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If I had any spare money, I would call Gov. Roy Romer and inquire as to which bridge he had in mind a couple of years ago. The Union Pacific Railroad was about to swallow the Southern Pacific, which had earlier merged with the Denver & Rio Grande Western.
In the process, the UP planned to abandon the line over Tennessee Pass, the highest through rail route in the United States, and one of only seven mainline rail crossings of the Continental Divide. Although the route was then carrying 20 trains a day, UP said its traffic could be moved to other routes in its 34,000-mile system.
There were skeptics who predicted that rail traffic might get snarled as a result and argued that it was foolish for the governor of a state with crowded and crumbling highways to agree to the abandonment of a viable railroad.
Romer then remarked that if you believed that Tennessee
Pass had any future as a rail route, then I've got a
bridge I want to sell you.
Last week, UP sent a letter to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board and withdrew its request to abandon Tennessee Pass, where the last train ran a year ago. UP doesn't have immediate plans to resume through trains, since the rails and ties need work to handle heavy traffic.
But with growing volume and a shortage of capacity, Tennessee Pass -- even though it's high and steep and an expensive route to maintain and operate -- looks like a keeper, and service may well resume in the next year or two.
Thus my interest in finding out which bridge Romer
wanted to sell me -- Bill Clinton's bridge to the
future,
perhaps?
But it's more likely that he was starting one of those
public-private partnerships,
giving us a chance to
contribute to a fund to build new bridges on Interstate 70,
being as there isn't enough money in the state treasury to
give Vail everything it wants.
Or so I gather from the controversy revolving around a
$2.1 million study conducted by the Colorado Department of
Trucks (be advised that some say that the T
in CDOT
stands for Transportation).
The people who live along the corridor in Clear Creek County point out that the interstate already fills narrow canyons and chops up their communities while straining their ambulance crews, fire-fighters and other emergency-response capacity.
Adding more lanes, they say, will just add to their problems and expenses, while providing little if any benefit. Motorists whiz through Silver Plume, Georgetown and Idaho Springs, on their way to and from hedonism along the slopes and shopping sprees at outlet malls. But they don't stop and spend money in Clear Creek County, even though they expect the emergency services to respond if necessary.
Thus corridor residents have spoken in favor of some form of rail line if Colorado insists on jamming more traffic into the I-70 corridor.
Not that anybody has any idea of how to build such a rail line -- the technology for 8-percent grades and heavy snow hasn't been developed -- and previous rail efforts stalled more than a century ago when the Georgetown Loop line couldn't climb past Silver Plume.
So Colorado Ski Country USA, the resort trade association, says we need more lanes on I-70 right away to whisk pleasure-seekers from DIA to Vail.
Sometimes I delight in comparing the ski industry to the mining industry, but in this case, there's no fair comparison. About 20 years ago, Climax Molybdenum needed more room for its tailing ponds, which meant rerouting Colo. 91 on the west side of Frémont Pass. Climax built a new highway and paid for it.
Vail, however, wants us to pay for a bigger highway, and it could be a hard sell.
After all, Vail Resorts can hardly use the Pat Bowlen approach -- unless you subsidize me, I'll sell out to somebody who'll move the operation. Snow-making technology has improved, and we're good at making mountains out of molehills in this country, but still, ski resorts are captives of geography.
Nor can Vail employ the Gateway method of offering a bunch of $55,000 a year jobs. There are doubtless a few such positions in the ski industry, but mostly it's low-paid dead-end seasonal work that puts a major burden on the social services budget of the county that the workers live in. This won't be near Vail, since the presence of working people would detract from the glamor.
So it's my guess that Roy Romer really does have some bridges for sale -- along with culverts, guard rails, tunnels and all the rest that will be needed to expand I-70. We'll get to buy them, and Vail will get the profits. Did you expect anything less from our far-sighted governor?
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