(The following column by David Hendricks appeared on the San Antonio Express-News website on September 20.)
LAREDO — Twenty-five people died last weekend when a commuter rail train collided with a Union Pacific Corp. freight train.
It’s just one more reason Union Pacific can use to derail the proposed San Antonio-Austin passenger service.
“Freight and passengers don’t mix,” James Young, Union Pacific chairman, chief executive and president, declared during the Laredo Development Foundation’s annual logistics conference this week.
For five years, a San Antonio-Austin commuter rail district has tried to plan passenger rail service predicated on using or sharing Union Pacific’s existing tracks.
Those tracks are critical to Union Pacific because it carries freight between Laredo and Chicago and other points. The goal has been to relocate Union Pacific’s route to the east so that freight not delivered to San Antonio and Austin can bypass the two cities, making room for passenger service and reducing train traffic in urban areas.
Track relocation talks between Omaha, Neb.-based Union Pacific and the Texas Department of Transportation started in 2005, but negotiations on routes and splitting the costs have bogged down.
On Thursday, Young said relocation might not be best solution. “You start talking about relocating a railroad, you can very quickly get to a billion-dollar proposition,” he said.
A better solution, he said, could be paying for additional safety measures in cities, such as rail underpasses and overpasses. “You still get the benefit” of relocation, Young said.
As for negotiations with the Austin-San Antonio Intermunicipal Commuter Rail District, Young said only: “We have a long way to go.”
Separate from the district’s planning efforts, Amtrak and TxDOT want to contract a study on whether Amtrak could operate between six and 17 trains a day between San Antonio and Austin, using Amtrak’s statutory authority to use freight tracks.
Young said that frequency would disrupt Union Pacific’s service and warned against the consequences.
“The easy thing to say is, ‘Give the money and start passenger service,’” he said. “I can’t, and I’m not going to, sell the franchise. The outcome of that would be that you end up with more trucks on the highway, which is exactly the worst thing. There are physical limits on how much traffic can go on a rail line, and we must keep the long-term view here. I think railroads moving more freight is one of the solutions.”
After safety, Union Pacific’s top priority is customer satisfaction because it retains and expands jobs in cities where the company operates, Young said. Shifting rail routes means moving away from companies that receive and send shipments, and that could lead to job losses.
Beyond that, Union Pacific owns the tracks and the land around them. The company can call the shots when it comes to relocation negotiations.
If Amtrak service does not materialize in the next two years, and if Union Pacific relocation remains unlikely, few options exist. Sid Covington of Austin, the commuter rail district board’s chairman, said he is asking the board to consider piggybacking new rail onto the land alongside the Texas 130 toll road east of Interstate 35.
Part of the toll highway, near East Austin, has been built. The rest of the Georgetown-to-Seguin route is in an advanced stage of planning. Moving the passenger train service there would leave out New Braunfels and San Marcos, which is not ideal, Covington said.
Ross Milloy, director of the Greater Austin-San Antonio Corridor Council, said he believes the state still can find a way to satisfy Union Pacific with a new route, one that can handle more freight for more customers and more efficiently.
Rail relocation necessary to accommodate passenger service will be up to the Texas Legislature. Most of the funding must come from taxpayers. The financial terms and the new route would have to be exactly what Union Pacific wants.
Otherwise, Union Pacific can stay where it is, and passenger service remains what it is now: a dream.