(The following story by Patrick Miller appeared on the Albuquerque Journal website on January 21.)
ABLUQUERQUE, N.M. — State transportation officials are considering several options for the route of the rail line that would be used to link Santa Fe with points south as part of a regional commuter train system.
The various alternatives— all designed to get around the steep climb at La Bajada— were presented at a Regional Planning Authority meeting Thursday at Sweeney Convention Center.
Gov. Bill Richardson is pushing a commuter rail system linking Belen at the south end with Santa Fe to the north. The $75 million Belen-Albuquerque line is planned to be operational by the fall.
The governor predicted earlier this month, in announcing state acquisition of the 18-mile rail corridor extending from Santa Fe to Eldorado and Lamy, that commuter trains will be hauling passengers between Albuquerque and Santa Fe by 2008.
But just what route the trains would take into Santa Fe remains an open question. State Transportation Secretary Rhonda Faught has said that the Albuquerque-Santa Fe line likely would involve laying new tracks that would link up with the existing Santa Fe Southern Railway route— the route recently purchased by the state— close to St. Francis Drive near Interstate 25.
Although many Eldorado residents saw the purchase of Santa Fe Southern’s 18-mile right-of-way as the first step in bringing commuter rail service to their community, they might want to scale back their hopes for the time being, said Patricia Oliver-Wright, strategic planner for the state Department of Transportation, at Thursday’s meeting.
“The Santa Fe Southern alignment through Eldorado is one of the options we’re looking at (for the Albuquerque-Santa Fe route), but we have to look at a series of alternatives,” she said.
The state is considering a few different alignments, which range from laying new track to following existing rights-of-way or long-abandoned railbeds, she said.
All of the proposed routes would branch off from existing Burlington Northern tracks south of Santa Fe. The Burlington Northern tracks run along east-west from Lamy to Cerrillos to Santo Domingo Pueblo, then head south.
One idea for getting trains up from Albuquerque is to tap into Burlington Northern’s line near Bernalillo. The proposed line would parallel I-25 to the Waldo exit. From there, it would make a jog east to near Waldo near the bottom of the hill, then head north again to follow I-25 into Santa Fe, where it would connect with Santa Fe Southern track near St. Francis Drive.
Routing the tracks through Waldo would avoid having to scale steep La Bajada, Oliver-Wright said.
Another possible— and less ambitious— plan calls for building a spur that would connect Burlington Northern track south of Lamy with Santa Fe Southern track to the north. The spur would bypass a twisting section of existing track that makes commuter service difficult, Oliver-Wright said.
A third possibility is laying track along N.M. 14 right-of-way from the Burlington Northern tracks near Cerrillos. The advantage of this route, as well as for the I-25 option, is that the state already owns the right-of-way. Sometimes building new tracks is less expensive than purchasing rights-of-way, Oliver-Wright said.
Still another option would be to purchase the right-of-way of an old mining railroad east of N.M. 14. Called the Kennedy line, the old railway cuts through the Rancho Viejo subdivision near Santa Fe Community College.
Public input, costs and a host of other factors will decide which proposed route makes the cut, Oliver-Wright said. The state is sensitive to the idea of a local commuter service linking Eldorado and Santa Fe, but Santa Fe city government and Santa Fe County will have the final say in the matter, she said.
“There are definitely plans in the works for passenger rail service between Eldorado and Santa Fe, but it’s not quite as far along. It’s more of a city and county plan,” she said.
At Thursday’s meeting, Santa Fe City Councilor Karen Heldmeyer said the Regional Planning Authority— a joint city-county body— will ultimately be responsible for Eldorado’s rail service, should it ever come to pass.
The city hasn’t made the route a front-burner issue until now, she said, but the state’s acquisition of the right-of-way and its ambitious plan to bring rail service to Santa Fe from Albuquerque by 2008 has awakened the City Council to the issue, she said.
The city can’t go forward with an Eldorado plan of its own until the state signs off on not only the winning route for the Albuquerque commuter service, but also settles a host of legal issues, including just who is going to provide the trains and maintain the tracks, Oliver-Wright said.