Thanks for the URL Don.
Let's get this whole thing in perspective for a change. In the same Sunday Denver Post, there was another article about gross retail sales tax revenue...listing the greatest and the least of most Colorado mountain communities.
Durango is at the top of the list, with an amazing $525,000,000...above even Aspen at 425,000,000. That's a bunch of bucks, folks. At near the bottom of the list was Crested Bute, listing about $45,000,000.
Forcing the DSNGRR to adopt even more restrictive measures will eventually put them in a no profit picture, and the railroad will be gone. Although the nice people at DSNGRR are very historically sensitive, they are still a FOR PROFIT corporation.
I would bet that of the $525 MILLION DOLLAR figure, that 60% comes from railroad tourism, and the remainder comes from Mesa Verde tourism. Perhaps it is even more lopsided than that.
A railroad ticket on the DSNGRR is a heck of a lot more costly than the gas and admission ticket to Mesa Verde....
If the DSNGRR holds firm...(as if they haven't done enought already)...and somebody just waves a check for $525 MILLION DOLLARS in front of the politicians at State...nothing will happen. If, on the other hand, these 'touchie-feelie'politicians get together with the newbies in Durango screaming like mad about coal smoke...they just might do something politically correct, as the political 'left' is prone to doing...something tragic might happen, to the everlasting damage to the historic legacy of this State of Colorado.
The Durango economy is an economic power-house, and that is one bottom line all politicians will know and respect.
For the newbie-interlopers....screw them. The railroad was there far earlier than when they came, and NG railroads, coal smoke, is a much a part of our wonderful Colorado heritage, as miners picks, carbide miner lamps and ranches & cowboys.
If those touchie-feelie newcomers don't like it, let them leave, and good riddance.
One think politicians undersand is MONEY!
God Bless us Every one!
