State Senate passes Southwest Chief Commission’s bill
The commission charged with rescuing Amtrak’s troubled Southwest Chief route through southeast Colorado won a victory Thursday as lawmakers in the state Senate passed a bill to extend its life and expand its mission to explore passenger rail service along the Front Range.
The legislation, officials say, passed on a vote of 2411. The bill — Senate Bill 153 — was first introduced on Jan. 31 and will be heard next by the Democrat-controlled House.
The legislation seeks to elongate the Southwest Chief Commission’s authority beyond its July 1 expiration date and allow it to work on developing passenger rail from Fort Collins to Trinidad.
The commission was created several years ago at the height of worries that millions of dollars in critical track repairs would shut down the Southwest Chief.
With the Amtrak route now on solid footing, an expanded mission for the commission makes sense, said Sal Pace, a Pueblo County commissioner and chairman of the Southwest Chief Commission.
Under the proposed expansion, the reconstituted Southwest Chief and Front Range Passenger Rail Commission would be made up of stakeholders from along the Front Range. It would be charged with presenting the legislature with a plan for border-to-border service by the end of 2017, backers say.
The bill doesn’t seek additional money but forges a way to best work with the state on how to move forward, Pace said. Statutory authority, he said, gives the commission more power.
The Southwest Chief’s cause has, at times, been a tough sell to lawmakers. In 2015, the Republican-led state Senate initially blocked $1.5 million for the line with now Senate President Kevin Grantham, R-Cañon City, suggesting it would take more and more spending to keep it operating.
The Southwest Chief route was in a precarious place until late in 2015, when funds were secured to repair the Burlington Northern Santa Fe track the Amtrak train travels. Officials were plotting to reroute the beloved Chicagoto-Los Angeles train through Oklahoma and Texas and away from small towns in Colorado, New Mexico and Kansas.
The Colorado communities at risk of losing their stops — including Lamar, La Junta and Trinidad — banded together with their counterparts in Kansas and New Mexico to raise the money to save the route.
The Southwest Chief Commission has since been working to add a stop for the line in Pueblo. Amtrak has said it is open to the idea, but cost remains the question.
Pueblo’s community leaders, led by Pace, have been pushing hard for a link to the historic line. The southern Colorado city has dreams of train travel bringing a renaissance similar to the revival of Denver’s Union Station to its downtown rail hub and a potential economic impact in the millions.