Officials are once again playing dress-up with Colorado’s never-ending rail charade—this time pledging commuter rail service to Longmont by 2029. This was reported by BizWest and features the usual suspects: RTD and the Front Range Passenger Rail Authority making empty promises with confident faces.
The Bullet Point Brief
- RTD just slapped a new bow on its old lie—the FastTracks “promise” is now magically being fulfilled through someone else’s project.
- Target date is now 2029… because nothing says urgency like completing a taxpayer-funded fantasy two decades after collecting the checks.
- RTD and the Passenger Rail bunch are now besties. Yay! More bureaucratic orgies where no one takes responsibility.
- No mention of sustainable funding models or actual ridership demand—just vibes and vague optimism from people who’ve clearly never balanced a checkbook.
- Once again, government treats density like a suggestion and fiscal math like fiction.
My Bottom Line
Let me translate this government bedtime story for you: RTD swindled voters back in 2004 with their overpriced FastTracks plan and now they’re desperately trying to pass it off as “in progress” using someone else’s train set. They’re hoping we forget the past two decades of broken promises if they show us shiny renderings and throw out the word “partnership” enough times. I’ve seen more realistic timelines on bar napkins—at least those aren’t funded by taxes.
The truth? We don’t have the population density for rail that pencils out without bleeding taxpayers dry every year. This isn’t Manhattan—it’s Colorado. That matters when you try to stuff blue-state pipe dreams into red dirt reality. Commuter rail has always been more of a feel-good sticker than functional infrastructure here. You want better roads? How about fixing those before blowing billions laying useless track to nowhere?
But hey, if rail makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside while siphoning cash out of working folks’ wallets… congrats. Just don’t be surprised when it opens four years late (if ever), costs twice as much, and nobody rides it except politicians giving themselves tours.
