(The following editorial was posted on the Great Falls Tribune website on September 28.)
GREAT FALLS, Mont. — It’s not a big surprise that seven of Montana’s 10 most endangered rail lines serve this part of the state.
It’s still sobering, though, to see just how dramatic the decline in rail traffic over those routes in the past dozen years really was. For example:
— 1,747 carloads traveled the Big Sandy-to-Havre route in 1991; last year traffic was down to 282 carloads.
— The Moore-to-Lewistown line declined from 635 carloads in ’91 to just 17 in 2003.
— Great Falls-to-Fort Benton went from 3,600 carloads to 1,381.
These data and more were part of a multi-department state study of rail lines. The purpose is to inventory rail traffic and, because rail service is a component of economic development, to see if anything can be done to forestall more closures.
“We were trying to get ahead of the branch line abandonment process for a change,” Department of Transportation Director Dave Galt said, “instead of reacting every time BN (the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway) does something.”
Many reasons are given for the declines, not the least of which are drought-diminished crops in recent years and the growing Conservation Reserve Program, which takes crop land out of production.
But the main reason appears to be simple economics, driven by railroad rate structures that encourage consolidation of grain-loading at a relative few centralized high-capacity railroad facilities.
Once farmers decide to sell their grain, where to sell it is a straightforward decision: wherever they can make the most money.
In the past that usually meant hauling the grain from the farm to a nearby town’s elevator, where it was loaded onto trains.
What’s changing is the distance between the farms and the elevators. It’s cheaper to load grain at efficient, high-speed “shuttle loaders,” so the railroad charges less for the service at those facilities.
“Our vision and our approach is to focus on what we do best, and we think that is to provide a high-volume, far-reaching mainline trainload network,” said Patrick Hiatte, a BNSF spokesman in Fort Worth, Texas.
That vision requires farmers to truck their grain a little farther — sometimes a lot farther — bypassing their local elevators.
More studies and federal and state legislation are in the works, and none of the “spur” lines is in immediate danger, so precipitous action isn’t required.
But before any more lines do close, we (in the form of our state and federal government) should at the very least understand fully just whose interests are being served by such closures.
The equation should include big-picture perspectives on such things as overall fuel consumption, wear and tear on the region’s roads and highways, development precluded by the absence of a railroad, and the domino effect of yet another local business (the elevator) closing its doors.
In other words, we need to understand the full effect of making thousands of farmers truck grain farther.
Only then will we know whether progress for the railroad coincides with progress for the state of Montana.