Governors want federal cash for high speed rail study

It looks like some sense is prevailing in Colorado state government for a change. Our state's governor Bill Owens has teamed up with New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Texas Gov. Rick Perry two long time rail boosters to ask the Federal Railroad Administration to designate the I-25 Corridor between El Paso and Denver a high speed rail corridor.
This action doesn't mean that high speed rail is coming to Colorado it simply means that the three states would be eligable for $5 million to study the possibility of fast passenger trains operating along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.
The governors' proposal makes a lot of sense, a lot more sense than earlier high speed rail proposals for the corridor which wanted high speed rail running from Cheyenne to Albquerque. El Paso is a substansial metropolitan area and a gateway to Mexico. The I-25 Corridor north from El Paso to Denver is a straight shot that econmpasses the cities of El Paso, Alamagordo, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Raton, NM, Trinidad, CO, Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Denver. These cities are all fairly close together and there's a lot of existing railroad track on this route. More importantly the land along the route is fairly flat so the building would be fairly easy except on the Raton Pass the Monument Hill area south of Denver. To make matters easier there's already a commuter rail line the RoadRunner linking Albqueque and Santa Fe and the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority has already done a lot of the preliminary studies for commuter rail between Denver and Pueblo. The Regional Transportation District in Denver is planning to build a commuter rail line to Boulder and Longmont so those cities could easily be linked to the Denver to El Paso line. So this is a realistic rail plan that's quite doable if the money is there.
Such a commuter system would be a real boon to Colorado because it would make jobs in Denver and Colorado Springs more accesible to residents of economically depressed Pueblo and Trinidad and affordable housing in Pueblo accessible to poorer residents of the Denver area.
One suggestion here this system should be expanded north to Boulder, Longmont, Loveland, Fort Collins, Wellington and Cheyenne, Wyoming. That would create a true front range rail system that hundreds of people would ride. It would also bring a fourth state into the plan and make it more likely for the plan to get the federal funds it would need.