Tag Cloud
Friday, February 10, 2012
State turns over $31 million for RR tracks
by Suzanne Hurt, published on December 11, 2009 at 11:05 PM
Storyline: Railyards
Loading images
Helping to save $20 million in local federal stimulus money, the state of California on Thursday ponied up $31 million in Prop. 1B funding for projects connected to Sacramento's future regional transportation center.
The Sacramento Area Council of Governments and the city of Sacramento told the California Transportation Commission this week that the city would lose the federal stimulus funds unless the agency paid out the Prop. 1B money as promised, said Erik Johnson, SACOG spokesman.
The bulk of the $31 million will be used for a $60 million railroad track relocation, the first phase of the train station and public transit center being built in the 244-acre historic railyards adjacent to the Sacramento Valley Station downtown.
"In order to receive the $20 million, we had to have all of our funds to move forward," Johnson said. "Congress wanted to have the stimulus funding move quickly. They (the state) understood that need."
Darrell Steinberg, state Senate president pro tem, represents Sacramento and helped win state funding for the project. U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui helped land the federal stimulus money, according to SACOG.
The state allocated $25 million in trade corridor improvement funds to the city to help move the tracks and for tunnel work under the new tracks.
The state also allocated nearly $6 million in highway railroad crossing safety funds. The money will go toward the $12 million Sixth Street overpass to be built by Railyards developer Thomas Enterprises, Johnson said. The money was paid to Thomas on behalf of the city, which requested the money in August.
All the funds had been awarded but not turned over, he said.
Reconfiguring and relocating the tracks has been a SACOG priority for years, Johnson said.
The Sacramento Valley Station sits on a major national trade route, the Central Corridor, whose western junction is the high-volume Port of Oakland. Freight and passenger trains share three tracks, a configuration set up about the time the Sacramento station was built in 1925.
Track relocation work will include building tracks devoted to freight, allowing a higher volume of freight trains to move more quickly through Sacramento. Freight and passenger tracks will be moved at least 300 feet north and straightened to allow for longer trains.
SACOG helped the city apply for the Prop. 1B funding. SACOG also is responsible for the regional distribution of about $109 million in federal stimulus funds. The organization earmarked $20 million for the railroad tracks project, the largest single project receiving those funds, Johnson said.
Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson said he was happy the California Transportation Commission has allocated the funding for the transportation center and the Railyards.
"This project is important to revitalizing our downtown and will be a tremendous regional asset as new residents, visitors and workers come in and out of this area," he said in a prepared statement.
Photos by Suzanne Hurt, a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.
Conversation Express your views,
debate, and be heard with those in your area closest
to the issue.
Leave a Comment
We have discussed this before--those tracks were not used for freight in 1925, they were strictly for passenger trains. There were also more than three passenger tracks. Freight ran along the old alignment, roughly where they are being moved to now. Prior to 1925, passengers and freight ran along that approximate alignment, but the current depot was intended to separate freight trains from passenger trains.
Prior to the construction of the current depot, there was an 1890s era depot, a wooden "arcade" design. It was located parallel to the Shops buildings, and is roughly where the new track alignment will be located. The area where the current depot sits was a body of water called "Sutter Lake" or "China Slough," an inlet of the American River filled over decades after the American River's course was altered to prevent flooding in downtown Sacramento. After it was filled, the current depot was built on the site of the former slough. The tracks from the arcade depot were retained for freight use, not replaced or taken out of service. They served that role until at least the 1970s. Thus, the current setup, where both freight and passenger trains run through the "dog leg" section, is not the original 1925 track alignment, but a portion of it intended for passengers only. That use changed when railroad traffic dropped mid-century.
During the nadir of American railroading, the 1980s, there was probably little enough freight traffic to justify taking the tangent out of service, and moving freight through the then little-used passenger tracks--but now that the tonnage carried on American railroads is again at an all-time high (admittedly, down since the end of the housing boom, but showing no signs of going away) and the Sacramento Valley Station is the third busiest in the Amtrak system, they need a separate tangent again. But because of changes in the way the FRA regulates things like switches and crossovers near bridges, they don't want to duplicate the 1925 split alignment.
Otherwise, a very nice story, and it's great to hear the funds are finally being released.
The Railyards will put K street out of it's misery...
Why are we going to continue to throw money into K street...when the future is clear as day.
oh yeah..and William likes trains...
Re: number of tracks. A few months back I was traveling south on the San Joaquin and a railroad historian was sitting across the aisle from me. He got out regularly to take photos. He told me that the mainline tracks from LA to SF & Sacramento originally had four tracks--two right next to the passenger stations for detraining and boarding and cross overs for freight delivery and pick up at the freight buildings along the way. I had always wondered why the wide space in Fresno and several other stops still on that former mainline.
He went on to say that when the passenger cars were abandoned, the RR companies sold off much of that land to add to their incomes, gov't and RR believe in that there would never again be a need for passenger train travel. His explanation made sense. He said the public is now bearing the cost of that shortsighted belief.
Bill, are you able to dispute or confirm this?
In the mid-20th century, airlines and passenger cars on public highways rapidly eclipsed passenger train travel as the long-distance travel method of choice. The loss of railway post office mail contracts made passenger trains a money-losing proposition for railroads, and trains even lost freight customers to trucks, who used the same public-funded highways as cars. After a century of expansion into every part of the country, railroad miles started shrinking. Passenger facilities fell into disuse, and many beautiful union stations fell into disrepair and disuse, often replaced by modular "Amshack" stations in cities that still had rail service. Sacramento is very fortunate that our 1925 depot never went out of use! In some parts of the country, there is no railroad service at all; I have met a surprising number of people who thought that passenger rail travel, and even freight railroad traffic, was entirely a thing of the past.
Since the deregulation of the railroad industry 1990s (during the Clinton administration) and the end of the Interstate Commerce Commission, railroad freight traffic got cheaper for long-haul runs than trucks, and since then railroad freight traffic has only gone up. There is more freight riding on the rails now than during the golden age of American railroading in the 1920s--and more passengers on the rails too, somewhat to the chagrin of railroads more interested in freight traffic. Some of the property has been sold off and turned into new portions of cities, or is slated for such renovation, like the Railyards project itself. In some cases we might now be better served by having held onto some of that track and right-of-way and those old depots, but most of the track and infrastructure probably would have needed to be replaced by now anyhow.
Investment in railroad improvement is investment in our national infrastructure. Sacramento made its mark on the nation in the 1860s by pursuing government dollars--we convinced the federal government to provide land and funding for a railroad to connect California to the rest of the country! That project was considered a horrible waste of taxpayer money by some at the time, but it was an investment in a national railroad network that connected our state to the union and made Sacramento the nexus of California's transportation network for a century. This track relocation is basically a continuation of that legacy.
The tracks through Midtown aren't going anywhere anytime soon.