Bob Little never gave the railroad track in his backyard much thought. Covered by weeds and blackberry bushes, the old, rusty rails rarely saw a train, and those that came by were short and slow-moving. Sometimes the engineers waved and tooted their horns.
But all that changed last December when Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. decided to restructure its network and revitalize such sleepy tracks. Now, mile-long trains thunder past Little’s wood frame house day and night, shaking furniture and jostling the Littles from their slumber.
A former Vietnam War naval medical assistant, he likens the sound to mortar fire. “I feel like I’m in a war zone,” he says.
After a decade of sweeping mergers and hostile takeovers, the railroad industry is on the verge of its largest remapping in history–a 25,000-mile rejiggering of tracks that will straighten out routes, speed up shipments and make railroads a better competitor against trucks. But the plans also put the industry on a collision course with residential America. Many of these new routes would cut through the heart of hundreds of cities and towns, subjecting them to long, lumbering freight trains.
In Maple Valley, Wash., an Auburn suburb, the change is already triggering an exodus of homeowners throwing up “for sale” signs.
In Reno, enormous freight cars plow right past the Nevada city’s casino district, in some cases less than 100 feet from the gaming tables.
In little Truckee, Calif., a hotelier gives out earplugs and sweet-dream notes. And in Wichita, Kan., the railroad wants to double its rail traffic downtown.
“We’d be gored by all these trains,” says Wichita transportation planner William Stockwell.
Upset as many of these towns are, so are the railroads. They assumed they had the right to use the tracks any way they wanted.
Instead, a couple of towns have prevailed upon federal regulators to impose a moratorium on traffic growth. Other towns have mounted separate legal fights, and have persuaded railroads to build expensive overpasses.
Analysts say the campaign against the railroad industry is a problem that could fester.
“It could rob the railroads of a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get efficient,” says John Taylor, assistant professor of logistics and transportation at Wayne State University in Detroit.
The problem for the railroads, and the reason they say they need to remap a fifth of all tracks, is that the current network was designed in the 19th Century, when many routes were laid out to avoid mountains and bodies of water, quite unlike the interstate highways of the 1950s, which bulldozed more direct routes.
Trucks then rode the interstates to prosperity. They now account for 80 percent of shipments in the U.S.
With new rail layouts, the railroads say they could reclaim some of that market and reduce the $33 billion they annually bill retailing and manufacturing customers, while saving as much as $500 million a year for themselves.
Mergers, which reduced the number of major railroads to five, from 40 in 1980, have opened the way for the biggest shortcuts.
After Union Pacific Corp. completed its $3.9 billion takeover of Southern Pacific Rail Corp. last year, the railroad lopped 200 miles off its Chicago to Oakland, Calif., route, which will allow freight trains to make the run in 50 hours, eight hours faster than today.
The route actually uses tracks from the old Central Pacific Railroad, which in 1869 linked with Union Pacific to form the nation’s first coast-to-coast track. At the time, a golden spike was hammered in that track to celebrate the historic joining of the railroads.
Under its merged system, Union Pacific also wants to create a new route from Western coal fields to power plants in Texas–through Wichita. By bypassing busy railroad tracks in Kansas City and cutting 10 percent off the current length of the haul, the railroad would save a day in delivery time.
But Wichita officials see slow-moving freight cars on the horizon, cutting downtown in half and holding up, according to one study, 8,000 vehicles a day at 26 intersections, for a total of 426 hours. Pollution levels at intersections would rise, too, as much as 30 percent from what typically is sent up as fumes by idling cars.
And that assumes Union Pacific no more than doubles freight traffic on the new route–something the company has promised but city fathers doubt.
“There would be no limit” on the number of trains, says Stockwell, the city planning executive.
Haymarket, Va., meanwhile, is worried about becoming ground zero for Norfolk Southern Corp.’s ambitious plans to take over 58 percent of Conrail Inc. for $5.9 billion.
Under that plan, the connecting link between Norfolk Southern’s 14,000-mile system in the Southeast and Conrail’s tracks to New York City would run straight through Haymarket.
“We’re horrified,” says Mayor Jack Kapp, who believes that as many as 50 trains could be roaring through town, more than double what Haymarket sees today. He says that could dash the town’s hopes of attracting tourists to its nearby Civil War battlefields, not to mention developers eyeing farmland for new office parks.
“It would ruin everything,” says Kapp. The town has hired a lawyer and is raising a legal defense fund from resident donations to fight back. Meanwhile, Norfolk Southern says it isn’t sure how many more freight trains Haymarket may see.
Railroads traditionally have won such fights. The promise of jobs and additional commerce was usually enough to prompt towns to compete for rail routes.
Nowadays, the railroads must rely on a 100-year-old law that blocks towns and states from interfering with interstate commerce. Still, the rule has served the industry well. The railroads are under the jurisdiction of the federal Surface Transportation Board, which also tends to rule in favor of commerce.
“Communities have essentially been at the mercy of the railroads,” says Steven Kalish, an attorney in Washington, D.C., who represents communities concerned about increased rail traffic.
But you wouldn’t know it in Reno, where a $1 billion casino and hotel industry has placed all its bets on a defiant campaign against Union Pacific.
Robert MacKay, an administrator of the Eldorado Hotel Casino, bristles at the sight of existing railroad tracks near the city’s signature neon arch, which proclaims: “Reno. The Biggest Little City in the World.”
“You don’t think clean, inviting entertainment,” says MacKay. “You think dirt, industrial.”
So far, the battle is producing studies, proposals and hype. Reno opened a telephone hot line for residents to complain about the railroad and staged a mock traffic jam last year to demonstrate how longer freight trains would block downtown intersections. Traffic was blocked for eight minutes, while the fire department and the ambulance service showed how response times to emergencies would grow.
The city also has turned to technology. In February, Mark Demuth, a consultant for Reno, set up video cameras aimed at the tracks from hotel rooms, stores and atop buildings.
In nearly 3,000 hours of videotape, Demuth captured scenes of freight trains passing through intersections while motorists and pedestrians waited. Later, in San Francisco, Demuth sat with officials from Union Pacific and the Surface Transportation Board’s consultants to go over the results.
“It was tedious. I was happy when it was over,” says D. Patrick Jumper, a Union Pacific senior manager, who viewed 30 hours of videotapes. To defend itself, the railroad launched an ad campaign proclaiming that its tracks were there first, before downtown built up around them.
Reno is trying to cope, as well. Some hotels have cut rates 10 percent or more for rooms facing the tracks and installed extra insulation and triple-pane glass to muffle train sounds. MacKay shows a visitor the casino’s new 580-seat theater equipped with $700,000 of extra soundproofing.
“For all the money we paid for sound consultants and improvements, it better work,” he says. Nevertheless, MacKay grimaces when a freight train shatters the stillness inside.
Such problems would only get worse if Union Pacific follows through with plans, currently on hold during an 18-month moratorium imposed by the Surface Transportation Board, to double the freight trains through Reno to 24 a day.
Still, Reno officials say they won’t be satisfied until the railroad moves its tracks or sinks them below city streets. An offer by the railroad to spend $35 million to depress its tracks in a trench below street level recently was turned down by the city, which insists that Union Pacific pay more.
Meanwhile, some railroad customers are siding with the railroad.
“Every dime spent on solving Reno’s problems will be taken away from track improvements that will allow for cheaper transportation,” says Frank Napierski, general manager of Napz Drayage, a Sparks, Nev., company that receives rail shipments for truck delivery.
Of course, there are towns that want the railroads–and the business they bring. Just 34 miles west of Reno, officials in the little town of Truckee think freight trains are a tourist attraction.
The town has set up a historical display in its old depot, and a local apparel shop has put up a nostalgic “Railway Express Agency” sign over its checkout counter.
“I have seen men and women holding their children five feet from a thundering train going through,” says Truckee Mayor Robert Drake. “It’s the raw power, the ground shaking beneath your feet. The tourists love it.”
Even Truckee Hotel, which is located across the street from the railroad tracks, puts a light spin on all the rail noise, giving all its guests earplugs, with a note that says: “You might hear the rumble and whistle of one of our trains. These disposable earplugs can soften those sounds when you go down for a nap or the night. Sweet dreams.”
But its love affair with the railroad aside, Truckee did insist upon and persuaded Union Pacific to pay $1 million to help build a highway tunnel under the tracks, so motorists won’t have to wait in long lines when trains come through.
The town also managed to get the railroad to put $300,000 into a fund to buy back inefficient wood stoves from residents; the old stoves have been a chief contributor to the blue-gray haze that hangs over Truckee.
Here in Auburn, the city continues to make a federal case of Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s reopening of an old, rusty rail line for extra track space.
Auburn officials sent letters to 15 cities in the state warning them of the dangers of more trains, and four of them joined Auburn in the fight.
“We are only the first domino,” says Paul Krauss, Auburn’s planning director.
