While Colorado has 79 public airports, Amtrak rail service and a variety of historic passenger train lines, the automobile remains king of transportation. Colorado motorists drive a combined total of nearly 70 million miles each day – about 17 miles for each resident. If the average car on the road achieves gas mileage of 20 miles per gallon, roughly 3.5 million gallons of gasoline are burned each day.
To accommodate this mobile population, the Colorado Department of Transportation operated on a nearly $1 billion budget in 2002.
In all, 72,699 miles of roadway criss-cross the state. Only 946 miles are part of the interstate highway system. The roads range from world-class engineered superhighways such as Interstate 70 to rural county roads – some not even graveled. Not included in the state and county counts are hundreds of miles of forest roads and four-wheel-drive-only mountain passes.
Colorado’s 79 public airports range from dirt runways to the bustling Denver International Airport. DIA, one of the busiest airports in the world, is an important air transportation hub in the nation’s commercial airline industry. Almost 8,000 takeoffs and landings are recorded everyday in Colorado, about one-third of which are handled at only two airports: DIA and Centennial Airport just south of Denver.
The aeronautics division of the Colorado Department of Transportation estimates that Colorado’s 79 public-use airports generate an annual economic impact of $14.3 billion, some $4.6 billion of which is paid as wages to the 246,000 jobs associated with aviation, including medical transport, fire fighting, public safety, agriculture, tourism and recreation and shipping.
Railway buffs have an interesting array of passenger train service. Amtrak offers two daily long-distance trains. They are the California Zephyr (Chicago-Denver-Oakland) and the Southwest Chief (Chicago-Kansas City-La Junta-Albuquerque-Los Angeles). One eastbound and one westbound train are scheduled each day.
Three different historic narrow-gauge lines transport passengers through Colorado’s spectacular alpine scenery. These include the Georgetown Loop just west of Denver, the Durango to Silverton run through the San Juan Mountains and the Cumbres and Toltec line from Antonito to Chama, N.M. Another scenic tour runs from Canon City up the narrow Royal Gorge and back. A cog railway transports 200,000 people each year to the summit of Pikes Peak near Colorado Springs. In all, Colorado tourist trains host almost 1 million passengers a year.
The Denver area’s Regional Transportation Disrict operates a light rail railroad on 15.8 miles of track with 24 stations.
Freight, specifically coal, is the backbone of Colorado’s railroad industry. Of the 36 million tons of freight originated in the state each year, 73% is coal. Twelve freight railroads operate in the state on 3,662 miles of track. They carry a combined total of 143 million tons of freight on almost 2.3 million rail cars each year. Wages paid annually to the 3,329 railroad workers living in the state total more than $201 million, with an additional $95.6 million in retirement pay.
