(The following column by Peter Callaghan appeared on the News Tribune website on June 29.)
TACOMA, Wash. — What is it about 135 years of local history that makes me not trust the railroad?
Besides all of it, I mean.
Being from the town that was made and slowly broken by the Northern Pacific Railway, it’s hard to find an episode that makes me feel warm and cuddly toward the company.
So when Burlington Northern Santa Fe tells Tacoma that it has a great deal for it but that the city has to decide right now or the deal goes poof, I get a bit worried. Rather than grab for the noisemakers and party hats, I can’t help but clutch for my wallet instead.
Because from its creation by the signature of Abraham Lincoln, what is now known as BNSF has made lots of money taking towns like Tacoma for a ride.
Doubt it? The Washington Constitution and the Tacoma city charter have sections created solely to make it harder for governments to be taken advantage of by the railroads.
Washington has an archaic-sounding section prohibiting elected officials from taking free tickets from the railroads. It also bans the lending of public credit to private companies, primarily to keep the railroad from demanding tax dollars in exchange for connecting a town to the mainline.
And Tacoma prohibits the sale of waterfront property because then-Mayor Angelo Fawcett, who in 1911 finally acquired a measly 350 feet on what is now the Foss Waterway, was sure the railroad would succeed in buying it back once it had him recalled by voters.
So forgive me for worrying that a deal between the city and the railroad that was set in motion last week might not be as good as it looks.
The city gets a 20-foot swath of the historic Prairie Line right of way in return for agreeing to close the A Street underpass that connects the Foss Waterway with Puyallup Avenue.
The line that in 1873 brought the first Northern Pacific train to tidewater on the West Coast will be transformed – eventually – into a bike path and walking path. It will run from the Foss, through the University of Washington Tacoma and on to South 27th Street. From there it could link with the proposed Water Ditch Trail and run all the way to the southern boundary of the city.
That’s cool. But why can’t we get all 80 feet of the right of way to make sure that the trail isn’t lined with undesirable development or left unkempt as it is now?
And why is everyone in such a hurry to seal a deal that the people, and some City Council members, have known about for just a few weeks?
The council was told last week that it could reject the issue before it, authorizing city staff to complete the series of negotiations with BNSF. But that would require a reopening of the talks with the railroad.
“I don’t know what the outcome of that would be,” said city economic development director Ryan Petty, suggesting that the Prairie Line acquisition – at least the donation of it – would be in danger.
“BNSF has been wrangled into this,” Petty said. “They don’t want to give up the Prairie Line.”
But it’s not like BNSF isn’t equally eager for a deal since it also is getting city cooperation, and some property, that allows a Denver company to redevelop the railroad’s long-closed South Tacoma shops into a distribution center serviced by 1,000 truck trips a day. It would make a fair amount of cash with that. (Isn’t that the same property that symbolizes the final abandonment of Tacoma by Northern Pacific?)
And what, exactly, can it do with the Prairie Line that makes it any money? If anything, having a city-funded trail in the middle makes it worth more, not less.
Yet we’re told that any delay to allow those questions to be asked, any chance to involve the public in the conversation, would unravel the deal. And the council, played skillfully by city staff, has to go along.
Which is exactly how to run a railroad, if you’re the railroad.