The idea of an inter-city/commuter rail line serving the fast-growing cities lined up along Colorado’s Front Range urban corridor has been around for decades, but lately it’s finally gotten traction. It’s about time: There are now around 5 million people at the foot of the Rockies in a relatively narrow strip less than 180 miles long. Technologies from high-speed rail to Hyperloop have been considered, although conventional diesel rail (like in neighboring Utah and New Mexico) is now moving forward, if in stages. This plan would also finally allow passenger rail between Denver, Boulder and Longmont, the last great missing piece of Denver’s FasTracks plan. (The State also appears to be serious about a new line on existing tracks in the northern mountains, and there’s a proposal to connect the Front Range corridor’s south end to the Amtrak Southwest Chief.)

Notes on Design

This strip map is based on the Colorado Connector brand (or “CoCo,” as the Front Range Passenger Rail District likes to call it). It also, however, adds some Colorado-specific elements, including a stylized diagram of the actual Front Range of the Rocky Mountains (the official CoCo map sorta, kinda does this) and diamond-shaped stations. It also leaves potential future expansions to the official map. A couple of notes on the CoCo brand: The fox is cute, and you can’t go wrong with western sunset colors (which also happen to be Broncos and Rockies colors). But both the logo, with its rounded font, and the map, with its cartoonish vibe, feel very much of the moment, which is not necessarily a good thing. The best transit brands are timeless — both BART and Muni have had the same logos for 50 years. The typeface is Quicksand, per the CoCo brand (the logo is Frankfurter).

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