(The following story by Michael A. Lindenberger appeared on The Dallas Morning News website on October 30, 2009.)
FORT WORTH, Texas — A deal to make it easier for visitors in town for the 2011 Super Bowl to get to Cowboys Stadium could be close, a spokesman for Union Pacific Railroad said Thursday.
UP has been in talks with Super Bowl host committee officials for months over a rare agreement that would let the region run passenger rail cars along busy freight lines owned by the railroad.
Passengers headed to the big game could leave from rail stations in Fort Worth or Dallas, and would be dropped off near downtown Arlington, less than a mile from the stadium. Shuttles would then take them to the game.
An agreement is likely, said Clint Schelbitzki, the railroad’s director of public affairs for Texas and Oklahoma.
“We are excited about this opportunity,” Schelbitzki said. “The Super Bowl is such a huge event for this region. There are a few outstanding issues that we are going to have to work through, but we are very hopeful that we will be able to do so.”
UP, one of the nation’s busiest railroads, does not operate passenger rail service. But one of its major freight lines runs from Fort Worth through the middle of Arlington to beyond Dallas. Officials planning for the Super Bowl, which they say could lure more than 100,000 out-of-towners, want to run passenger cars along the freight lines for one day only, hoping to make it extremely easy to get to the Super Bowl.
Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments and chief transportation planner for the Super Bowl host committee, confirmed Thursday that negotiations were ongoing.
“Until we have a signed agreement on something as important as this, I don’t think we can talk about it,” he added.
If no agreement is reached, Morris said fans would probably use the Trinity Railway Express line, and take buses from its CentrePort station north of Arlington.
Getting to the giant new stadium has been an issue for fans and area planners, given its location in Arlington, America’s largest city without mass transit.
Fans now are limited to driving, taking shuttles from a Fort Worth rail station, or using a taxi. Last week, for instance, hundreds of passengers who had used taxis to get to the game waited for hours to leave after the game was over.
Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck has acknowledged his city’s need for transit, and had previously vowed that a one-day deal with UP would be reached in time for the Super Bowl.
Schelbitzki did not say when he expected a deal to be reached, and he cautioned that some details still need to be resolved. Nothing on the table, however, appeared to be a deal-breaker or something local officials hadn’t anticipated.
He said the remaining issues to be worked out include making certain that UP would not be liable in the event of a crash involving passenger rail cars on its line. He also said his firm is still working through possible complications involving the unions whose members typically serve as engineers and other crew members on trains that use UP lines.
One possibility that has been raised, he said, is for the Super Bowl committee to use Amtrak trains, rather than the Trinity Railway Express commuter cars that are already jointly owned by DART and the Fort Worth transit agency. Amtrak, he said, already has certain rights to UP rail lines, and it may be easier to use its cars, rather than TRE cars.
Those details will probably be left up to the local officials, he said, so long as UP is satisfied that whoever is operating the trains that day can do so safely and can assume liability in the event of a crash.
Schelbitzki said UP has been asked to give the Super Bowl planners a 12-hour window to use its rail lines. In return, some of the freight it normally moves through the region would be transferred to the TRE rail line.
The TRE line has less capacity than UP’s lines, so the challenge for the railroad has been how to handle a slowdown on its rail lines that could affect freight movements all the way to California.
Traditionally, the nation’s largest freight railroads have been loath to share their lines with passenger trains, given the demands on its system.
But such requests have become more common, as high-speed rail has grown in popularity and more local governments have expanded light rail and commuter rail service.
This week, DART officials said they plan to ask UP to allow the TRE commuter trains to access its rail lines in Dallas to run service directly to Fair Park during the Texas-OU football game, a move that would ease congestion on its new Green Line.