(The following story by Russell Clemings appeared on The Fresno Bee website on October 20.)
FRESNO, Calif. — On a typical day, more than two dozen freight trains pass through Fresno without stopping. They make noise and snarl traffic on some of the city’s busiest streets.
Now, a consultant for two agencies is considering whether all those trains — along with nonstop trains in the state’s proposed high-speed passenger rail system — should be diverted to new tracks looping west of the city.
The Council of Fresno County Governments and the California High Speed Rail Authority are jointly funding a study on how to meld high-speed rail with another long-sought project, consolidating the city’s Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail lines. An express loop is one option for accommodating both projects.
Creating such a loop could remove many trains from the city’s heart while speeding travel for both freight and passengers that don’t stop here. But it also would reverse a decision made three years ago to put all the high-speed system’s Fresno traffic — local and express trains alike — in or next to the UP corridor.
“It’s going to take a lot to change that,” said Carrie Pourvahidi, deputy director of the California High Speed Rail Authority, which has plans for a system that goes to voters Nov. 4 as Proposition 1A, a $9.95 billion bond measure.
Merging the UP and BNSF tracks into a single corridor has been a dream of city leaders since World War I. The tracks parallel each other, with the UP hugging Highway 99 and the BNSF coursing through the city a mile or so east.
In late 2006, voters gave the idea a major boost by extending Measure C, Fresno County’s half-cent transportation sales tax, for a second 20-year term. The extension included $102.5 million as a down payment on rail consolidation.
Adding high-speed rail to the mix, however, presents a challenge that is simple to grasp if not solve: how to wedge eight sets of tracks — two for each freight railroad, plus pairs of local and express tracks for high-speed rail — into an already built-up city.
Laid out side by side, the eight tracks would require a 231-foot-wide corridor. That’s more than twice the 100-foot width of the existing Union Pacific corridor through much of the city.
Moving express tracks to their own corridor west of town could reduce the city corridor to 125 feet. But that’s not the only option under review. The consultant, URS Corp., also is looking at ways to squeeze the extra tracks into the current UP corridor or next to it.
“In order to get into that alignment, it might be necessary to elevate or trench” some of the tracks, said the study’s manager, Sandy Stadtfeld.
How much any of the options would cost, where they would go or when they could be built won’t be known until they are evaluated further. The study’s results are expected early next year, and even if Proposition 1A passes, the first high-speed rail service would be a decade away.
The state authority is helping pay for the study even though its board already decided all high-speed trains should use the UP corridor in Fresno. An analysis for that decision said a bypass would add more than $700 million to the high-speed system’s cost while consuming valuable farmland.
Ultimately, whatever approach is adopted will require cooperation from the freight railroads. Both are providing data to the study but won’t commit to any solution.
“We really can’t comment further until we see the substance,” said BNSF spokeswoman Lena Kent.
Even if all the parties agreed, there would be other hurdles. Land is expensive. Farmland protection is a sensitive issue. The $102 million from Measure C would cover only a sliver of the cost. Whether the high-speed system would contribute money is iffy. So is railroad cooperation. And no one is even guessing when such a project could be completed.
For now, Stadtfeld said, it’s just a matter of deciding which alternatives deserve to be pursued further: “All of this is just in the spirit of looking at every option.”