if you still have a capacity problem, then pour concrete.
Overall, I get the feeling that they are doing the study just to do a study, and nothing of much subsistence will come out of it. Unless it has the words "Environmental Impact Statement" on it, then noting much could be done.
Thanks for posting, and thanks for letting me know how other people commented.
Worse than this rail study being a waste of time, it may be an effort to make rail look too expensive.
Can you also share your experience with the ColoRail Yahoo group? Thanks.
Of special note are the two ridiculously sharp 90 degree curves the consultant drew the railroad alignment with, when there was plenty of space to use larger radii. Such blatant rigging of the study to favor a preferred alignment ultimately ends up hurting the public's trust in CDOT.
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