CC image from marcmo

Several weeks ago, Colorado released an ambitious high speed rail plan.  The $21 billion plan would feature two trunk lines: one running north-south connecting the cities along the Front Range, and the other running east-west along the I-70 corridor connecting Denver International to the state’s mountain ski resorts.   Colorado’s ski resorts along I-70 are a crucial economic engine for the state, but the interstate is jammed on the weekends.  Mountain geography provides an ideal choke point for successful rail transit, as there simply is no room for I-70 to expand, and adding capacity on alternate routes would only induce more demand.

At the Transport Politic, Yonah Freemark notes that such a large investment might make sense for Colorado, but isn’t a national priority.  These ideas sneak forward in the absence of a national high speed rail plan.

Enter the Olympic Games.   David Williams at the Colorado Independent sees the prospect of the 2022 Winter Olympics as the catalyst to encourage some long-range transportation vision for the state.

Denver was awarded the 1976 Winter Olympics, only to later reject via referendum the funding to pay for the required infrastructure, forcing the IOC to award the ’76 Games to recent host Innsbruck.  Thanks to this slight, it’s not certain the IOC would ever award the Games to Denver again – to say nothing of the recent feud between US officials and the IOC.

Nevertheless, at least the prospect of winning the Games has Colorado thinking big and long term.   Vancouver stands to benefit from multiple infrastructure investments in the run-up to the 2010 Games, and perhaps Colorado can do the same – even if their corridors are not a national priority.