(The following article by Matt Leedy was posted on the Fresno Bee website on January 23.)
FRESNO, Calif. — Trains have always chugged through northwest Fresno, and some residents fear the vibrating growls from freight and passenger cars will soon become noisier and more frequent.
About 3.5 miles of new track will be laid alongside the existing line in the Figarden Loop area, allowing trains to pass each other without stopping, if officials with Caltrans and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co. have their way.
The California Department of Transportation will spend $12.7 million to lengthen what is now a two-mile turnout to create the passing track. Currently, one train must wait on the turnout track for another to pass.
BNSF officials won’t say when construction could begin but believe the project will take a year to finish.
The passing track is needed to accommodate an increasing number of trains and to help them reach their destinations faster, BNSF officials say.
But plans for the passing track anger City Council Member Brian Calhoun, who represents northwest Fresno, and some of the residents who live close to the BNSF track. They fear the noise created by two passing trains rolling within 20 feet of neighborhoods will be too loud.
Northwest neighbors will have a chance to voice their opinions and ask questions about the project Thursday night at a community meeting with Caltrans and BNSF representatives in the Figarden Elementary School cafeteria.
Calhoun wants to know why the passing track can’t be added to a rural area, and he points to fields in Madera County, just a few miles north of the Figarden Loop, as a better alternative.
“Why do this here, when just a few miles away you have fields?” asks Calhoun, who says he first heard about plans for a passing track almost four years ago and has been voicing his objections ever since.
He has complained about the plan, and asked for details about why the passing track is planned for the Figarden Loop area. But Calhoun says he has been given no details, only the explanation: It’s better for train traffic.
“That may be the case,” Calhoun says. “But show me the facts.”
Calhoun has convinced the city of Fresno to pay $10,000 for a firm to study the details of the passing track plan. “We’ve got to have some way to know what [BNSF and Caltrans] are talking about.” But he concedes there’s little the city can do to stop the project because the railway company owns the land.
“I’m just the local guy in this,” he says.
The BNSF railroad tracks cut diagonally through the Figarden area, parallel to Freeway 99. The turnout runs next to the main track and extends from about Shaw Avenue to Figarden Drive. Plans call for that turnout track to be lengthened on one end by 2.5 miles from Figarden Drive to the San Joaquin River and by about a mile on the other end from Shaw Avenue to West Avenue.
BNSF officials say the passing track will keep trains moving through Fresno at a quicker pace and reduce the time motorists wait at crossings.
Amtrak trains share the BNSF track with freight trains and the passing track will help those trains run on time, says Lena Kent, a BNSF spokeswoman. Train congestion at the Fresno depot also will be cleared up.
The passing track also is needed to keep up with the growing number of trains that pass through Fresno on the BNSF line — from 30 trains a day three years ago to 50 trains a day now. With or without the passing track, the number of trains will likely continue to increase, Kent says.
“Train traffic will continue to increase as more and more containers come in through the ports of Oakland,” she says.
Most freight trains that travel the line start in Oakland or the Pacific Northwest and deliver their cargo to destinations throughout the country.
The Figarden Loop is considered a bottleneck that Kent says will be opened up with the passing track.
Calhoun says residents have complained about that bottleneck for years because trains would stay parked on the Figarden Loop turnout for days — often with their engines running.
Calhoun and others say an extended passing track would allow more trains to park just beyond the backyard fences of many residents.
Not so, says Kent.
“You won’t have trains sitting there waiting. That’s the whole reason for a passing track,” she says.
The new track also will allow trains to travel the Figarden Loop area at a faster clip. They now travel through the area at 40 mph. With the passing track, passenger trains could double their speeds and freight trains could hit 70 mph.
If the passing track is installed in the Figarden Loop area and not somewhere else, such as Madera County, northwest Fresno residents won’t have to look and listen to idling parked trains, Kent says.
If the turnout is not extended and the passing track is put somewhere else, the problem of parked trains in Figarden Loop will only become worse, she says, adding: “I think that’s exactly what residents don’t want.”
Randy Moens has lived in the Figarden Loop for 15 years. Their property is about 10 to 15 feet from the BNSF main track and the parallel turnout track.
The turnout track has long doubled as a “parking lot,” Moens says, but he’s just as concerned about the noise created by two trains running by his house if a passing track is created.
He also fears a mishap could cause passing trains to crash.
“What goes through my mind is, ‘What happens if those trains don’t catch the track just right when they’re passing each other?'” says Moens, 48. “I see cars labeled liquid petroleum and I think, ‘God, this is practically in my backyard.'”
Moens’ wife, Monica, says the noise created by a passing track, “would be a little too much” and she worries about her children: Destiny, 13, and Moriah, 8.
“What if something ever went wrong? It would be a mess back there,” she says.
“And I would for sure worry about my children going back there.”
Tom Bailey, president of Fresno Area for Rail Consolidation, is against the project, saying it would create noise and air pollution and complicate the effort to move railroad tracks outside the city.
He says construction of the passing track will stir up dust and dirt and, once it’s finished, he thinks trains will stop there with their engines running.
The 3.5 miles of new track also would add millions of dollars to the cost of moving the line during proposed rail consolidation.
Kent says BNSF will “continue to cooperate with studies on rail consolidation,” but she adds that “rail consolidation is still years away, and we need to improve our efficiency now.”