Avon Mayor Bets I-70 Traffic Relief on Union Pacific Merger

Aspen —The most expensive infrastructure project in Eagle County history isn’t a new tunnel, a bridge, or a road widening. It’s a letter.

Avon Mayor Tamra Nottingham Underwood sent it last week to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board in Washington, D.C., supporting the merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern. On paper, this looks like a victory for local control. In practice, it’s a bet that a private corporation headquartered in Omaha will suddenly start treating mountain towns like partners rather than obstacles.

Let’s do the math on what “better communication” actually costs. It doesn’t cost a dollar in local tax revenue. It costs political capital and, potentially, years of litigation.

Underwood’s letter is blunt about the problem: Interstate 70 runs through Avon and is heavily traveled 24/7/365. Semi-truck closures on Vail Pass, at Dowd Junction, and in Glenwood Canyon directly hit the workforce and resident health. The mayor argues that moving freight from trucks to rail reduces highway congestion and road wear. It’s a logical trade-off, provided the rail actually runs smoothly.

But here is the catch that gets glossed over in support letters: Eagle County, which also backed the merger earlier this month, did so after suing Union Pacific twice to slow oil trains along the active Moffat Line. The county commissioners stated that past communication with Union Pacific was "woefully inadequate" regarding rail safety, grade crossings, and local transportation use.

So the new deal is simple: Union Pacific promises "dramatically improved" engagement, and the local government votes yes.

Avon sits on the dormant Tennessee Pass Line, which runs from Dotsero through Avon to Ski Cooper. The active Moffat Line runs past Dotsero along the Colorado River toward Winter Park. Underwood’s letter quotes Eagle County’s assurance of "improved cooperation, communications and information sharing." She doesn’t specify what that looks like.

When asked by the Vail Daily what form this newfound cooperation will take if the merger is approved, Mike Jaixen of Union Pacific began to answer. The response was cut off in the reporting, but the silence is telling. There are no specific metrics cited for "improvement." No new grade crossing safety standards were detailed. No timeline for using the dormant Tennessee Pass Line for local passenger service was offered.

For context, the active Moffat Line has been proposed for a truck-by-train rail system from Grand Junction to Denver, mirroring systems in Europe. If that happens, the volume of trucks on I-70 through Avon could drop significantly. That is a tangible benefit. But it relies entirely on the merger proceeding and Union Pacific executing its promises without another decade of legal back-and-forth.

The counterintuitive part is that Avon, a town with no active rail traffic on its own line, is betting its transportation future on the behavior of a railroad that currently ignores it. The mayor supports the merger as long as communication improves. That is a conditional support that hinges on trust, not contract.

In practice, this means locals in Avon and Eagle County are trading a known quantity — poor communication with Union Pacific — for an unknown quantity: better communication. The financial risk to taxpayers is low, but the logistical risk is high. If the "improved cooperation" fails to materialize, the semi-trucks stay on I-70, and the county is left with a merger it endorsed based on a promise rather than a guarantee.

The practical bottom line is that this decision doesn’t change the traffic on your commute tomorrow. It changes who you call when a train blocks the grade crossing at 6 a.m. on a Monday. Right now, that call goes into the void. The hope is that after this merger, it gets answered.