Rod, what happened to C&TS trackwork proposals back in 2004 gets kind'a weird. According to the minutes of its June 29-30 meeting the Commission agreed to a proposal to "Bring track up to a class 1.5 standard in five years at a cost of $20 million." (No where is "1.5" defined --certainly not in FRA rules).
This ended up being part of $31 million "Strategic Plan" that covered locomotives, infrastructure, and passenger cars. According to the minutes the Commission agreed to pursue $6.2 million each year for five years.
However, the Commission on a 3 to 1 vote (Carol Salisbury voting no) decided "to request $2 million funding from each state each year for five years." (Where the other $2.2 million each year was going to come from has always been a bit of a mystery). These were the actual resolutions of the Commission. If you review the minutes of the August 13 meeting you'll find that no further resolutions were made regarding these matters.
I was at the June 29-30 meeting, and Commissioner Salisbury explained her vote saying that chances of getting that magnitude of finding from the Colorado legislature was unrealistic; maybe $1 million being the top end. If you look at what has happened since you'll see that she was on to something.
In the spring of 2005 the Colorado legislature appropriated only $30,000 (that's right!) for capital projects. Things sure got better the next year when the capital appropriation was $1,750,000 (of which $1,350,000 was earmarked for track), but this spring the Colorado legislature fell back on its old ways and only came up with $80,000 for capital projects.
The corresponding capital appropriation figures for NM over the same three years have been $1,000,000, $1,000,000, and $1,050,000. You can do the math. What do you think the odds are of achieving the goals laid out in June 2004? And were those goals realistic?
What is remarkable is the extraordinary progress that CTSMC has made upgrading the track with only limited funding -- but that is another discussion.
