The preliminary Airports Council International rankings also place DIA as the third-busiest in North America for the fourth year, based on DIA’s record passenger traffic last year.

Capacity growth by the largest airlines and increased flight frequencies, combined with new carriers adding service, maintained DIA’s position. Aer Lingus launched flights to Dublin, Ireland, and Turkish Airlines launched flights to Istanbul, Turkey. DIA chief executive Phil Washington cited “continued, thoughtful growth” toward a target of handling 100 million passengers within the next couple of years by expanding global reach.

DIA’s record-breaking 82.3 million passengers traveling through the airport in 2024 represented a 5.8% increase compared with 2023. International passenger traffic at DIA is increasing faster – up 15% above the 2023 level to more than 4.6 million. That’s 46% more than the pre-pandemic international passenger traffic in 2019.

Worldwide, DIA’s passenger traffic placed behind the numbers in Atlanta (108 million), Dubai (92.3 million), Dallas/Fort Worth (87.8 million), Tokyo (85.9 million), and London (83.8 million).

The ACI airport rankings are based on data from 2,700 airports worldwide. DIA had the fourth most aircraft takeoffs and landings among the world’s airports last year, exceeded only by the aircraft movements at Atlanta, Chicago/O’Hare, and Dallas-Ft. Worth.

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But when RTD’s trains slowed to 10 mph last summer, his commutes took as long as two hours.

Hunter, a Wi-Fi engineer, reverted to driving through traffic — fixating on rear bumpers from inside his burgundy Highlander or blue Subaru on Interstate 25, navigating shortcuts during jams, paying for gas, sacrificing the free transit pass his employer provided and missing the “peace of mind” he had on light rail.

“It’s disappointing,” Hunter, 60, said last week. “You lose your faith and hope of taking public transit. They have all this infrastructure in place. It is just not reliable.”

RTD officials plan to eliminate the slow zones, which they imposed for safety during a catch-up track maintenance blitz, before June 1. Light rail trains would resume normal speeds around 55 mph, ending an 11-month ordeal that has shaken public confidence in a taxpayer-financed rail transit system built to ensure mobility as traffic clogs metro Denver roadways.

And RTD leaders are counting on winning back Hunter and thousands of other lost riders.

Last year, what had begun as isolated instances of track corrosion and “rail burn” defects ballooned into a major engineering burden after RTD managers, under Colorado Public Utilities Commission scrutiny, adopted a stricter, industry-standard track inspection program. Starting in May, inspectors found more and more problems that, if left unchecked, could lead to crashes.

Light rail supervisors at first estimated that slow zones would end by September. Then they aimed for February. Trains have rolled at reduced speeds, in some areas, through this spring.

RTD maintenance crews have repaired 51 miles of tracks as of this month — about 42% of the agency’s 119-mile rail system, according to records obtained by The Denver Post through a Colorado Open Records Act request. They’ve replaced nearly two miles of track. That’s more maintenance work within a year than transit crews had done in the previous two decades.

Meanwhile, light rail ridership plummeted.

The 1.1 million monthly boardings reported for January 2024 decreased by 30% to 771,000 in January this year, agency records show. On the hard-hit E-Line that runs between central Denver and the southeast suburbs, ridership decreased by 50%.

Slow zones added to separate disruptions from downtown rail reconstruction work and other projects. RTD didn’t adjust published schedules to incorporate slow zone delays, bewildering riders, and bus shuttles between stations typically weren’t possible, managers said, due to driver shortages.

Smoothing tracks

RTD crews have made “great progress” in shoring up the system, agency officials announced last week.

The catch-up maintenance relied on a track-grinding machine that smooths away rail burn and corrosion. RTD inspectors have analyzed more than 6,000 track segments since May, records show, and agency officials say inspectors check all tracks twice a week.

However, the widespread rail burn — linked by RTD to wheels slipping on aging steel tracks — hasn’t been fully explained.

RTD general manager and chief executive Debra Johnson wasn’t made available for an interview. Dave Jensen, the assistant general manager for rail operations, was also unavailable. In an emailed statement, Johnson said proper maintenance will ensure good transit service in the future.

“Anytime there is a disruption to services, even temporary, the number of boardings can be impacted,” she said.

RTD officials didn’t rule out imposing slow zones again.

“Aging rail infrastructure necessitates ongoing maintenance, repairs, and upgrades. RTD’s rail network is continually aging and will require ongoing repairs in the future. All transit agencies undertake similar maintenance work, so this effort and speed restrictions are common,” RTD spokeswoman Marta Sipeki said in an email. “As RTD is able to fully resume light rail services without disruptions, the agency anticipates a return of customers.”

“My commute became more difficult”

In the last year, the slow zones brought havoc for transit-dependent workers around metro Denver. Some riders say they’re leery of trusting public transit, especially after RTD’s failure to update its schedules to incorporate slow zones.

If light rail trains resume normal speeds, life will improve, said Adriano Bamba, a Metropolitan State University of Denver student who works in a downtown FedEx store. The unexpected RTD delays made him late, he said, forcing discussions with supervisors about pay for lost time.

He’s optimistic, noticing fewer slow zones along the R-Line he rides from Aurora into Denver, he said. Yet illegal drug use on trains also deters riders.

“Someone will start smoking,” he said. “You could start yelling at them. Or you can change train cars.”

For Thomas Charles, 22, relying on RTD trains to get to work has meant waking up early to allow for a possible two-hour trip from his home in the south suburbs to an Amazon facility in Thornton. He leaves Lincoln Station at 7:30 a.m. and seldom gets home before 10:30 p.m. “You lose sleep and energy,” he said while waiting for a train last week.

Slow zones, combined with unannounced delays and train cancellations, made him late so often over the past four months that supervisors have warned him he could lose his job if he doesn’t line up reliable transportation. Taking an Uber costs $35.

“They’ve told me that multiple times. It does not feel good,” Charles said. “I am saving up for a car.”

University of Colorado Denver student Tim Reinicke, who lives in Parker, already had shifted to driving for part of his commutes. RTD buses between Parker and the Lincoln Station run only once an hour and aren’t synced with trains, Reinicke said.

Slow zones felt like “salt in the wounds,” he said. “My commute became more difficult.”

As he spoke, he was waiting for a train to get to his linguistics class at CU’s downtown campus. He learned that rail service had been suspended through noon after a car that went off a highway overpass crashed onto the tracks below, leading to a fatal collision with an RTD train.

“I don’t know how I’m going to get there,” Reinicke said, checking his smartphone.

“I want to try to avoid driving,” he said. “I don’t like driving. I don’t want to pay for parking. It costs $7.” Not to mention gas costs — “a big motivation” for riding light rail, he said.

But driving is more reliable. “When I have to drive, that is me — actively — not trusting RTD,” Reinicke said.

Willing to give light rail another try

The Greater Denver Transit advocacy group has questioned RTD’s track inspections and lambasted RTD’s schedules as “unworkable,” rendering light rail “virtually unusable for riders” after the sudden imposition of slow zones last June.

GDT co-founder Richard Bamber, a civil engineer who worked on the construction of RTD’s light rail system, said rail burn “is not age-related” and that solutions require analysis of the interplay of steel wheels on tracks and how operators drive trains.

“We’re almost a year into this, and if there might be more slow zones imposed, it tells me RTD still hasn’t completed enough inspections,” said GDT analyst Joe Meyer, an aerospace engineer. He concluded RTD light rail “is no longer a reliable option” for consistent commutes between his home in Five Points and his office in the Denver Tech Center.

Meyer shifted to buses or drove to his office to be on time for meetings. Last week, when he was frustrated to be “watching traffic, figuring out when to leave,” Meyer decided to try light rail again — only to find service suspended after the train-car collision.

He tried again Wednesday, boarding at Stout Street and taking a seat in the front car with three other riders.

South of the Colorado Station, the train slowed to a crawl. “We may be doing 15 mph,” Meyer said, looking out the window at I-25. “It’s frustrating to see every single car on the highway flying by. My time is valuable.”

But even with the slow zone, he arrived in about 50 minutes. “The upside of a working system is so advantageous that I’m willing to keep trying,” he said.

Similarly, in Lakewood — where commuting in traffic has become such a brain-addling experience for Hunter over the past six months — if RTD can end the slow zones by June 1, he says he will try light rail again.

“I cannot wait.”

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But state regulatory documents show the derailment occurred after a steel wheel broke apart and that, after the train operator radioed supervisors, the crippled train kept rolling through RTD’s Yale Station before stopping near Hampden Avenue where tracks dip ahead of an overpass.

Train wheel failures can be deadly, as seen in 1998 near Hanover, Germany, where a crack in steel caused a high-speed train to derail and crash into an overpass, which collapsed, killing 101 people.

The RTD investigation of its Jan. 24, 2024, derailment and a subsequent Colorado Public Utilities Commission corrective action plan have not been made public. Neither have the investigations of other light rail derailments, including two in Aurora in 2019 and 2022 along the same curving stretch of track where multiple passengers were injured and a woman’s leg was severed.

RTD’s total 97 bus and train crashes in 2024 included a record seven train derailments, more than during the previous two years combined, according to RTD records obtained by The Denver Post under a Colorado Open Records Act legal petition. Over the past six years, an annual average of 113 RTD trains and buses crashed, a rate of one every 3.2 days.

The public should be better informed about the cause of derailments under a new law  — signed last month by Gov. Jared Polis — requiring the PUC to make RTD light rail accident investigations public if it would protect safety and health. PUC officials are tasked with implementing the law.

Meanwhile, Denver-based civil engineer Richard Bamber, who worked on the construction of the RTD’s rail transit system, is warning that the deterioration of RTD’s tracks — a problem that forced agency managers to impose safety “slow zones” where trains run at 10 miles per hour – could make wheels wear out faster. A founder of the public transit advocacy group Greater Denver Transit, Bamber said that if the RTD isn’t replacing worn-out steel wheels frequently enough, rider safety could be compromised.

“We have had at least one wheel fail, and things don’t normally fail in isolation. That’s why they need to check everything,” Bamber said.

“Did this wheel fail due to a manufacturing defect? Or did it fail because inspections and maintenance were not adequate? In both cases, the problem would affect multiple train wheels. Safety-first logic says you should treat the systemic problem and not the incident in isolation.”

RTD officials weren’t available to discuss train derailments and didn’t answer questions about whether changes were made after the wheel failure.

The RTD “will comply with the changes in state law and any regulations that are issued by the PUC,” agency spokeswoman Tina Jaquez said.

Derailments

None of the RTD’s seven train derailments in 2024 led to passenger or operator injuries. One of them happened when a vehicle hit a train, knocking its wheels off the tracks, Jaquez said in an email.

The Jan. 24, 2024, derailment just north of RTD’s Southmoor Station “resulted in a disabled train,” she said, repeating the language used in public service alert announcements while crews cleared tracks.

A required June 6 RTD staff report to the PUC summarizing accidents described the derailment: The light rail train “began shedding wheel/tire components and eventually experienced a catastrophic failure of one wheel/tire assembly and derailed,” the report said.

A separate PUC document refers to the undisclosed corrective action plan and says the train operator detected trouble and radioed a control supervisor, asking about possible train mechanical problems, yet “continued southbound from Colorado to Yale Station with significant performance issues.” Then, the train “experienced catastrophic failure of one wheel/tire assembly. Another tire was also affected.”

PUC recommendations included metal testing to determine whether the wheel was defective, giving train operators more leeway to stop without authorization from supervisors when they face potentially unsafe situations, reviewing RTD practices in getting rid of worn wheels, creating a standardized wheel procurement process, and increasing rail grinding (smoothing out bumps) on tracks.

In 2022, an RTD employee’s detection of corroded tracks downtown led to a PUC corrective action plan and eventual RTD toughening of inspections in line with industry standards — weekly inspections on foot or in a vehicle that moves slowly enough along tracks to allow accurate assessment of wear and tear. RTD began stepped-up inspections, leading to the imposition of the slow zones that have delayed transit for nine months.

Train wheels

If Colorado’s new law had been in place last year, metro Denver riders might have learned about the derailments and their causes, Bamber said. Around the country, other public transit agencies also need to know about problems to prevent disasters, he said, referring to the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board systems for investigating aviation incidents and making preliminary and final reports public.

“If the RTD was finding problems, would you want to know? Would you want to read the accident investigation reports? That’s what this current secrecy prevents,” he said.

After the Aurora derailments, RTD officials determined that light rail operators were at fault.

State lawmakers crack down

Colorado’s new accident investigation reform law may not apply to past light rail crash incidents, depending on the regulations the PUC must adopt to implement the law.

State Sen. Faith Winter, one of the legislative leaders who pushed it through, said lawmakers have been talking with PUC officials and are confident that the agency will implement the law effectively.

If the RTD crashes and derailments expose problems, transparency will be crucial to prevent disasters and improve public transit, Winter, a Broomfield Democrat, said. “Seeing how those flaws are fixed adds to the greater trust of the public in our transit systems,” she said.

“It is essential to have this information and make the reports public so that we can establish what the corrective solutions are. Is it a tire problem? Is it the angle of that specific curve? Was it a driver issue? Without having access to the reports, we don’t know. And that leads to a lot of questioning about public safety.”

DIA airlines had delayed 600 flights and canceled nine shortly before 3 p.m., according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.

Travelers on Southwest Airlines faced 231 delays. United reported 170 delays, and SkyWest had 103. Frontier reported 29 delays, American Airlines 22, and Delta 21.

National Weather Service forecasters measured the noon temperature around DIA at 30 degrees, with 15-mile-per-hour wind and visibility at 10 miles. More potentially heavy snow is expected to hit metro Denver Friday night and Saturday.

Snow showers on Thursday delayed more than 800 flights at DIA.

In addition to snow and ice on Friday, runway construction at DIA contributed to delays under a travel management plan for arriving flights, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. “This is causing some arriving flights to be delayed an average of 31 minutes,” an FAA bulletin stated.

DIA officials said surface temperatures around noon were above freezing, letting snow melt, but “the snowfall rate may overpower surface temperatures” and create slush that would have to be removed.

Airport officials advised travelers to check with airlines about delays, arrive inside DIA at least two hours before scheduled boarding times, and anticipate waiting for aircraft ice removal.

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The $22 million project will stretch from Alameda Avenue to 44th Avenue just south of the interchange with I-70 and include building higher walls, repairing expansion joints between the highway and bridges and installing new signs.

Most of the repaving will be done at night between mid-May and the end of October, officials said. Construction crews will replace 2,700 feet of concrete walls along I-25 adjacent to the South Platte River — work scheduled through January 2026.

Here’s what I-25 drivers will face:

U.S. 6 and Alameda ramp closures

Shortly after sundown Sunday, CDOT crews will start replacing walls along southbound I-25 between the U.S. 6 ramp and Alameda. They’ll work Sundays through Thursdays between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., requiring overnight closures of the east and westbound U.S. 6 on-ramps to southbound I-25 and the southbound I-25 off-ramp to Alameda Avenue. Drivers will also face single-lane and highway-shoulder closures on southbound I-25.

Detours

CDOT crews are setting up detours. Drivers headed east or west on U.S. 6 will be routed onto southbound Kalamath Street to the Santa Fe/Kalamath on-ramp to southbound I-25. Drivers headed south on I-25 to Alameda will be routed onto the Santa Fe Drive exit and then across Mississippi Avenue and over the South Platte River onto North Santa Fe Drive and then Alameda.

I-25 lane closures

Once nighttime temperatures consistently exceed 44 degrees in mid-May — a threshold for laying asphalt — workers will begin resurfacing the highway. As many as three lanes in each direction will be closed at night, Sundays through Thursdays, until late October.

Drivers also may face delays and lane closures during the day and on weekends, depending on project needs, with closures timed to accommodate other events in the area.

CDOT supervisors said they’ll set up traffic cones and signs, including overhead electronic signs, to guide drivers.

The deal that Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1001 leaders negotiated with the RTD would provide a 6.5% wage increase this year, applied retroactively to Jan. 1. The drivers, operators, mechanics, and other transit workers would receive a 4.5% increase for each of the following two years.

ATU negotiators had pushed for wage increases by 7% each year for three years.

The 2,000 or so union members would have to approve the deal in voting this month, ATU president Lance Longenbohn said. If approved, it would raise the starting hourly pay for a new bus driver or train operator from $25.96  to $27.65 this year, increasing to $28.89 next year and $30.19 in 2027. The top pay would increase from $32.88 to $35.02 this year, then to $36.59 and $38.24, Longenbohn said.

RTD drivers “can find other jobs where they’re not getting cursed at and spit on, in some cases to make more and in most cases to make enough that it’s worth the difference,” he said. “It’s a hard job. You’re not just driving. You’re keeping an eye on people on the bus, answering questions, helping people with mobility devices.”

RTD has struggled to retain frontline employees. Shortages of available bus and train operators have limited the agency’s ability to help riders navigate disruptions as maintenance crews carry out catch-up work to repair deteriorating rails. Bus and train operators marched through Lower Downtown from Union Station to RTD headquarters at rush hour recently and packed an agency board of directors meeting demanding higher wages.

Photos showed passengers scrambling out on a wing above the smoke as ground crew members tried to get the bridge to DIA in place and positioned slides and ladders.

“Evacuation procedures will be part of the investigation,” an NTSB email said. The role of the bridge, in particular, “is something the investigators are looking into.”

An NTSB-led team has been investigating at DIA since the incident on March 13, when American Airlines Flight 1006 took off from Colorado Springs at 4:52 p.m., bound for Dallas-Fort Worth. It diverted at 5:14 p.m. to DIA after crew members reported engine vibrations. The aircraft landed safely and taxied to gate C38, where the fire broke out.

DIA ground crews went to the gate and doused the flames as 172 passengers escaped. A dozen passengers were taken to the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora for treatment of smoke inhalation and minor injuries.

An NTSB study done 25 years ago of 46 evacuations over a two-year period found engine fires are the most common cause and that, even when flight attendants commanded passengers to “leave everything,” passengers often took their belongings. Nearly 50% of passengers interviewed for the study reported trying to remove a bag during the evacuation.

The FAA sets standards for airlines to follow in emergencies.

“Airlines determine how to do that, and flight attendants typically instruct passengers to leave all carry-on luggage in the cabin if they evacuate,” FAA spokeswoman Cassandra Nolan said. “FAA regulations require passengers to obey crewmembers’ safety instructions,” Nolan said.

American Airlines officials did not respond to requests to discuss what happened.

Airline crews undergo training to prioritize passenger safety and quick movement of people off the plane.

At Metropolitan State University of Denver, Aviation and Aerospace Science professor and FAA chief instructor Chad Kendall, a former commercial airline pilot for American Eagle and other airlines, saw the incident as a case study in the complexities of evacuating aircraft.

Beyond the question of which exits were used and crew members’ actions, “a crucial and unpredictable element is human behavior,” Kendall said. “Passengers often react instinctively under stress, which can either aid or hinder the process, he said.

“Even if the jet bridge was in use for passengers deplaning through the forward exits, the urgency and panic inside the cabin may have led passengers to independently initiate an evacuation through the over-wing exits,” he said. “Instinct takes over, and their primary focus becomes finding the nearest available exit to ensure their safety.” 

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He and his brother paid $3.5 million for a defunct 1889 train station, the Pueblo Union Depot, where vandals had broken in and set fires on the mosaic tile floor. They launched a $4 million project two decades ago to restore the station down to the details, a three-story red sandstone bulwark in the heart of the city with ornate woodwork ceilings and stained glass windows. They opened a café across B Street and are planning a jazz club on the station’s second floor, above a statue of a Roman goddess aiming an arrow.

But there are no scheduled trains.

The work became a matter of “stewardship” of what they call “the Ellis Island of the West,”  where thousands of immigrants arrived from Europe for work in southern Colorado’s coal mines and steel mill. “Our grandparents from Slovenia and Italy came into Ellis Island, hopped a train and came here,” said Koncilja, who sees a passenger rail comeback as crucial for sustainable mobility.

“Europe and China have seen the future. We in the United States demolished what we had. It was a major financial error for us to vacate all these passenger railways. Someday it is going to be returned and alleviate some of our modern problems, such as traffic congestion and air pollution.”

It’s one of scores of old stations from a century ago when passenger trains whistled and hissed along tracks that crisscrossed the state.

Coloradans have embraced old train stations even as they are used for non-transportation purposes, from making meals on wheels to showcasing history, investing millions of dollars to preserve their craftsmanship and glory. Many were architectural masterpieces. They sit on prime property at the centers of cities and towns, some along proposed routes where passenger trains may roll again.

Around 1910, railroads maintained 545 train stations around Colorado, according to researchers at the Colorado Railroad Museum archives in Golden. As automobile culture led to the demise of in-state rail service by the 1970s, stations were abandoned or demolished, starting in rural areas, including classics at Salida, La Junta, and Sterling.

But many survived. Old train stations still stand in at least 40 towns and cities, a Colorado registry of historic properties shows.

“Old train stations provide a sense of place and belonging. They’ve always been gateways to communities where individuals have begun or ended trips. Having old train stations in city centers can spark a sense of connection with the rest of the state,” said Jack Wheeler, president of the Colorado Rail Passenger Association. “Most importantly, they remind citizens that there’s an alternative to driving.”

Restoration projects to preserve, protect, and redevelop old train stations are gaining momentum from small-town efforts to buttress brick foundations to Denver’s $500 million reconstruction of Union Station.

Meanwhile, Colorado leaders are finalizing plans to revive passenger rail service using existing tracks along the Front Range and through the northwestern mountains between Denver and Craig. A separate Southwest Chief “thru-car” project that received a federal study grant would link La Junta with Pueblo and Colorado Springs. The Colorado Department of Transportation hasn’t ruled out other possible passenger rail routes using tracks that run from Pueblo to Salida and Leadville, then over Tennessee Pass to Minturn and the Interstate 70 corridor.

“We still feel as if we are a meaningful stop,” said Grand Junction entrepreneur Dustin Anzures, co-owner of the 1906 Grand Junction Union Depot, which had been boarded shut for 30 years until he re-opened it in 2023.

The price was $350,000 in 2016. Since then, Anzures has rallied residents – 900 attended an open house – to raise funds for a $3.5 million restoration. He plans a boutique hotel and shops integrated with an adjacent CDOT regional mobility hub for Bustang buses and e-scooters.

“When people fly places, they want to hurry up and get there and then start their vacation,” Anzures said. As soon as you step on a train, you start your experience. The comfort on a train far outweighs the comfort on a plane. You can get up and walk around. You can sit in the dining room and talk or play cards. It’s a more interactive way to travel. You can get a room if you want a bed. Every car has an attendant. Then, add in the scenery. You get to see the landscape of the American West. You get to see things you cannot see from a plane or a car.”

For now, most surviving old train stations serve new non-transit purposes as a movie-making site in Gunnison, base for city inspectors in Walsenburg, meat processing company offices in Rocky Ford, and community centers in Steamboat Springs and Boulder. But the structures, once restored, also reflect their original mission and raise hopes for new service.

“That would be fantastic,” said Otero County administrative assistant Jennifer Rife in southeastern Colorado. “We’re the forgotten zone of Colorado because we don’t live next to the mountains, and we don’t have many people living out here. My kids live in Colorado Springs,” Rife said. “I could read, hang out, eat.”

Florence

In Florence, residents used a $150,000 state grant to replace the roof of a former Denver & Rio Grande Railroad station and plan more restoration work. When passenger train service ended in 1967, town officials set up offices in the station before converting it into a senior community center with a kitchen where elderly residents prepare meals, play cards, dance, and exercise. On Wednesday mornings, they host town gatherings to discuss local news over coffee and pastries, often including the mayor and police chief.

It’s where workers caught trains to Pueblo or Canon City. Other trains running from Cripple Creek to Florence through Phantom Canyon carried gold ore from mines to smelters. Coal mines and, later, oil and gas operations provided jobs before Florence lost those industries. Another old train station in town became a private residence. A third became an A&W drive-in, then Polar King, then the Jade Café.

“Our train station is going to thrive. We’re making sure it is a centerpiece of Florence,” said Millie Wintz, 93, a keeper of town archives.

Westcliffe

Over Hardscrabble Pass in Westcliffe, trains that carried passengers and freight to the Wet Mountain Valley, starting in the 1880s, ended in the 1930s. Workers removed the tracks by 1938. The train station served as a home for the station master, then as a motel and as a mechanics shop. A fire destroyed the south end. A woman who had played in the house with the station master’s daughters bought it and restored it as a home where she lived with her husband and children. For the past two decades, the local nonprofit All Aboard Westcliffe has been restoring it and using it as a railroad museum.

All Aboard Westcliffe earned $7,000 profit last year by renting the upstairs living quarters as an Airbnb to help sustain preservation work, said Sandy Messick, the group’s president.

“This is just about knowing your roots. The railroad is the reason Westcliffe exists,” she said, recounting the rivalry with neighboring Silver Cliff to be closest to the tracks. Saving the old station “helps us understand how people got here and why they might have come. Miners came, and the rail helped that industry, which created demand for other businesses. It helps us honor what built us.”

Canon City

In Canon City, the Royal Gorge Chamber Alliance bought the 1909 train station where passenger service ended in 1967. Royal Gorge tourist loop trains run from a separate, restored station. Chamber directors made a $800,000 down payment and are raising funds to restore the station to become a “gateway depot plaza,” the group’s president, Rich Millard, said. They envision a hub for business with farmer’s markets, concerts, and craft fairs in an adjacent park.

Lamar

In Lamar, a train station listed on the National Historic Register still serves as a stop for Southwest Chief Amtrak trains before they move to La Junta and Trinidad along the route from Chicago to Los Angeles.

“I’m grateful we’re still able to use it. It still has a purpose and a life,” said Anne Marie Crampton, director of community development. The building also serves as a southeastern Colorado welcome center with chamber of commerce offices and, outside, a Madonna of the Trail monument to pioneer women along the historic Santa Fe Trail.

When the station was deteriorating in the late 1980s, local leaders raised funds for a partial renovation to preserve local history. “They realized they wanted to re-invest. It’s a beautiful building,” Crampton said. “We are a small town, not well-funded.  We will continue to have a future. Instead of saying: ‘Yesterday was better than today’ we just need to embrace our history and also embrace our future and be open to change.”

Grover

On the plains of northeastern Colorado, historical preservation of old train stations is taking off even though there are no hopes for restoring passenger rail service.

A red wooden station built in 1887 in Grover (population 160), 60 miles northeast of Greeley,  once served residents who rode trains to Sterling and 120 miles to Cheyenne, Wyoming. But it had practically blown down by the 1970s.

The last railroad agent planned to demolish it and sell the lumber, said Tanya Wahlert, president of the local Pawnee Historical Society. In 1975, local women rallied to save it. An unidentified donor bought the station. A member of the Denver Audubon Society who visited the nearby Pawnee Buttes helped replace windows.

In 2024, a state grant of $80,589 funded work to start stabilizing brick foundations. Now the historical society is applying for a  $250,000 state grant to shore up walls and the foundations and seeking sponsors to commit required matching funds.

“Old train stations are an important piece of history for small towns. It’s how the plains were settled,” Wahlert said. “They symbolize the dreams people had. Railroad companies were going to make money bringing people in. Why keep it alive? Look what people went through, their difficulties. They persevered.”

Julesburg

At Julesburg (population 1,400), Union Pacific owners had planned to raze their train station after ending passenger service in 1971. They wanted to clear the station away from tracks where freight trains roll through town (still as frequently as every 15 minutes). Town leaders intervened, persuading railroad officials to sell the station for a nominal fee on the condition residents would move it.

The residents raised funds for the move and to convert the station into a history museum. Over the past 50 years, they’ve raised more than $971,000 for restoration work, including a $305,000 state government grant.

So much life happened in that station, said Jeana Johnson, who oversees museums in Sedgwick County.

Julesburg residents wanted a complete renovation, launched in 2016 and completed in 2023, restoring train ticketing windows and the walls as they were when trains rolled, Johnson said. “The reason we are here is the railroad.”

Colorado Springs

Colorado Springs will go modern.

The city’s train service team met with Front Range Passenger Rail District officials this week, reviewing the plans to eventually run passenger trains south from Denver to Castle Rock, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo. They also met with organizers of the Southwest Chief project, “which in some ways is advancing more rapidly,” to bring trains northward from La Junta and Pueblo to Colorado Springs, city engineer and deputy public works director Gayle Sturdivant said.

When the last passenger trains left Colorado Springs in 1971, a developer bought the 1887 train station and launched Giuseppe’s, a pizza restaurant that lasted until 2011. A 1917 Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Station in Colorado Springs became a defense industry technology and innovation training center.

City leaders commissioned a study to find the best place for a new train station. Not owning the old stations was an obstacle. They settled on a four-acre site by the 16.9-acre America the Beautiful Park. An architectural rendering shows a $26 million futuristic station devoted solely to transit.

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The inaugural flights scheduled to depart Tuesday and Wednesday will make Contour the 27th airline providing flights from DIA.

From Concourse C, Contour will fly 30-seat Embraer jets daily to Moab, departing at 5:40 p.m. (arriving at 7:15 p.m.). Flights to Vernal are scheduled five days a week, departing DIA at 4 p.m. (arriving at 5:25 p.m.)  Return flights will leave Moab at 2:50 p.m. and Vernal at 1:40 p.m.

Previous SkyWest flights from DIA that carried passengers to Moab and Vernal ended 14 months ago.

The new flights increase DIA airlines’ offerings to 191 destinations across 46 U.S. states.

Contour Airlines officials call DIA “a new hub” for their efforts to link smaller communities. They’ve established a partnership with United Airlines. They allow a free checked bag and serve snacks and drinks. DIA chief executive Phil Washington has said increased connections to rural and mid-size cities are part of the airport’s growth strategy to serve 100 million travelers a year.

In May, United Airlines plans to fly the first nonstop flights from DIA to Rome, Italy, and Regina, Canada. DIA officials also noted new United flights this year to Peoria, Illinois; Buffalo, New York; Redding, California; and Wilmington, North Carolina.

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“Frequency is the thing people want that brings ridership. This is the best strategy if we want more people using RTD services,” Colorado Public Interest Research Group director Danny Katz said. “It’s all about not needing a schedule. Once you have service every 15 minutes, you’re in a situation where people know there will be a train or bus coming soon.”

RTD buses and trains already run at that frequency along some routes, such as East Colfax Avenue, but widely require 30-minute waits and sometimes 60-minute waits in outlying parts of the RTD’s 2,345 square-mile service area, which spans eight counties.

The Alliance to Transform Transportation leaders have called on Colorado lawmakers to embrace the plan for investing $420 million a year to enable the RTD to meet a target that would more than double the number of routes where buses arrive at a 15-minute frequency. The coalition includes environmental, civil rights, disability rights, energy efficiency, bicycling, and union worker groups.

RTD directors over the past year committed to restoring 15-minute frequencies on 34 routes by 2026, part of the agency’s efforts to regain riders lost since the COVID-19 pandemic. RTD’s overall ridership has decreased from 105.8 million in 2019 to about 65 million.

The coalition plan would more than double the number of routes where buses run every 15 minutes or less to 83 by 2036. It would increase the number of miles where buses run frequently from 490 miles to 1,139 miles and extend 15-minute frequency for early morning, evening, and weekend service.

“We like it when our trains and buses are full,” RTD light rail train operator Dennis Hawkins said. “We want people to ride. We need to have frequent and reliable service for them to do it.”

Funding is the challenge. The RTD’s record-high $1.2 billion budget relies primarily on sales taxes collected from metro Denver residents in the service area. State government funding for public transit in Colorado has lagged behind other states. However, lawmakers last year imposed a fee on oil and gas operations expected to raise about $50 million a year for public transit.

Raising taxes, if voters decide they want better transit, could be an option, said Jill Locantore, director of the Denver Streets Partnership, who helped conduct the study. “When we can’t count on federal funding, being able to generate local revenue sources that we can count on is that much more important,” Locantore said, estimating a third of Denver’s residents cannot drive. “It’ll take time to increase service to this level. That’s why it’s important that we start investing today.”

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