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Trains Once Again Subject Of Controversy In Fort Collins

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (CBS4) - Fort Collins is getting grief from taxpayers over a traffic study because the price tag for the research is $50,000.

Despite the region's growth, city officials say traffic is not the problem -- it's the trains and all the switching activity that goes on near the heart of the city.

At the intersection of Riverside and Lemay avenues in Fort Collins approaching trains signal dread for drivers. Union Pacific and Great Western Railway operate a switch yard at the location, and as trains get longer, the delays do as well.

In the past decade the average delay has more than doubled from 2 1/2 minutes to 5 1/2 minutes. Some waits run up to an hour.

"The frustrating thing is when they're really, really long, or when they stop to switch out stations," Fort Collins resident Laura Lawrence said.

"It's a part of life in Fort Collins," Fort Collins resident Dan Lundmark said.

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Fort Collins city leaders recognize the problem.

"It's probably more complicated than it sounds," city traffic engineer Joe Olson said.

Generic Train Crossing Train Tracks4
(credit: CBS)

Olson defends the city's decision to spend $50,000 hiring a consultant to study what's going on, despite some criticism.

"The traffic issues are obvious, but the reasons that it's happening as far as the blockages and going back and forth are things that we need to understand," Olson said.

Lundmark says finding a solution should not take a study.

"The trains aren't going away, the traffic is not going away, growth isn't going away," Lundmark said. "This has to become a viaduct -- and that's free."

Any changes would have to first go through Colorado's Public Utilities Commission.

The city's short-term fix to change traffic signals is expected to be in place by summer.

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