By Ryan Zorn | Guest Columnist
Have you noticed that the expansion of passenger rail is beginning to permeate agendas of state and local governments? The romance of big rail projects and access to other people’s money have always been hard for career politicians to resist.
Gov. Jared Polis is no different. The Biden administration is dangling billions of federal taxpayer dollars out for grabs. Here at home, the governor just secured a legislated $3 per-day rental car fee worth $58 million per year and a privately-negotiated political ransom worth $175 million per year from Colorado oil and gas producers in the form of new production fees that will be funneled toward new passenger rail initiatives.
His message to our local governments seems to be “all aboard!” or get out of the way. However, his aspiration to make passenger rail mainstream in Colorado is totally separated from economic reality for families, woefully misjudging the feasibility of such an option for the viability of local businesses in rural Colorado, and will misallocate dollars that could have been spent elsewhere to reduce significantly greater amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.
During the ski season just ended, the Winter Park ski train ran 38 days on peak weekends (Amtrak intended to run 40 days but a mudslide and a severe storm otherwise known as an epic powder day cancelled the train twice), average seat capacity was 281 per day, and average riders totaled 221 per day. The most recent Winter Park Resort Master Development Plan quotes current peak day capacity of more than 17,200 visitors and nearly 23,700 visitors if the planned territory expansion and Town Gondola are completed.
Therefore, current ski train riders represent about 1% of the visitors that Winter Park Resort and local businesses require on peak weekends to be sustainable. How many trains is the governor planning to run in order to deliver meaningful numbers of visitors to Winter Park, much less the additional numbers required by Steamboat?
Why didn’t more people ride the ski train this season? Consider a family of four. Ski train tickets for two adults and two kids cost $177 and parking the family car at Union Station is another $58 per day for a total roundtrip cost of $235. Alternatively, the cost of independent driving is estimated at $91 assuming the family car gets 25 mpg, average February gas prices, 20 cents per mile to account for wear and tear, and $50 for primo covered parking at the resort. So, the net premium of riding the ski train versus driving comes to just more than $144 per trip. The ski train is a splurge—very few families would elect the train on a regular basis. In fact, the gas price required to inflate the cost of driving to be equivalent to the cost of riding the ski train for this family is a whopping $30.52 per gallon.
What about the planet? An open records request to Amtrak provided the ridership stats above, but was unsuccessful in yielding the volume of diesel burned by the ski train this winter. Amtrak claimed the ski train’s fuel consumption was a trade secret — no joke. However, using the average emissions per seat mile for Amtrak’s diesel fleet as reported in their latest sustainability report, we can estimate that this family’s carbon footprint was lowered by 6% or 0.0028 tons of CO2 by riding the ski train versus driving independently. But the implied cost (net premium paid to ride the train) of carbon emissions avoided was a staggering $52,000 per ton. For context, the federal government’s current estimate for the social cost of carbon is $51 per ton. Pursuing decarbonization goals at ski train costs will quickly bankrupt us all.
I love that Winter Park has the novelty of the ski train — it’s a unique experience for riders and a great marketing tool for the resort. But, passenger rail has massive cost and convenience gaps to close in order for it to be considered a mainstream mode of transportation, a cost-effective tool to lower greenhouse gas emissions, or a viable means of creating a “just transition” for northwest Colorado. Any politician claiming otherwise is not to be trusted.
Ryan Zorn of Fraser is the director of energy additions at Liberty Energy.
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