(The following article by Stephan Salisbury was posted on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on May 22.)
PHILADELPHIA — Back in 1997, back in the days when Conrail rode the tracks in Philadelphia, a driver could head on down 49th Street all the way, practically, to the Schuylkill.
No obstructions. No roadblocks. No mounds, mountains or piles.
Maybe it wasn’t a New Jersey freeway in the wee, wee hours. But it was passable.
No more.
The CSX Transportation Corp. railroad, which took over chunks of Conrail in 1998, promptly blocked off 49th Street just east of Grays Avenue, where old track crossed the roadway.
It’s been garbage time there ever since.
Mountains of garbage, say some.
“I’ve seen it,” said John Moffo, facilities manager with the city Streets Department, who works out of an old warehouse complex on Botanic Avenue.
And that discarded junk and trash tells a small tale of why things are the way they are in a sprawling, messy city.
Moffo laments that 49th used to cross Botanic Avenue. But now it ends in a locked gate and chain-link fence more than half a block west of the avenue, closing down the final two-block stretch of 49th Street before it hits the river.
“The [blocked] street there was piled I don’t know how high – just mounds,” recalled Moffo. “Unbelievable.”
“Short dumping?” he continued, referring to illegal disposal of trash and other materials. “Big time.”
Several recent visits to the site in Southwest Philadelphia showed there were not exactly mountains of garbage. Just molehills. And lots of them. Bursting bags of black plastic, chocked with reeking refuse. Piles of plastic canisters. Fields of blank, shiny CD-ROMs.
According to documents on file at the Public Utility Commission, CSX applied to the city for a temporary construction permit to close off 49th Street for roadbed repair in 1998.
The city complied, although officials opposed any permanent closing of 49th Street.
Nevertheless, the temporary closure became permanent. The railroad never bothered to take its fences down, according to state documents.
In 2001, the PUC fined CSX $35,000 for closing and altering the crossing without state authorization. The commission then granted retroactive approval, over loud objections from the city.
“The problem we had is, you just don’t go in and close off a public street,” said Robert Wright, an engineering and planning official with the Streets Department. “It’s been there a long, long time. It’s a public street. The legal status of 49th Street is that it is stilla legally open public street.”
As far as CSX was concerned, company officials said at the time, a closed crossing is a safer crossing. As part of the takeover of Conrail routes, CSX planned to upgrade the track that crossed 49th Street – known as the Chester Secondary line, which had been unused for about 15 years – and start running freight trains.
At the same time, the railroad upgraded the decrepit viaduct over 51st Street.
Moffo remembers the day when 49th Street was closed.
“We used to use 49th to come down here,” Moffo said the other day while sitting in an office at the Botanic Avenue facility. “I couldn’t believe it when I made the turn on the street. ‘Uh-oh. What’s going on here? Trains?’ Now we have to go down to 51st Street. We used to use 49th Street.”
The 2001 PUC order retroactively approving the street closure states that the railroad, “having agreed to do so, at its sole cost and expense, will maintain the fencing, crossing and asphalt approaches” at 49th Street.
Robert T. Sullivan, spokesman for CSX, said that language meant only that the railroad was responsible for keeping the area within the fences in good shape. It has nothing to do with the street immediately outside the fence, he added.
City officials were not so sure about that interpretation.
In any event, it is the city that has repeatedly cleaned up the mess on the street, according to streets department officials.
CSX’s Sullivan said that after being contacted about the matter by The Inquirer, CSX has asked city officials about the matter.
The dumping problem “appears to be the responsibility of someone other than CSX,” said Sullivan. However, he added, “We’ve reached out to the city. If there is an issue we will work with them.”
Wright, of the Streets Department, said the problem is ongoing along railroad rights-of-way across the city.
“This is an issue we have with the railroads in town,” he said, adding that SEPTA is an offender, as well as Norfolk Southern and CSX.
“They don’t see this because they’re in Florida,” Wright said of CSX officials. “But people come in on Amtrak and they see what the right-of-way looks like.”
In a nutshell, Wright said with a sigh, railroads and their routes provide convenient “short-dumping sites,” adding that the PUC order authorizing closure of 49th Street contained “ambiguous terms.”
“We’ve been cleaning it,” he said, of the street. “But it’s a burden.”