In the November 2026 midterm elections, voters along Colorado’s Front Range approved Ballot Issue 7A, a new sales tax to fund the Colorado Connector passenger rail service between Fort Collins and Pueblo. The measure passed with about 56% of the vote.

The vote is an important win for future passenger rail service in the Front Range, as it provides a dedicated funding source for the project and signals that voters see the train as a real answer to the region’s mobility needs. However, the vote is only one step. Before trains can run south of Denver, the state still needs to establish agreements with the freight railroads that own the tracks, and those deals will shape whether the project succeeds.

Front Range Passenger Rail District Map

Credit: High Speed Rail Alliance

Ballot Issue 7A

The approved measure lets the Front Range Passenger Rail District (FRPR) levy a sales and use tax to build and run the Colorado Connector, affectionately called CoCo. The 0.333% tax, about 33 cents on a $100 purchase, applies to taxable purchases in the district, excluding groceries, gasoline, residential electricity and gas, prescription drugs, and medical supplies. It is expected to generate around $295 million annually as a dedicated source of funding, and lets the district keep all revenue rather than refunding amounts above the estimate. The measure also authorizes $580 million in debt, with a maximum repayment cost of $785 million. The tax also has no set end date.

7A is a piece of the broader Front Range passenger rail vision for intercity rail service between Fort Collins and Pueblo (with visions for future connections north and south). In 2021, the Colorado state legislature established the Front Range Passenger Rail District, with the power to levy a sales tax if district voters approve one. In April 2026, the state and freight railroad BNSF signed a term sheet for 25-year track access for passenger services from Denver to Fort Collins. On July 31, 2026, the district board adopted the final delivery plan. The starter service will be three daily round trips from Denver north to Fort Collins, and its $332 million cost is covered by existing state and Regional Transportation District (RTD) funds, with no new tax. Starter service on the northern segment is set to begin in 2029.

Ballot Issue 7A funds the southern half of the line from Denver to Pueblo, serving the communities of Littleton, Sterling Ranch, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo, with service targeted for 2032. It also funds a fourth daily round trip on the north leg from Denver to Fort Collins. The full-service cost is estimated at around $1.7 billion to construct and $40-51 million a year to operate. Later phases will add up to 10 daily round trips north of Denver and 8 to the south, costing another $2.7 billion. With the measure passed, the tax is set to start in July 2027.

Critically, 7A ensures that CoCo will have its own dedicated revenue stream, approved by voters, so funding will not be subject to yearly budget fights. In contrast, most state-supported passenger trains in the U.S. rely on annual state budgets and competitive federal grants. Under the 2021 infrastructure law, an advance appropriation ensured that competitive grants would be available for all five years of the authorization, but with the new surface transportation reauthorization on the horizon, the future of competitive rail grant funding is not certain. Although the FRPR could still choose to pursue federal grants, CoCo’s dedicated source of local funding enables the service to move forward without depending on federal funding. The FRPR district says federal grants could speed up the work but are not required.

A steady revenue stream also lets the district borrow. The $580 million in bonds that 7A authorizes is how the district plans to reach Pueblo without waiting for cash to pile up. It also gives Colorado a local match if it receives federal grants, since CoCo is in the Federal Railroad Administration’s Corridor ID pipeline for new routes.

Nonetheless, dedicated money is not a guarantee of successful implementation. RTD’s FasTrack program has had a sales tax since voters approved it in 2004, yet only 6.2 miles of the promised-41 mile line to Boulder and Longmont have opened, after BNSF’s estimate for using its tracks came in far above RTD’s. Funding is key, but buy-in from host railroads to let passenger trains run on the tracks is critical.

A big win for passenger rail

An important takeaway from 7A’s passage is that it transforms a three-train starter line into a funded corridor plan, backed by a clear majority of voters, giving the FRPR district a solid foundation to deliver its promise of passenger rail service across the region.

CoCo is being marketed as an important spine for regional travel, serving a wide range of uses beyond commuting for work. In fact, the district’s rail plan notes leisure and recreation as the main uses of CoCo, with concerts and festivals holding approximately 23% of potential trips, family visits at 19%, sporting events at 17%, and recreation at 17%. Work trips account for only about 11%. Other commuter railroads in the U.S. are also trying to tap into ridership beyond traditional commuters in a post-pandemic world, including the MBTA in Massachusetts, which shifted its focus to all-day bi-directional service.

While CoCo is not designed to capture a large share of commuters, it does introduce a faster express option that bypasses intermediate stops already served by the Denver metro area’s existing RTD commuter rail lines. This gives CoCo the ability to provide service to the entire district—a wider audience that extends beyond the commuting population of Denver to people in cities outside the Denver metro area. The district’s rail plan forecasts an estimated 1 million one-way trips per year at full build-out, with the segment north of Denver accounting for 70% of riders and the southern segment accounting for 25% of riders. That would put CoCo in the middle of the pack among Amtrak’s state-supported routes, behind California’s Capital Corridor and ahead of Amtrak Cascades in the Pacific Northwest.

The 1 million figure is only an estimate, and the district has not set ridership targets for the 2029 starter service. But there is demand for intercity travel along the Front Range. After the state expanded the Winter Park Express, which connects Denver to the Winter Park ski resort, from three to five days a week and cut fares by more than 40%, ridership in the 2024-2025 season rose 153% to 43,919. This reflects the mobility demand for non-commuting traffic. New rail routes elsewhere have also beaten expectations. Amtrak’s Borealis between Chicago and St. Paul carried 212,909 trips in FY2025, well above the roughly 155,000 yearly ridership forecast in its 2015 feasibility study.

Getting freight railroads on board

One concern about 7A is that it pays for service south of Denver before the state has permission to run trains on those tracks. To get passenger service running, the district must reach agreements with the freight railroads that own the tracks.

Currently, there is a non-binding agreement between the state of Colorado and BNSF, the freight railroad that owns the tracks north of Denver to Fort Collins. It sets the framework for the starter service and allows three daily round trips using one active train set and one spare, with Amtrak as the planned operator from Denver to Fort Collins. A binding access agreement, which the partners had hoped to finalize by June, had not been completed as of early November 2026.

But this only applies to the northern segment of the line. The state must establish a second agreement to allow for passenger trains to run from Denver to Pueblo, and this time, the state would have to negotiate with two freight railroads instead of one. The line south of Denver is known as the Joint Line, which is jointly owned by BNSF and Union Pacific. The Joint Line has long been a heavy freight route, known for Powder River Basin coal trains.

BNSF has already shown it is willing to host passenger trains by coming to the table on the northern leg of the line, so there is precedent for freight rail agreements along the Front Range. But the non-binding agreement also limits future growth of passenger service. It allows for three daily round trips, but the district’s vision is for 10 trips on the northern leg and 8 on the southern leg. More trips mean more track upgrades, such as additional passing sidings. That adds costs for the district and host railroads, and adds more elements to negotiate over.

Negotiating with the freight railroads will also take time, and the district’s goal of starting service to Pueblo by 2032 gives the state about six years to establish an agreement with both BNSF and Union Pacific and build the needed upgrades. During the process to re-establish passenger rail along the Gulf Coast between New Orleans and Mobile, Amtrak filed a case with the Surface Transportation Board for track access in March 2021. They reached a settlement with CSX and Norfolk Southern in November 2022, and the new Mardi Gras service did not start until 2025.

A negotiated agreement between Colorado, BNSF, and Union Pacific within the next two to three years is what keeps the 2032 target realistic, but there has been no indication of when those negotiations will begin or how willing each party is to compromise for the sake of reaching an agreement.

Conclusion

Ballot Issue 7A is more than a regional transportation measure. It is a big rail win during an election when transit measures from the San Francisco Bay Area to Seattle also passed with clear majorities. 7A also arrives just as guaranteed federal support for passenger rail fades, which makes a corridor funded mostly by local voters a model that other regions can study.

Several corridors share the Front Range’s shape: multiple growing metros, a congested interstate, and an existing freight rail line. Arizona is planning service between Phoenix and Tucson on Union Pacific trackage but has no money yet to build it. A planned Austin-San Antonio line fell through in 2016 after Union Pacific ended talks.

Colorado now offers those regions a template: a tax district drawn around potential service areas, with a dedicated source of funding, and a starter line paid for before a big vote for future funding. But money alone is not enough—track agreements are key. To begin service, the state will need to negotiate separate agreements for the southern leg, and once service starts, the trains must prove their reliability with on-time performance and steady ridership. If all goes well, the Front Range Passenger Rail district could become a model for regional rail across the country.