(The following article by Elizabeth Allen was posted on the San Antonio Express-News website on September 9.)
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Drivers who are tired of playing chicken with big trucks on congested highways can only look forward to more of the same — unless the railroads take more freight off the roads, officials said Thursday at a transportation conference.
But for that to happen in any meaningful way, those drivers must be willing to sacrifice tax dollars to help pay for rail improvements.
Then they’ll have to be patient while government officials and the railroad industry try to find a common language.
Railroad officials talked about cooperation at the San Antonio Regional Transportation Leadership Forum, but always with the caveat that it be on their terms.
“When it makes sense for my shareholders, when it makes sense for my customers, we’re willing to put the investment in,” Union Pacific Railroad President Jim Young said in Thursday’s keynote speech.
And bureaucrats at the state level are only now starting to adopt the notion that transportation is a network of different ways to get around.
“When I got there, we were the highway guys,” said Tom Norton, director of Colorado’s Department of Transportation and a panelist on public/private rail partnerships.
Norton is overseeing a massive rail bypass project that would move much freight traffic out of that state’s metropolitan areas along the Front Range of the Rockies, and onto its eastern plains.
Railroad companies normally use private capital to pay for their improvements, and banks don’t tend to lend money just to see a return in cleaner air, reduced congestion and better traffic safety, said panel moderator Seth Mitchell, Bexar County’s chief of staff.
And with strong economic growth projections, the railroad industry will need billions more in investment dollars than it could get on its own, said panelist Scott Moore, UP’s public/private partnerships general manager.
Moore listed the public benefits of cooperation between railroads and government: moving freight traffic out of busy urban areas, economic development, reduced train-vehicle accidents, and possibly passenger rail — although people aren’t nearly as profitable as freight, he noted.
Moore also said he expects the public sector to pay for those public benefits.
With the gas tax dwindling as a source of highway funds, state and local officials are looking at new ways to pay for roads.
The Texas Legislature has extended one of those new options to rail, said Phillip Russell, Texas Turnpike Authority director. Russell said government can now consider using comprehensive development agreements, which are master plans by private developers on major infrastructure projects, to finance rail projects.