(The following column by Jon M. Hunter appeared on the Madison Daily Leader website on March 10.)
MADISON, S.D. — The Mayo Clinic, long an opponent to the Dakota Minnesota & Eastern Railroad’s plans to upgrade lines through Rochester, is now shifting its attention to making the upgrade as safe as possible.
The clinic and the city of Rochester had pushed for a bypass around the city, saying the trains would run too close to the famous medical center and disrupt public safety with its frequent trains.
The strategies for forcing the DM&E to reroute around Rochester didn’t work. So the clinic is asking the federal Surface Transportation Board to require the Canadian Pacific Railway (the railroad’s proposed new owner) and DM&E to carry out a list of mitigating actions. These include overpasses or tunnels on major Rochester streets that cross the DM&E tracks, whistle-free crossings, fencing and soundproofing where the tracks pass near pedestrian areas and the Mayo campus, speed limits on freight trains and a process for consulting with public officials about the movement of potentially hazardous freight.
In other words, the Mayo Clinic is pushing for the construction of a modern railroad with state-of-the-art features. It’s a course of action that should be embraced by Canadian Pacific and DM&E.
This isn’t the late 1800s, when much of the rail in this region was first laid down. Our standards have changed for almost everything dealing with transportation: automobile crossings, noise, safety, air quality and other environmental issues.
If a railroad is going to spend $2 billion on upgrading a line, they should do it right, from stem to stern. It’s a great opportunity for Canadian Pacific and DM&E to build a world-class system that can be held as the new standard in rail transportation. We urge them to work with all constituents to make that happen.