CHAPTER 5

Why Meter-Gauge?

The selection of a meter-gauge railway for Colorado's mountain access problem is a natural solution which has previously been overlooked. The Colorado Department of Transportation conducted a two-million-dollar Major Investment Study (MIS) which considered only conventional and high-speed standard-gauge railroads for the I-70 corridor. (This study and its erroneous assumptions are discussed in detail in Chapter 11.) For reference, meter-gauge is approximately 39" between the rails, while standard-gauge is 4'8 ", or 42% wider. This difference is highly significant because of the extreme difficulty in locating a new right-of-way within the narrow I-70 corridor. In constricted areas, the minimum right-of-way requirement for the 8 -foot-wide vehicles typical of international meter-gauge railways is approximately the width of a bicycle path. This provides a distinct advantage when shoe-horning through such difficult areas as Clear Creek Canyon. A typical "tight squeeze" negotiated on a meter-gauge railway is shown on the bottom of page "n."

Not only does the meter-gauge require a narrower right-of-way than any feasible alternative, but its shorter cars also allow more restricted curves as shown below.

Comparable Railway Curves
Minimum Radius Meter-GaugeMinimum Radius Standard-Gauge
Without Undue Difficultygreater than or equal to 80 metersgreater than or equal to 100 meters
Design More Difficult40 - 80 meters50 - 100 meters
SOURCE: Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works

The combination of at-grade construction, reduced right-of-way requirements, sharper curves, conventional power supply and motors, and lightweight equipment leads to very significant cost savings. The construction cost of SMARTrans is substantially less than that required for any alternative system; i.e., it is estimated that one billion dollars is required for the construction of the DIA-to-Vail spine, including the branches to Granby and Breckenridge, which is anywhere from three to eight times less than a "high-speed" train of the French- or Japanese-type railroad or any hypothetical monorail system would probably cost, and four times less than expanding I-70 to six or eight lanes. Since economics cannot support the expenditures for the more expensive higher speed rail or monorail systems, it is highly unlikely that they could ever be implemented. And there is no room to expand the highway to six or eight lanes throughout.

Equally important is that SMARTrans is based on proven technology and is therefore substantially risk-free. In Switzerland alone, two dozen railways operate over a thousand miles of route trackage mainly in mountainous terrain and weather conditions similar to those in Colorado. There, hundreds of daily trains carry thousands of passengers from all over the world safely, efficiently and with an envious on-time record. And these meter-gauge railways are in harmony with the mountains both aesthetically and environmentally as shown by the pictures on page "b" and "c."



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page updated March 8, 2005