The Rio Grande Pacific Railroad project also known as the Uinta Basin Railway is a development that is being driven by the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition. The Coalition is currently comprised of seven counties Carbon, Daggett, Duchesne, Emery, San Juan, Sevier and Uintah.
“We’re excited about this project its to build a $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion railroad connecting the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah with the national railway system with Union Pacific Railroad and BNSF Railway. We’ve got four different routes that are under consideration by the federal government, who gets to choose which route we build. Three of those routes come out at the top of the Price River Canyon where the Emma Park Road touches U.S. 6 and the other route goes east into Colorado reaches the Union Pacific Railroad of Craig,” explained Rio Grande Senior Vice President, Mark Hamphill. The goal is to get the railway under construction by January of 2021 with the railway taking about two years to be fully constructed and should be operational by 2023.
“We’ll also have construction jobs we anticipate around 1,500 employees on average for construction for two years and we hope most of those jobs come from Carbon and Emery Counties and from the basin and this area, Utah, we would like them to be all local,” stated Hamphill. “We’re excited about what this will do for Carbon County we think it will create a lot of jobs not just in the Basin but in Carbon County as well. We anticipate hiring 50 to 100 employees for the railroad itself. We anticipate that BNSF and UP will hire people in Helper, in Price area to help run their trains that we give to them and we interchange with them.”
This is a public/private partnership that is involved in the project with the public side being the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition. “Each of those counties has a County Commissioner that sits on the board and their goal is to create infrastructure projects that provide economic benefit to their counties. That’s the public partner, their responsibility in this project is to do the Environmental Impact Statement. I work on the private side for Rio Grande Pacific we own the shortline railroad so we have an equity partner in New York called Drexler Hamilton they’re the bank. We’ll provide a $1.5 billion in financing to build the railroad and we also hope to have the Ute Tribe as a partner in it as well,” said Hamphill.
The new year will bring monthly Public Stakeholder Meetings that the public will be invited to attend. To learn more about the Uinta Basin Railroad visit their website at http://uintabasinrailway.com/ or visit their Facebook page.