April 23, 2025 10:37 AM UTC

Boebert's Bumbling Attempt To Kill Front Range Rail Has An Ugly Subtext

• 6 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

As Denver7’s Robert Garrison reports, now that Colorado’s bumbling blunderbuss of bluster Rep. Lauren Boebert has successfully carpetbagged her way from the Western Slope to Colorado’s Eastern Plains, she needs local issues to sound off about so as to give the appearance of representing a specific congressional district instead of her vast social media constituency. And Boebert appears to have found one, in a factually-deficient attempt to thwart the development of the Front Range Passenger Rail project:

The Republican congresswoman announced Tuesday that she is seeking Elon Musk’s help stopping federal funds from going to the Front Range Passenger Rail Project (FRPR) despite Colorado footing the bill for construction…

Boebert sent a letter to U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) calling for a reevaluation of federal funds already scheduled for the proposed project.

In her letter to the Department of Transportation and co-President Elon Musk, Boebert claims that the Front Range Passenger Rail project will harm Douglas County’s “quality of life,” without specifying why or how:

“As I continue to hear from leaders and constituents across Douglas County, it’s clear there are serious concerns with the Front Range Passenger Rail proposal that will harm our community’s quality of life [Pols emphasis] and cost hundreds of millions in state and federal funds,” said Congresswoman Boebert. “Our nation owes more than $36 trillion in debt, and we simply cannot afford spending resources on projects that will not benefit most Coloradans. It’s imperative that DOGE and USDOT reevaluate the importance of this project before we spend another dollar.”

Unfortunately for Boebert, as Denver7 continues, Front Range Rail can’t be stopped by cutting off allocated federal funds any more than Tina Peters can be pardoned by Donald Trump:

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis claims no federal funds are planned for the project’s construction [Pols emphasis] and that only $2 million in federal dollars was used for a study that is scheduled to be completed this year.

In the letter to government officials, Boebert claimed the project would hurt Douglas County residents but did not provide specifics…

Now that we’ve established Boebert’s threats against Front Range Rail are fiscally toothless, let’s take a moment to discuss what’s really going on here: pandering to exurban Douglas County conservatives, who consider public transportation to be an invitation to what they describe in public as “the riff raff” and in private in much more offensive terms. It’s the same reason why the town of Castle Rock is conspicuously absent from the available stops of the Bustang regional bus from Denver to Colorado Springs. In Washington, D.C., the lack of a Metro station in the affluent Georgetown neighborhood is regularly attributed to efforts by white residents to prevent its construction–and while the reality there is more complicated, the story has proven motivational for both sides of the debate.

For a relatively small number of influential wealthy conservatives, a lack of public transportation to their community is a good thing, even if the rest of the community would overwhelmingly benefit like Castle Rock would from a Front Range Rail station.

It should come as no surprise that those are the voters Lauren Boebert has chosen to pander to.