We do not have to lose the Dinner Train!..

We’ve been told we will lose the dinner train as a result of I-405 widening in South Bellevue. Recent reports give the impression that this is already agreed to by the State DOT and Burlington Northern Railroad. Meanwhile, Puget Sound Regional Council and the King County Executive’s office are both working to develop future proposed uses for the Burlington Northern Corridor, leaving many members of the public confused as to what is really going on and who is making the decisions.

But we actually have more control over the situation than it first appears. Railroad rights-of-way include a mix of fee-simple property (outright owned by the railroad)and easements often obtained by eminent domain power. Because the Federal Government utilized broad condemnation power to complete these rights of way for railroads, rail lines can not be bought and sold for other uses, or simply abandoned to whoever asks for them, without an extensive and public abandonment process per Title 49 CFR 1152.27. This abandonment process is established to expressly prevent loss of valuable lines as a result of short-term thinking, as I feel we are seeing here.

In the current case, Burlington Northern is agreeeing to split 30 million dollars with the State DOT by taking a short linkage of rail line out of service. The 30 million is coming from DOT savings realized by not replacing the I-405/rail crossing tunnel when I-405 is widened. Even though the project budget allowed for rebuilding the tunnels under and over I-405, our state Department of Transportation and Burlington Northern propose instead that the they simply split the money, and take the active line out of service. I’m personally irritated by this, because I served four years on the I-405 Executive Committee which oversaw funding for this and other I-405 projects, and we never ONCE considered eliminating this railroad crossing.

One of the options in Railroad Abandomnent Law is that any other person, business, organization, or jurisdiction that cares about the continued use of the rail line can make an “offer of financial assistance” to keep the abandoned line open. By law, an arbitrator must determine that the offer is in fact sufficient money to keep the line open. In this case, the abandoned portion of the line is only a few hundred yards long, and the DOT is already budgeted and authorized to replace it, so I think an offer of one dollar along with the allocated state $30,000,000 should be acceptable to prevent abandoment. I think Renton, Newcastle, Bellevue, or perhaps even a citizen that eventually wants to have a train station named after their family, should consider pursuing this step to halt the abandoment.

Now you are probably asking yourself, “why would Renton want to own or subsidize a short piece of a railroad….sure, the dinner train is cool, but do we really want to become railroad barons just to save the dinner train?” The answer is we would not be just saving the dinner train, we would be saving an extremely valuable rail corridor that could be worth billions of dollars to future generations in our area. Over the next few years, the State DOT and elected officials like me will be asking you to spend many billions of dollars widening I-405 so that we can get people and freight in and out of this super-rapidly growing east-side urban area. Under such circumstances, it makes no financial sense to sever a forty mile rail line along this exact same corridor to save 30 million on a tunnel. Especially if a substantial part of the 30 million is still going to be paid by taxpayers, but paid to Burlington Northern as compensation for losing their line. I can’t blame Burlington Northern for wanting to take the money (it’s difficult for a publicly traded company to refuse free money), but I don’t feel we taxpayers and residents should let this happen.

You may also be saying to yourself…”I hear Ron Sims wanted to make this a bike trail, or a monorail line, or something cool like that….maybe I want the rail to be gone so we can have these uses instead of noisy diesel trains”. My answer to this is that Ron Sims, and the King County Government he manages, is closing parks and pools because they are tens of millions of dollars in the red. They do not have enough money to patch holes in existing trails, let alone build new ones like this. And Sound Transit Phase 2, which represents light rail planning for the next two decades, is planning no money for a commuter rail along the 405 corridor… the way things are shaping up Renton will be lucky if we can get expanded bus service on our over-crowded I-405. And let’s not forget, a few mile-long diesel trains loaded with freight, if properly managed, can get hundreds of big trucks off of 405 during the peak hours. And Puget Sound Regional Council’s work has shown that the corridor can actually support the existing heavy rail and a trail/bike path….all it takes is a chain link fence down the middle to keep walkers and bikes from getting too close to the danger zone. I believe the best way to preserve these possible uses for the future is to keep the line operating as is, get the tunnel rebuilt at 405 with the money budgeted for it, and keep the dinner train rolling…toot, toot.

So please join me in telling the State DOT to quit taking short cuts, and build that tunnel for the train. And if they don’t listen to us, let’s look at Renton buying the “abandoned” section for a few bucks, to force the DOT to build a tunnel for BN instead of handing them the cash. Finally, if we can’t keep the rail line this way, contact me if you want to get some citizens together ourselves to buy the line out of abandonment using a dollar or two of our own, plus the state’s 30 million, and put the line back in service for our grandchildren’s sake.