(The following story by J.B. Smith appeared on the Tribune-Herald website on March 24, 2009.)
WACO, Texas — Up to 20 times a day, freight trains cut downtown Waco in half. They stop traffic, rattle windows and block access to police cars and ambulances between the Brazos River and 17th Street — a 1.3-mile stretch where railroad tracks and intersecting streets are at the same level.
Here and elsewhere around the state, trains are obstacles for cities, and cities are obstacles for trains. And the conflict is only going to grow in coming years, transportation planners say.
The solution Texans approved in a 2005 constitutional referendum was to create a fund to relocate freight rails out of urban areas. But four years later, the Legislature has yet to set up such a fund. A bill filed by Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, which would fund such projects to the tune of $200 million a year, is pending in a committee.
Until the urban bottlenecks are bypassed, the Texas rail system will continue to become slower and less efficient, said Bruce Todd, a former Austin mayor who leads a coalition of local governments pressing the issue in the current legislative session.
“We know Texas has a transportation problem, and we can’t address it without including rail as part of it,” said Todd, executive director of the Texas Rail Relocation and Improvement Association.
He said expansion of the Panama Canal, to be completed in 2012, will help make Houston a major port for Asian products, increasing the demand on the freight rail system. He said freight trains, which can carry a ton of goods 436 miles on a gallon of diesel, are the most efficient long-haul transport solution, but rail congestion can kill that efficiency.
McLennan County could see a boom in rail traffic headed from Houston to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, said Chris Evilia, director of the Waco Metropolitan Planning Organization. The Union Pacific line that runs through Marlin, Riesel, Bellmead, Lacy-Lakeview and West could see especially heavy traffic, but the UP line through Waco also could be affected, he said.
“We think it’s a future issue we need to address,” Evilia said. “The Panama Canal is going to create a flood of containers into the Port of Houston, and one way a lot of traffic gets to Dallas is through Waco.”
Rail traffic already increased through McLennan County, partly because of increased shipments of Wyoming coal to Texas power plants. The town of West, which is bisected by the Union Pacific line, has about 25 trains a day pass through town, Evilia said.
Fort Worth high priority
But Evilia has little hope that the state will fund relocations in McLennan County in the short term. He said any funds first will go to clear up critical bottlenecks, such as the Fort Worth rail junction known as Tower 55.
“Tower 55 will require several hundred million dollars,” he said. Austin, San Antonio and San Marcos also will be a higher priority than the Waco area, he said.
Another challenge for Waco would be how to ensure that areas such as the Texas Central Industrial Park continue to have access to rail. One possibility might be to turn the existing track into a short-line track, perhaps operated by a county rail authority, Evilia said.
Ultimately, relocating rail could have great benefits for the Waco area, he said. The rail bypass would make it so no drivers, including emergency vehicles, would have to wait on the train.
The danger of train accidents also would be greatly reduced.
Taking freight trains off urban tracks could help make downtown more attractive for redevelopment and could clear the way for intercity passenger service along the same tracks, Evilia said.
Todd of the rail relocation association said freeing up track for passenger service is one of his goals.
“In many locations, it could be the first chapter in creating high-speed rail,” he said.
No relocation proposals
Todd said his group isn’t making specific proposals about where and how track should be relocated and said individual communities should guide those decisions.
The town of West has yet to have that discussion. The farming town grew up around the railroad, though trains no longer stop there. City Secretary Kenneth Kubala said Union Pacific has gotten better about keeping trains from stalling in the middle of town, but the city still has to keep firetrucks on both sides of the track to ensure emergency access.
Evilia said in West’s case, the MPO may find an easier solution than relocation, such as a grade-separated intersection, like an overpass, near downtown.
“You have to ask yourself when you reach the threshold of pain,” Evilia said. “If you get to the point where you can’t reliably get emergency vehicles from one side of town to the other, that’s something that demands a solution.”