(The following story by John Dodge appeared on The Olympian website on April 3.)
OLYMPIA, Wash. — Anyone who regularly drives through downtown Olympia has surely seen the Tri-City & Olympia Railroad Company at work.
Five days a week, the company’s 279,000-pound black and white engine is busy pulling or pushing freight cars on a railroad line that runs from the Port of Olympia marine terminal to Union Avenue.
To get from the port to Union Avenue, the engine and the eight to 10 freight cars attached to it have to pass through 13 street intersections.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably seen motorists making mad dashes across those intersections even when the railroad intersection signals are flashing.
The train isn’t moving fast — 10 mph or so — but there’s a close call with a motorist just about every day, said Wayne Harner, the company’s Olympia office manager.
And even a slow-moving train doesn’t stop on a dime.
“Safety is a huge concern,” the likeable Hoquiam native said. “The last thing we want to do is hit somebody.”
Some motorists like to play chicken with the train, which debuted in Olympia in 2003 when the company signed a lease with the port to move cargo — chiefly aluminum arriving by ship from Russia — off the pier and across town to the start of the Union Pacific Railroad spur that runs about seven miles out to East Olympia and the main Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. Tacoma Rail runs the Tri-City & Olympia freight cars out to the main line.
More often than not, a motorist who ignores the railroad crossing signals simply ends up stuck at a red light one block away.
In other words, is anything gained by beating the train across the tracks?
I don’t think so, especially when you consider how much the drivers and passengers in the cars and trucks have to lose.
“We tread very carefully and very lightly through downtown Olympia,” said Dave Samples, director of business development for the Richland-based railway. A former law enforcement officer, Samples has witnessed the aftermath of car-train collisions. “The car will come out the loser every time,” he said.
Company officials said the Jefferson Street-Seventh Avenue intersection is the most dangerous. A black and white railroad crossing sign is all that stands between a vehicle and an oncoming train. They’ve urged the city to put a stop sign in on Seventh Avenue before somebody plows into a train.
A decision on whether to install a stop sign there is about two weeks away, said Randy Wesselman, the city’s transportation, engineering and planning supervisor.
It’s not a heavily traveled stretch of street, but a stop sign makes sense.
Other issues
I asked the folks at Tri-City & Olympia Railroad whether they have an interest in moving people — not just cargo — around South Sound.
“The answer is an emphatic ‘yes,’ ” Samples said. “We see a great deal of potential for passenger rail.”
The first piece in the puzzle probably would be acquisition of the Union Pacific line to East Olympia.
That could provide a route for a dinner train or even a way to link with Sound Transit to the north, Samples and Harner said.
Thurston Regional Planning Council plans to start exploring soon what kind of commuter rail service, if any, would work in South Sound, associate planner Jailyn Brown said.
It’s been a question on the minds of transportation planners for a long time.
With Tri-City & Olympia Railroad officials suggesting they’re willing to move people as well as freight, now is a good time to start getting some answers to the passenger rail question.