Guest column: Light rail should share corridor with freight trains

Can it be that freight rail cannot share space with Southwest Light Rail through the Kenilworth railroad corridor? And over $100 million of taxpayer dollars must be spent to send them instead through St. Louis Park neighbors' backyards and just feet from our high school?

Safety in the Park, a neighborhood advocacy organization, along with two independent railroad engineering consultants, strongly disagree.

Last month Hennepin County consultants addressed a joint session of the St. Louis Park City Council and school board to offer several engineering solutions for co-locating the new Southwest Light Rail near the current freight rail in the Kenilworth railroad corridor, so as to avoid building new infrastructure to run the trains through St. Louis Park. The options ranged in complexity and cost.

Many listeners questioned why another option -- simply running the light rail alongside the current freight rail and moving or narrowing the bike trail for one-quarter mile -- was not presented. From the consultant's own figures, it seemed that there is more than enough room to make this option a reality.

Such questions are particularly apt when considering that the group also has been made aware of the elaborate plan for re-routing through St. Louis Park -- a plan that calls for miles of new bridges and new tracks. Safety in the Park, in consultation with two separate railroad engineering consultants, has determined that the freight reroute through St. Louis Park would cost, without any mitigation, approximately $100 million. This is to say nothing of the extreme safety risks posed by rerouting these trains within feet of St. Louis Park High School and hundreds of homes.

In fact, on Oct. 2, one of the freight trains in question derailed on a perfectly flat, perfectly straight portion of the current route. The St. Louis Park route is full of curves, grade changes and grade-level vehicle/pedestrian crossings.

Imagine a derailment near the high school and/or homes with trains that can carry any number of harmful loads, including ethanol. The sheer weight of a unit train carrying a hundred 286,000-pound coal cars around two blind curves is a tragedy waiting to happen when the train runs 35 feet from the high school parking lot -- not even the length of one coal car. And this is indeed a real fear: According to the Federal Railroad Administration, there were over 1,300 U.S. derailments last year.

Hennepin County has spent in excess of $240,000 of taxpayer funding on reroute consultants to study these important matters, and seemingly no one bothered to measure the corridor accurately. Frankly, that is staggering and/or a bit suspicious.

At this point, Hennepin County officials and the county's consultants have little credibility. Many people are skeptical that the "latest measurement," and the resulting conclusion that co-location is not possible, have any basis in fact.

Consulting railroad engineers working with Safety in the Park believe that the corridor is indeed wide enough for freight rail and light rail to co-exist if the nearby bike trail is moved in that short stretch. Furthermore, these consultants have determined that to save more space, the light rail trains could share one track for the short distance with no change to train schedules. This is a common practice around the country in such situations and could save the bike trail in the corridor.

Finally, at last month's meeting, Commissioner Dorfman insinuated that if studies need to continue to get this situation right, they may delay or put an end to SWLRT. Residents of St. Louis Park and supporters of Safety in the Park strongly desire light rail in our community. Yet, if the SWLRT is delayed or cancelled, it will be the fault of county officials who lacked the leadership to make sure things were done right the first time.

Furthermore, it seems that the county and the Minnesota Department of Transportation are either favoring Minneapolis (where the Kenilworth corridor runs) for political reasons or there is a serious case of incompetence in both organizations. Why else would they encourage spending an estimated $100 million of taxpayer funding to build new railroad tracks and bridges when the freight rail can stay where it is for a tiny fraction of that sum?