The seemingly endless studying of what ails the Interstate 70 corridor between Denver and Colorado’s mountain resort communities has started feeling a bit like the snarled driving nightmare common on mid-winter Sunday afternoons. The process inches forward at a glacial rate as the traffic just keeps building.

But state and federal regulators seem buoyed by achieving at least one milestone on Thursday, as the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) signed a Record of Decision (ROD) for the Interstate 70 Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS).

Bureaucratically speaking, that means that after 20 years of studies the feds have finally signed off on the Colorado Department of Transportation’s (CDOT) planning framework for improving the often-gridlocked corridor between its intersection with C-470 in the Denver metro area and the mountain town of Glenwood Springs in Garfield County – a distance of about 160 miles.

“The dedication of many stakeholders working together has brought us to this point of having a Tier 1 Record of Decision,” FHWA’s Colorado Division Administrator John Cater said in praising the hard-fought deal. “We all need to continue working together in this same spirit as we implement future transportation improvements in the mountain corridor.”

The first draft of the PEIS that the feds just signed off on was issued in 2004, but the process was stalled when various stakeholders balked over the costs associated with major upgrades along the corridor, and the fact that – during the Republican Owens administration – the plan didn’t include any kind of rail alternative, and the overall concept of trying to pave the problem away by six-laning I-70 through small mountain towns and sensitive alpine environments.

That led to a reboot of the process in 2007, the formation of the I-70 Collaborative Effort (CE) – made up of 27 stakeholder groups along the corridor – and ultimately a preferred alternative that included at least the possibility of some sort of advanced guideway rail system.

“Implementing the CE process was crucial and a great example of what can be accomplished when everyone comes together to improve our transportation system,” CDOT Executive Director Don Hunt said in a release.

The nuts and bolts highway improvements are entirely contingent on very limited state and federal highway funding and still may be years, if not decades, away from becoming reality. But here they are, according to a CDOT release:

• Six lanes from Floyd Hill through the Twin Tunnels, including a bike trail and frontage roads from Idaho Springs east to Hidden Valley and Hidden Valley to U.S. 6
• Empire Junction (U.S. 40/I-70) improvements
• Eastbound auxiliary lane from the Eisenhower Johnson Memorial Tunnel (EJMT) to Herman Gulch
• Westbound auxiliary lane from Bakerville to the EJMT
• CDOT will begin studying an Advanced Guideway System (AGS) in the corridor this summer.

CDOT already funded a high-speed rail study to the tune of $1.5 million that concluded it will cost more than $21 billion for such a system along both the I-70 corridor and Interstate 25 on the Front Range. The study envisioned fares of up to $40 one way between Denver and Vail. That’s better than what van services currently charge for a similar trip, but still a fairly steep price.

It’s a lot cheaper to build high-speed rail along the relatively flat Front Range corridor where the vast majority of the state’s population lives, costing about $6 billion. Denver International Airport over the Eisenhower Tunnel to Summit County, where the majority of Coloradans and visitors ski every weekend, would cost about $9 billion. Extending it on over Vail Pass to the Eagle Country Regional Airport in Eagle County would likely cost another $7 billion.

The good news, if you’re a passenger rail fan, is the Obama administration is pushing very hard for high speed trains. The bad news is that push isn’t happening in Colorado, which doesn’t have the population density needed to justify such huge federal expenditures.

Some observers have argued the only way Colorado may see high-speed rail into the mountains is a 2022 Winter Olympic bid.

Meanwhile, the various user groups – from truckers to skiers — will no doubt continue to battle over what will fix the growing gridlock along the state’s key east-west corridor between the population centers of the Front Range and the mountain resort playgrounds where all those people love to recreate.

As the premier of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell gets a lot of credit for pulling off the successful 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver despite a global recession and challenging weather. As a state lawmaker and later Democratic governor of Colorado, Dick Lamm gets a lot of the blame for torpedoing the public financing for the 1976 Winter Olympics in Denver.

Gordon Campbell

Lamm and Campbell will participate in a public forum in Vail on Tuesday, which also will include Steve McConahey, former chairman of the Denver Metro Sports Commission — the organization leading the charge to bring the Olympics to Colorado. A former special assistant to late President Gerald Ford and program administrator for the Urban Mass Transit Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation, McConahey is now chairman of SGM Capital.

The Vail Symposium panel discussion entitled “Should Colorado bid for Olympic Games?” is scheduled for Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Sebastian at Vail hotel in Vail. It will be moderated by former Vail Resorts president and current Vail Town Council member Andy Daly.

The question of Colorado hosting the Winter Games has been put off for a few years given the fact that the USOC declined to put in a bid for 2018 because it was focused on the failed 2016 Summer Games bid in Chicago. Those Olympics were awarded to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, much to the delight of President Barack Obama bashers. The location of the 2018 Winter Olympics still hasn’t been determined, but Colorado is not in the running and wouldn’t be able to host until 2022 at the earliest.

There are questions of whether Denver, the only city to ever be awarded the Olympics and then turn them away, even has a shot with international organizers who may hold a grudge. But the bigger debate remains the same from Lamm’s days in public office: is the taxpayer expense worth the potential infrastructure hassles and environmental impacts?

Lamm, in a previous email interview with the Colorado Independent, clearly still thinks Denver-area voters made the right call in 1972.

“I come down on believing strongly that the voters did the right thing,” Lamm said. “The history of the Winter Olympics was a history of red ink, and I believe it would have left Colorado with a very large expense and a worse environment.”

Daly previously told the Colorado Independent he thought the Winter Olympics might be the only way Colorado every sees high-speed rail between the Front Range and the mountain resorts along the Interstate 70 corridor. Rail service between Vancouver and Whistler was actually discontinued a few years before the 2010 Games, although the connecting Sea to Sky highway was dramatically improved, and Vancouver itself saw significant rail upgrades.

Interstate 70 traffic into the mountains. (Photo courtesy of i70solutions.org)

Still, mountain towns like Vail and Avon – where preparations are already underway for the 2015 World Alpine Ski Championships — can dream. And politicians can continue to make fixing I-70 a campaign issue ahead of the November election and likely many future elections to come.

“We might host the Winter Olympics in Colorado, and if we did, certainly the I-70 corridor would be a part of the travel pattern … and those private companies that want to showcase what amazing work they can do to the world might want to use Colorado as a model,” said Jeanne Nicholson, a Democratic Gilpin County commissioner running for the state Senate District 16 seat currently held by Democrat Dan Gibbs.

Running for a seat held by Gibbs, who made transportation a signature issue, Nicholson says it will take a healthy mix of private and public funding to fix gridlock on I-70 for tourists and locals. Gibbs is leaving the state Senate and seeking a seat on the Summit County board of commissioners.

Nicholson’s Republican opponent in the Senate race, Evergreen commercial real estate developer Tim Leonard, told the Summit Daily News that the state’s ski industry should stand on its own two feet, offering “a better product at a lesser price” in order to compete with other states. Nicholson is in favor of increasing funding to market the Colorado skiing and tourism industries.

Leonard did not respond to emails and phone messages requesting comment for this story.

“Tourism is an industry in Colorado that provides a lot of jobs and doesn’t harm the environment in ways that other industries can. For example, what just happened in the Gulf of Mexico,” Nicholson said, referring to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. “You’re not likely to have a major long-term negative environmental impact with tourism, but you are going to be able to create jobs.”

She said a Denver and Colorado bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics could boost the state as a global tourism destination. Harry Dale, a Clear Creek County commissioner and president of the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority, which drafted a $1.5 million study for the Colorado Department of Transportation on high-speed rail along I-70 and I-25, says simple economics may force the issue sooner.

“A lot of people have said the only way you’re ever going to build a transit system in the I-70 corridor is to get an Olympics because that will create the motivation to do it,” Dale told the Colorado Independent in an earlier interview. “I think when we get to $10 a gallon for gas in the next five to 10 years that might do it too.”

In Vail, former ski company executive and current town council member Andy Daly has previously said fixing I-70 may take a bid similar to the Salt Lake City in 2002: “I look at how Salt Lake got their interstate highway system rebuilt in anticipation for the Salt Lake City Olympics, and I think having a new, state-of-the-art, world-class transit system to the mountains would be essential for a really successful bid for the … Winter Olympics.”

The United States Olympic Committee opted not to bid for the 2018 Winter Games, instead focusing on the failed 2016 Chicago Summer Games that went to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The next opportunity for Colorado, which once was awarded but later rejected the 1976 Winter Olympics, would be 2022.

Vail and Beaver Creek will be well-positioned for such a bid, at least from an alpine skiing facilities and organizational standpoint. Already the hosts of two world championships (in 1989 and 1999), Vail this year was awarded the 2015 championships — second only to the Olympics in ski racing prestige – and has already started the planning process.

According to the story, CDOT “says the ski jams are something of a myth and that the highway is actually more congested in summer.” July and August are the busiest months, with nearly 40,000 vehicles a day passing through the Eisenhower Tunnel both months. March, January and February are the next busiest months.

So the point is, Front Range day skiers need to quit whining about winter weekend traffic jams on I-70. But the thing about summer is it doesn’t typically include a foot of snow, howling winds and long-haul truckers from Texas with no tire chains going sideways on Vail Pass.

Those are the conditions at 10,000-plus feet of elevation that can turn a two-hour scenic drive through the mountains into a grueling six-hour odyssey. Still, is it bad enough to warrant a $22 billion high-speed rail system crisscrossing the state, as some train backers propose?

Probably not in any of our lifetimes … unless Denver lands the 2022 Winter Olympics, which some observers say may be the only way the state ever gets high-speed mountain rail.

Of course, it would be hard to really call it “intercity” at that point, but such a rail line could serve to showcase the passenger-rail possibilities and build taxpayer support for true high-speed rail between the state’s major cities in the future.

A Beaver Creek resident and former IBM executive is seeking more than $1 million in seed money to go after state and federal grants in order to lease the dormant Union Pacific rail lines in Eagle County. Vince Cook’s “Greenport” project is a $650 million concept to connect seven green-built workforce housing villages between Dotsero, Minturn and possibly Leadville.

Such a rail line would mostly run along I-70 from basically the east end of Glenwood Canyon through the Eagle County Regional Airport – one of the busiest on the Western Slope – past the ski resorts of Beaver Creek and Vail to the former mining and railroad towns that have morphed into bedroom communities for workers at the high-end resorts.

There’s a disconnect in mountain towns between workforce housing people can afford and the price of real estate in the resort destinations where most of the jobs are. Workers have been forced farther and farther out, putting pressure on local roads and public transportation.

“My approach was (rail) would make it more complex but more powerful,” Cook told the Vail Daily, adding that he feels uniquely qualified to work with railroad and government officials because of his business background. “I think I know what pew of the church I need to sit in for this.”

Harry Dale of the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority, an intergovernmental group that last month completed a $1.5 million high-speed rail feasibility study for I-70 and I-25, said using existing freight rail lines is highly problematic because of the configuration of tracks, liability issues and federal rules governing the types of passenger trains that can share freight rail tracks.

Still, he’s heard talk of an Eagle County rail line, where he says light-weight, composite European passenger trains could run on tracks modified to 110 mph capacity, which means they would actually then be able to reach speeds of up to 60 mph. Such a system could then conceivably connect to other resort communities with similar housing and transportation issues.

“If you could make Eagle County Airport your hub, then you could do some 110 diesel, and in fact in our study we do look at extensions to Steamboat, extensions to Aspen and extensions to Glenwood Springs – just improving those tracks and running those high-tech diesel trains,” Dale said.

Such a transit system would be an obvious tourism draw, but the emphasis of the Greenport project is transporting and housing resort workers. Other rail proponents see a 2022 Colorado Winter Olympic bid as the best way to build either a mountain rail system or dedicated high-speed rail line along I-70 between Denver and the resorts.

Dale said the most popular and lucrative section of high-speed rail identified in the RMRA’s study is a $9 billion stretch between Denver International Airport and Summit County, home to four ski areas east of Eagle County that are highly popular with Front Range day skiers.

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In a column in the Summit Daily News, Frisco town manager Michael Penny predicts years and years of additional study but no real action on highway improvements for six more years and no high-speed rail solution until 2020 at the earliest.

Penny is chairman of the I-70 Coalition, a group of public and private-sector stakeholders along the I-70 corridor, which is the main east-west route connecting the state’s population centers on the Front Range with the outdoor recreation playgrounds on the Western Slope.

Penny says many of the I-70 Coalition members are also involved with the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority, which is close to finalizing a high-speed rail feasibility study for an east-west route between Denver International Airport and the Eagle County Airport (estimated $15 billion price tag) and a north-south route between Fort Collins and Pueblo (estimated $5 billion price tag).

But he adds that highway improvement are more likely to get funded first, although nothing is likely to happen in the State Legislature in 2010 because it’s an election year. A big part of the coalition’s focus so far in 2009 was getting the FASTER bill passed (increased vehicle registration fees) to create a permanent funding source for basic highway maintenance and critical bridge repairs.

All in all, though, it’s not a very encouraging report for frequent users of the state’s main mountain artery looking for more meaningful traffic solutions.

Denver's historic Union Station. (Photo/Bettinche, Flickr)

During Tuesday’s visit to Denver with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden said the federal stimulus bill will be a big boost to mass transit in the United States, with funding impacts for commuter rail projects from Colorado to Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.

“We should have the best transportation system in the world, and we don’t,” said Biden.

But many mass transit advocates are disappointed with the funding disparity between the money pegged for bridge and road repairs ($29 billion) and the funds for passenger rail and other mass-transit improvements ($17.7 billion). To break it down, that means $8.4 billion for transit, $8 billion for high-speed rail and $1.3 billion for Amtrak.

Colorado’s Front Range and the Denver metro area were used as shining examples of the “New Energy Economy” during Tuesday’s event. But the stimulus legislation’s funding realities mean that only $103.5 million will be coming to state’s way for transit projects.

How the money is spent remains to be seen, but it’s clearly not enough to meet the needs of the Regional Transportation District’s FasTracks light and commuter rail network, funded by a sales tax increase in 2004. The network is now $2.1 billion short of the $7.9 billion needed to build the system promised to voters.

RTD is weighing taking another sales tax hike to the voters, and metro area mayors – feeling shortchanged by service reductions – are looking for assurances RTD will deliver this time if it gets another sales tax bump. Some political analysts, though, citing the same economic collapse that’s hitting RTD and transit systems nationwide, say this is the worst possible time to ask voters for more money.

Of the $103.5 million in transit stimulus funds coming to Colorado — with 90 percent of it dedicated to the Front Range and the Denver metro area — it’s clear a huge chunk of it will go to the RTD, which submitted a $274 million list of “shovel-ready’ projects, according to RTD FasTracks spokeswoman Pauletta Tonilas. What’s unclear is how the stimulus money will be divvied up.

“The short story really about the stimulus funds is that it’s just really too early for us to tell what we’ll get, how much money we’ll get and what can be applied specifically to FasTracks and Denver Union Station,” Tonilas said, referring to the renovation of Denver’s historic downtown rail station, which is being touted as the central hub of the FasTracks network.

One of the most expensive aspects of Union Station’s redevelopment, which includes condos, restaurants and retail, is the FasTrack plan to build an intermodal bus station beneath the complex.

“We submitted a request specifically for Denver Union Station to DRCOG (the Denver Regional Council of Governments) for $18.6 million that would be part of the [stimulus] funds that get dispersed to DRCOG,” Tonilas said.

Overall, though, the governor’s blue-ribbon panel on transportation has recommended the state increase its transportation funding for all projects, including roads, bridges and mass transit, by $1.5 billion a year.

State lawmakers are currently wrangling over increasing vehicle registration fees, a move that could provide about $250 million a year in emergency road and bridge fixes, but a statewide vote on tax increases to create a permanent funding source looms on the horizon.

Though it is unlikely in the current economic climate, most state lawmakers say such a tax increase is inevitable given declining gas taxes to fund road projects.

“Unlike the federal government that prints money, all of this stuff costs money, too, so eventually Colorado voters will be asked to say, ‘Hey, would you be willing to support this or that for Colorado?’” said State Sen. Dan Gibbs, D-Silverthorne, sponsor of the FASTER vehicle registration bill currently in the House.

Although he’s particularly troubled by periodic gridlock on Interstate 70 between Denver and the Western Slope, Gibbs said any discussion of expanding passenger rail beyond the Denver metro area needs to include the Front Range.

“We need to have a statewide perspective, because if it’s just on I-70, folks in Denver or Colorado Springs will say, ‘Hey, what do I get out of this?’” Gibbs said.

“We’re doing what we can do at the state level with FASTER, and I would say this is just a small step in the right direction as far as what our real needs are, but then all of you will have the opportunity to vote on the future of transportation and transit in Colorado.”

Stimulus dollars will have virtually no impact on a long-term fix for I-70 aside from some repaving and bridge repairs, said Flo Raitano, executive director of the intergovernmental I-70 Coalition, because final long-term plans are years away from being realized. However, Raitano said rail along I-70 needs local transit to supplement it, and some of those agencies could see stimulus dollars for new buses and other infrastructure.

“[Stimulus] will help ultimately the transportation solution for the corridor because we’re looking at the stimulus having some benefit for our local transportation authorities,” Raitano said, but which local transit agencies will see funding remains a question mark.

The Rocky Mountain Rail Authority, another intergovernmental organization, is currently conducting a $1.5 million high-speed rail study for both the I-70 and I-25 corridors. Funding for that study, slated to be completed in June, came from the Colorado Department of Transportation and local governments along both corridors.

Harry Dale, a Clear Creek County commissioner and executive director of the rail authority, said many of the questions about capital costs, potential routes, ridership and funding will be addressed at a Feb. 27 steering committee meeting in Golden.

“It will answer some of the questions that are coming up with regards to sharing rights of way with freight railroads and highway improvements that we assume will happen within the study period and what that means in terms of what kind of travel demand will be met or will be left unmet that we can accommodate,” Dale said.

The rail study envisions high-speed trains along the I-25 corridor from the southern border with New Mexico to the northern border with Wyoming, as well as along I-70 from the eastern border with Kansas to the western border with Utah. Its price tag would be in the billions.

“You talk about it being statewide, and what’s nice is the RMRA is an I-25 and I-70 corridor solution,” said Vail Town Councilman Mark Gordon, who sits on the authority. “It will go from state border to state border on all four sides.”

Drivers tired of a two-hour trips between most major mountain resorts and the Denver metro area turning into six-hour odysseys due to frequent semi-tractor trailer jackknifes and ensuring pass closures (Vail Pass shut down more than 20 times this winter), may find themselves boarding the Obama Express.

According to Time’s “The Page – Politics up to the Minute” blog by Mark Halperin, Barack and Michelle Obama, campaigning ahead of the Indiana primary on Tuesday, visited the suburban Indianapolis home of Mike and Cheryl Fischer in Beech Grove on Friday. Mike Fischer, an Amtrak machinist, is facing a lay-off or possible move to another city to keep his job.

The blog reported Obama enthusiastically launched into the following endorsement of high-speed rail.

“The irony is with the gas prices what they are, we should be expanding rail service. One of the things I have been talking about for awhile is high-speed rail connecting all of these Midwest cities – Indianapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis,” Obama said. “They are not that far away from each other. Because of how big of a hassle airlines are now. There are a lot of people if they had the choice, it takes you just about as much time if you had high-speed rail to go the airport, park, take your shoes off.”

The Page reported Obama kept talking up Amtrak:

“This is something that we should be talking about a lot more,” Obama said. “We are going to be having a lot of conversations this summer about gas prices. And it is a perfect time to start talking about why we don’t’ have better rail service. We are the only advanced country in the world that doesn’t have high-speed rail. We just don’t’ have it. And it works on the Northeast corridor. They would rather go from New York to Washington by train than they would by plane. It is a lot more reliable and it is a good way for us to start reducing how much gas we are using. It is a good story to tell.”

Check out the whole blog at Time’s The Page.

Also on the topic of trains, Roberto Moreno, who heads up Denver-based Alpino, an organization dedicated to promoting diversity in snow sports and increasing minority participation, posted this comment on my story on a possible transit solution for the I-70 corridor, which ran on Colorado Confidential and later on realvail.com. His comment on the lack of statewide political will for such a mass transit system was posted at Real Vail.com.

“When Clear Creek County Commissioner Harry Dale argues that ski companies such as Vail Resorts and Intrawest need to be a big part of the rail solution since they have in part contributed to I-70 congestion in the past decade through the sale of discounted season passes in the Front Range market, he is echoing constituent concerns from a growing `forest ambivalent’ electorate which is unwilling to spend the billions of dollars necessary to create a comprehensive mountain corridor solution; one that would include light rail,” Moreno wrote, referring readers to a recent guest column he wrote for the Denver Post

Not sure if Barack is a skier or “forest ambivalent,” but he might like the idea of speeding through Colorado’s mountains on a high-speed Amtrak train.