As an elected member of the Regional Transportation District (RTD) in Denver, Colorado, which oversees passenger and commuter rail service in that area, Kathleen Chandler has seen the challenges of public-transit rail systems up close.

She offers a word of warning to Oklahomans as local officials are calling for construction of a $1.8 billion commuter rail system covering 39 miles from Edmond to Oklahoma City to Norman.

“Look to things that have already failed,” Chandler said. “There are massive amounts of rail projects in the West that just have failed.”

It is unlikely Oklahoma City will be exempt from the challenges that have plagued commuter rail systems in other metro areas across the country.

While some forms of rail service have existed for decades in the Denver area, and officials there are calling for a massive expansion that could eventually run commuter rail from Wyoming through Colorado to New Mexico, Chandler said the reality of rail service is far different from the picture painted by many proponents.

“Our rail service is quite abysmal, for multiple reasons,” Chandler said.

Part of Denver’s rail system was originally built in the 1970s and now requires significant repairs, but the system lacks sufficient funding to address those ongoing expenses without additional tax increases.

“We have a lot of repairs that need to be done and, like any ‘good thing’ that government does, it never really takes into account the cost and the time and the energy that will be needed in order to keep something in a good state of repair,” Chandler said.

At the same time, ridership plummeted during COVID and has not fully rebounded, she said.

“Not only did commuting habits change, but they never really have recovered,” Chandler said. “Our system was built on the fact that Denver is a transit hub. And Denver itself is no longer the hub of jobs. We have, in Colorado, one of the highest rates of ‘work from home’ for a lot of reasons, and because of that our transit system has never really recovered.”

A rail service designed to move people to downtown Oklahoma City is likely to face the same challenges, based on public data. Many downtown jobs have been tied to businesses that are now relocating at least part of their workforce to other areas or states.

In recent years, as much as 25 percent of business office space in downtown Oklahoma City has been vacant, and the announced departure of employees associated with companies like Devon Energy is expected to result in an increased vacancy in downtown Oklahoma City.

In 2023, local officials estimated that around 80,000 people worked in downtown Oklahoma City, but more recent documents suggest a much lower number. The site Downtownokc.com currently reports that roughly 45,500 “extended workforce” employees work in downtown Oklahoma City, and the document states, “The change from “Employees” to “Extended Workforce” reflects a broader, more accurate workforce metric that accounts for modern work patterns beyond traditional full-time, in-office employees.” That suggests the daily number of individuals who physically work downtown may be even lower than 45,500.

But even if 45,500 people do work in downtown Oklahoma City, that means the rail service would benefit work travel for just 4.3 percent of the Oklahoma City metro residents, based on recent population estimates.

The push to create a 19th-century-style commuter rail service in Oklahoma City comes amid growing changes in transportation tied to modern technology that is also affecting the Denver area.

“The private sector is starting to step up to the plate,” Chandler said. “We have Uber, Lyft, taxi services, Waymo. The private sector is coming to the rescue of the transit agency and making it far better.”

Waymo and other self-driving cars could account for a growing share of transportation needs in coming years. Since June 2025, Tesla Robotaxi has operated self-driving cars in Austin, Texas, that can be hailed via an online app. The service is expected to expand to other parts of the country over time.

Meanwhile, rail service nationwide is drawing fewer riders while overall costs increase. That routinely leads to tax increases to keep the rail systems afloat.

The proposed Colorado Connector service, a passenger rail service that could eventually run from Wyoming to New Mexico, running alongside Interstate 25 through Colorado, will require a tax increase to launch the service. Local Colorado voters will consider that tax-hike plan in November.

Chandler said the Regional Transportation District in Denver will also have to submit another tax increase to voters in 2028 to help fund existing rail service in the Denver area.

“We are going to have to go to the ballot in 2028 because we are $225 million in the red this year alone, and we cannot keep that up with the unsustainability of that deficit,” Chandler said.

That proposed sales tax increase will impact seven counties in the Denver metro area.

Those tax increases will come on top of existing taxpayer subsidies, including some that have been hiked in recent years. Passenger rail service in Colorado also receives funding from a portion of a recently enacted rental-car fee and an oil-and-gas fee, Chandler noted.

In many important ways, passenger rail service is an antiquated idea that is not compatible with the needs of the modern workforce, Chandler noted. Put simply, she said people across most of the U.S., aside from some portions of the Northeast, “don’t want to be tethered to a rail system” and prefer the independence provided by an automobile.

“We are not the East Coast,” Chandler said. “It works (there) because they built their cities around the rail.”

Also, rail systems restrict economic activity to a confined area that is basically within walking distance of a station, she noted. For business growth to occur outside that narrow stretch requires rail passengers to have access to automobiles at their departure site, which undermines much of the rationale for installing expensive rail systems in the first place.

“Do you want just two miles on each side of the rail system to be economically viable and not the rest?” Chandler asked. “You’re going to create a desert. Because once you get off a rail product, you still need to have some other kind of transportation unless you only let people get as far as their feet will take them.”