The Statesman’s Ben Wear has provided an update on moving freight rail out of Austin to the Coupland area to make way for passenger rail on Union Pacific’s Austin line. Here’s the link to his column “A rail district by any other name still needs money.”
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/11/09/1109wear.html
Recently, the Austin-San Antonio Intermunicipal Commuter Rail District held a news conference to announce that they have changed their name to the Lone Star Rail District.
Wear notes, “[T]he train service is still mostly a line on a map. As agency board chairman Sid Covington says, the main obstacles to creating a commuter line between Austin and San Antonio are now and always have been Union Pacific freights and money. . . . To make commuter rail viable, almost all of Union Pacific's freight runs would have to be moved to new or refurbished tracks east of the existing tracks.”
The 2008 Central Texas Rail Relocation Study shows two alternatives for the freight rail—expanding the rail line that goes through Coupland or constructing a new line from Taylor to San Antonio through the countryside west of Coupland. Wear points out, “Rerouting the Union Pacific trains from Taylor . . . would cost anywhere from almost $900 million . . . to $2.4 billion. The rail district last year was saying that construction of the line itself would take another $600 million.”
The Lone Star Rail District hopes that TxDOT and Union Pacific will pay for the alternate freight route.
Wear reports, “As for the passenger rail construction — 16 stations, trains, track and signal improvements, maintenance facilities — Lone Star officials see TxDOT paying half, the other half split roughly in thirds among governments in the Austin area, Bexar County and Comal and Hays counties.”
Right now, there is no money for this construction. What is new now is the Rail District will receive $40 million from the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and the San Antonio Metropolitan Planning Organization for design work and the environmental process. Wear says that these studies will begin early in 2010.
Showing posts with label Central Texas Rail Relocation Study. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Central Texas Rail Relocation Study. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Freight rail has to stay on Austin line to serve quarries, Ben Wear notices
Ben Wear had an interesting column in the Statesman several days ago--at least interesting to those of us who hope that moving freight rail from the Union Pacific line through Austin will NOT destroy the Coupland community. His column explains why it might be harder than the "powers that be" have let on to remove the UP freight traffic. Compliments to Ben for noticing and analyzing this, and I wonder why the activists in the movement to run commuter rail from Georgetown to San Antonio have not mentioned it.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/02/23/0223wear.html
Quarries present quandary for commuter rail push
A half-dozen quarries line the Union Pacific track in Round Rock-San Antonio corridor, making it problematic to move freight traffic to a new line east of Austin.
Ben describes the "quarries out west of the interstate. First, one just south of Buda. Then a large one by the community of Hunter, between San Marcos and New Braunfels. I saw two more before I got to Loop 1604 north of San Antonio.
". . . They hug the east edge of the Hill Country, just as I-35 does. And just as does Union Pacific's rail line, the one that cuts through Austin and San Marcos.
"Moving Union Pacific's freight traffic off to some new track miles to the east [eastern Williamson County], something that Central Texas civic leaders have pursued fruitlessly for years, may be more complicated than I had been led to believe. Because all those quarries, plus Austin White Lime in Northwest Austin and an enormous quarry operation north of Round Rock send their rock off to market on that Union Pacific track.
". . . Without finding a way to move all or almost all of those freight trains to some alternate track in the Taylor-Elgin-Bastrop corridor [possibly through downtown Coupland], the grandly named, if ill-financed, Austin-San Antonio Intermunicipal Commuter Rail District is just spinning its notional wheels.
"Asking them to truck all that rock 20 miles east to a new line would make little sense. . . .
". . . The Round Rock-San Antonio corridor was already going to have to compete with other parts of the state for what might be $1 billion to $2 billion, and a state study last year showed that relocating Union Pacific would cost between $883 million and $2.4 billion. [This is the Central Texas Rail Relocation Study that showed either a new line going from Taylor to San Antonio or expanding the existing line through Coupland.]
"No one has yet identified other funding sufficient to move Union Pacific, much less the additional $600 million or more to get the passenger trains up and running. . . . The Austin-San Antonio commuter line may eventually be the little train that could. But it may have to navigate around a bunch of limestone to get there. "
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/02/23/0223wear.html
Quarries present quandary for commuter rail push
A half-dozen quarries line the Union Pacific track in Round Rock-San Antonio corridor, making it problematic to move freight traffic to a new line east of Austin.
Ben describes the "quarries out west of the interstate. First, one just south of Buda. Then a large one by the community of Hunter, between San Marcos and New Braunfels. I saw two more before I got to Loop 1604 north of San Antonio.
". . . They hug the east edge of the Hill Country, just as I-35 does. And just as does Union Pacific's rail line, the one that cuts through Austin and San Marcos.
"Moving Union Pacific's freight traffic off to some new track miles to the east [eastern Williamson County], something that Central Texas civic leaders have pursued fruitlessly for years, may be more complicated than I had been led to believe. Because all those quarries, plus Austin White Lime in Northwest Austin and an enormous quarry operation north of Round Rock send their rock off to market on that Union Pacific track.
". . . Without finding a way to move all or almost all of those freight trains to some alternate track in the Taylor-Elgin-Bastrop corridor [possibly through downtown Coupland], the grandly named, if ill-financed, Austin-San Antonio Intermunicipal Commuter Rail District is just spinning its notional wheels.
"Asking them to truck all that rock 20 miles east to a new line would make little sense. . . .
". . . The Round Rock-San Antonio corridor was already going to have to compete with other parts of the state for what might be $1 billion to $2 billion, and a state study last year showed that relocating Union Pacific would cost between $883 million and $2.4 billion. [This is the Central Texas Rail Relocation Study that showed either a new line going from Taylor to San Antonio or expanding the existing line through Coupland.]
"No one has yet identified other funding sufficient to move Union Pacific, much less the additional $600 million or more to get the passenger trains up and running. . . . The Austin-San Antonio commuter line may eventually be the little train that could. But it may have to navigate around a bunch of limestone to get there. "
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