(The following article by Patrick Driscoll was published by the San Antonio Express-News on June 20.)
SAN ANTONIO — After months of closed-door discussions about potential routes for a Toyota railroad spur in southern Bexar County, officials quietly unveiled the preferred location at a public meeting last week.
The path of the possible spur, which would link Toyota’s future manufacturing plant to a second railroad service, showed up without explanation as a hatched black line on a land-use map for the city’s South Side Initiative. Copies of the map are available from the city.
The new line, which would run east of the factory site between Mitchell Lake and Blue Wing Lake, is the favorite of six potential tracks being studied to guarantee competing railroad service to Toyota before the $800 million plant cranks up production of Tundra trucks in 2006.
“That is the one we’re looking at as the preferred route, yes,” said Seth Mitchell, one of the county employees assisting the 7-month-old Bexar County Rail District.
County officials have been loath to announce any of the routes because of the risk that property values could spike on parcels not locked up for acquisition. But they were compelled to provide the information so the city could determine land uses for 57 square miles of newly annexed land.
“The city needed to know for their planning purposes,” said Mitchell, who is intergovernmental services manager for Bexar County. “Did we know that it was going to pop up in a public planning process? I don’t know.”
On Thursday, the county released a map with the other five routes after receiving a Texas Open Records request from the San Antonio Express-News. The map, like the city’s land-use plan, doesn’t show enough details to tip off property owners, Mitchell said.
The preferred route appears to be the easiest and cheapest to build, Mitchell said. It crosses fewer rivers and creeks, and government entities already own more than half of the property needed.
Studies could show, however, that one of the other five routes is better, and officials hope to get a federal nod by October to do a final environmental study on one route.
The new rail spur could be moot if Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe agree to share railroad tracks near the Toyota site between the Medina River and Leon Creek.
Changing the preferred route or ditching it altogether would affect a fast-track effort by the city to enact zoning codes in the area by August, said Emil Moncivais, the city’s planning director. Industrial zones are eyed for land around the Toyota plant as well as along the new rail spur.
“It may change; I don’t know,” Moncivais said. “But if it does change, we can always come back and amend the plan.”
City moratoriums on rezoning and on applications for new developments in the targeted area are in effect through Aug. 5 to give officials time to apply zoning codes. Staff members might ask the City Council to extend the moratorium until October.
That’s the same month the rail district might get news from the federal Surface Transportation Board on whether a locally chosen route is worth more study.