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Railroad Newsline for Tuesday, 03/13/07
Author: Larry W. Grant
Date: 03-13-2007 - 00:49
Railroad Newsline for Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Compiled by Larry W. Grant
In Memory of Rob Carlson, 1952 – 2006
RAIL NEWS
CSX TRAIN CARRYING PROPANE DERAILS AND EXPLODES
Related video here:
[www.cnn.com]
ONEIDA, NY -- A train carrying liquefied propane derailed Monday morning, setting off an explosion and fire that forced evacuations from this small central New York city and shut down a section of highway.
The 07:00 blast sent a huge fireball into the dawn sky. Thick smoke continued pouring out hours later as about half a dozen propane tanker cars burned, said Police Chief David Meeker. He said the explosion followed the derailment of about 15 of the train's 80 cars.
Fire crews fought to keep the flames from spreading to other tanker cars, about half of which carried propane.
"There is danger of further explosions," said Fire Department Lt. Kevin Salerno.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or fatalities.
The derailment occurred in an unpopulated area on Oneida's north side. Officials were evacuating an area of about a one-mile radius, covering most of the downtown area of the city of 10,000. Up to 4,000 people live within that area, but the evacuation was mandatory only for homes closest to the blast.
A 23-mile stretch of the state Thruway, which passes within a mile of the explosion, was closed in both directions as a precaution, said Patrick Noonan, a spokesman for the Thruway Authority.
Amtrak suspended service between Syracuse and Albany.
The CSX Corp. train that derailed was headed from Buffalo to Selkirk, just south of Albany, said company spokesman Robert Sullivan. He said the cause of the accident hadn't been determined.
Sullivan said that in addition to propane, two cars were carrying hazardous materials. One contained a flammable liquid and the other carried a corrosive, but he had no other details on the materials. - The Associated Press, CNN.com
KCSM MAKES PLANS TO SERVE NEW FREIGHTLINER PLANT IN SALTILLO
On February 27, Kansas City Southern de Mexico's sales and marketing, corporate affairs and engineering teams participated in an event for service providers of the new Freightliner truck assembly facility in Saltillo, Coahuila. Freightliner LLC produces and markets Class 3-8 vehicles and is part of DaimlerChrysler's Truck Group, a commercial vehicle manufacturer.
The purpose of the event was to inform service providers of why the facility will be built in Saltillo; dates for construction, the start of operations, production and when quality systems will be deployed; who to contact and how to register as a vendor; and to invite suppliers to locate near the Dayisa industrial complex where the Freightliner facility will be located. KCSM is a preferred vendor of the facility.
The Freightliner truck assembly facility will be adjacent to the existing Chrysler operation in Derramadero, which is in southern Saltillo. This facility will double Freightliner's production in Mexico and will be as large as the existing Chrysler operation. All production from this facility will be exported to the U.S. and Canada. Construction is expected to begin in January 2007, and the plant is scheduled to open at the end of 2008. - KCS NEWS
BNSF PLANS TO EXTEND MILEAGE-BASED FUEL SURCHARGE
The BNSF Railway Company plans to extend its mileage-based fuel surcharge program effective April 25 to those shipments covered by the Surface Transportation Board (STB) fuel surcharge ruling of Jan. 26.
BNSF's "All Other Carload" mileage-based fuel surcharge table will apply to regulated, public, non-contract, non-boxcar shipments for which rates have not been prescribed by the STB. The table is available on the Web, click here.
Mileage calculations between stations on BNSF will be based on actual BNSF mileage. Customers can compute mileage between BNSF-served points using the mileage inquiry on the Web, click here.
BNSF also will be prepared to apply a mileage-based fuel surcharge to interline moves using PC*Miler Rail from ALK Technologies.
As announced Jan. 29, BNSF will work with our interline partners on joint rates to extend mileage surcharges to those movements. BNSF will continue to assess our current fuel surcharge methodologies for customers not covered by the STB's ruling. - BNSF Today
$38 MILLION LA BASIN TRACK PROJECTS COMPLETED AHEAD OF SCHEDULE
OMAHA, NE -- Union Pacific Railroad completed its $38 million track improvement projects on two of its main line tracks in the Los Angeles Basin nearly seven days ahead of schedule.
"All of us at Union Pacific apologize for the traffic and Metrolink delays that have occurred while these necessary track maintenance projects were under way," said Lupe Valdez, director -- public policy. "We thank the Basin residents for their understanding and patience."
The track improvements were made to rail lines through City of Industry, Mira Loma, Pedley, Diamond Bar, Hacienda Heights, Montebello, City of Commerce, Hobart, El Monte, Bassett and La Puente.
A toll-free telephone number, (800) 269-2059, was established during this year's project to provide motorists with information in both English and Spanish regarding when crossings were closed temporarily to renew crossing surfaces. Plans are to keep the toll-free number accessible to residents in the Los Angeles Basin during future major Union Pacific improvement projects that may impact motorists.
Crews installed more than 93,000 concrete ties; spread 110,000 tons of rock ballast to ensure a stable roadbed; replaced the surfaces at 18 road crossings; replaced 33 turnouts that guide a train from one track to another; replaced 36 miles of straight rail and replaced 1,800 feet of rail in various curves on the lines.
The installation of concrete ties will enhance track strength to better handle the nation's growing demand for rail shipments, and concrete ties last longer than traditional wooden ties -- reducing the time needed for future track maintenance.
The improvements are part of Union Pacific's ongoing program to maintain its track across its more than 32,400-mile system. - Mark Davis, UP News Release
COAL DUST CONCERNS CONVERSE COUNTY OFFICIALS
DOUGLAS, WY -- Converse County, Wyoming officials hope the Bureau of Land Management will consider the impacts of transporting coal through Converse County as the agency prepares environmental impact statements for 12 proposed coal leases from Powder River Basin mines.
Commissioner Ed Werner said that while the county is fortunate to have one coal mine operating within its borders, the flip side is that a majority of the coal mined in the entire basin is run through the county on railroads, resulting in poorer air quality and increased fire concerns.
Mike Karbs, assistant field manager for solid minerals for the BLM, met with the commissioners last week to discuss 12 coal lease applications proposed by Powder River Basin mines. He said that the 12 leases should carry all the mines through 2011 production plans.
The BLM is evaluating those lease applications in six environmental impact statements as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. That allows the BLM to lump together potential leases where they would naturally affect one another, Karbs told the commissioners, and streamlines the process for the federal land agency.
Karbs left the commissioners with a letter offering "cooperating agency" status, which the county leaders have not acted on yet. Werner, however, encouraged Karbs to look at impacts beyond the mine boundaries -- and in particular, at the effects of running more and more coal through the county.
"We're blessed to have one mine in our county," Werner told Karbs. "But, we're cursed by the fact both of the trains come through. As the mines grow, so grows the problem."
Coal dust blows off the top of the train cars as they wind their way from the basin mine mouths, to Bill and on through Converse County to Orin Junction, a section of track where trains run cross-traffic to wind patterns. Werner said one could define the problem area just by looking at the sides of the tracks.
"The environmental saturation point has been exceeded by a long shot," Werner said in a later interview, adding that it's unlikely the earth around the tracks can absorb any more coal dust.
Instead, the piles are built up by wind. Coal can spontaneously combust, and water, including rainfall, can actually cause coal to ignite, Werner said. When fires start along the tracks, outside of the controlled environments of mines, people aren't always able to spot them right away. Sometimes the coal fires, spurred by wind, catch the surrounding prairie aflame, resulting in fairly major ranchland blazes.
"Even if the fires don't get away, even if they're confined to the railroad track, they are still fires that need to be addressed," Werner said. "It's a very difficult firefighting problem."
Often water only temporarily puts down the flames. Some fires repeatedly ignite over the course of hours or days. Sometimes the only solution is to use heavy equipment to dig holes to bury the coal.
Douglas Volunteer Fire Department Chief Rick Andrews said coal fires along the railroad tracks are ongoing problems that pose some difficulties for his crews. He estimated that coal fires account for at least 50 percent of the department's average summer call volume. And while the county's rural fire district is compensated for some of the costs involved in putting out coal fires, the payback doesn't come close to the actual costs, Andrews said.
The fires often re-ignite after trucks leave the scene, and volunteers become reluctant to respond to repeated calls at the same locations, Andrews acknowledged. Plus, in a large county, having crews sit on long-burning coal fires can spread firefighter resources thin.
Werner suggested that as the BLM considers pending leases from almost all the basin's 15 mines, this is a good time to equitably address the transportation issue. Historically, no one party takes responsibility for the coal dust blowing off trains. The mines have the infrastructure in place to treat the coal, but that cost would likely be passed on to the coal buyer -- who may opt to purchase from a different mine not bound by the added costs. Werner said that if all mines are required to treat the coal before loaded trains leave the silos, the increased costs would be spread equitably.
"Make it fair for all," Werner suggested. "If every mine has to put some level of dust containment on top of cars, then all mines are in the same position competitively."
Several techniques have been studied, all of which will add to coal costs. Werner said studies indicate a combination of shaping the loaded coal cars to even the tops of the loads and then spraying the coal with foam to create a hard crust is probably the best solution.
"I would like to see that addressed here," Werner said. "When you do an environmental impact statement, they are required to take a look at what's going on. Partly the need for these additional coal resources (the pending leases) is the fact that production has kept climbing -- and that's also exactly what's exacerbating the problem. It's time to step up and recognize the impacts have spread beyond the mine sites and the train tracks." - Rena Delbridge, The Casper Star-Tribune
SHOULD HAVE KEPT SMALL RAILROADS AROUND
One of the best attributes many of us possess is 20/20 hindsight. Some of us are the best at determining what we should have done. My, how nice it would be if that keen eyesight was available before we made decisions.
As agriculture changes, we look back and wonder if some of the momentous decisions affecting production, transporting and processing farmers' bounty were the right things to do.
Admittedly, it would have been hard to predict, but it now seems that the decision to abolish most smaller railroads was a poor move as we look ahead at transporting ethanol.
The statistics used to decide that small railroads serving the smaller upper Midwest communities were not cost efficient is a big question mark nowadays. These small railroad companies disappeared almost overnight, until only the main lines remained, and some of them were in jeopardy for a long while.
Now we have the constant lament that the high cost of maintaining our nation's highways is getting out of hand. One has to wonder if we could use those small railroads again. Unless someone can come up with an alternative to heavier weights on the highways, loads will just get heavier and heavier with more roads feeling the crunch. Farm-to-market roads are the lifeblood of our food production as well.
Ethanol is dependent upon ground transportation via either railroads or highways. So far, it is not feasible to use pipelines to transport ethanol. That being true, we can look for much more strain being put upon our highways, both with loads of corn and loads of ethanol.
There is a touch of nostalgia involved here. Many former farm youths can still recall the lonesome sound of the steam engine whistle and the belching smoke as the train traveled through the countryside. It was a big thrill to actually be in town to witness the changing of railroad cars - parking the empty cars on the siding and then the hooking up to cars full of locally produced grain. It was fun to see the engine roar and spin those giant driver wheels as it struggled to get those heavy loaded cars moving. And then there were those mysterious hand signals used by the brakeman during the hook up.
It can be admitted now, 60-plus years after the fact, that youthful indiscretion led to some rather dangerous antics around the railroad tracks. Did anyone ever put a penny on the tracks just before the train arrived and then retrieve that flattened penny after the train passed? Gee, hope it wasn't one of those silver pennies worth thousands of dollars now.
But now getting back to transporting ethanol. If the future occurs as predicted, an unusual stress is going to be placed on farm roads, highways and railroads.
Perhaps we weren't too wise when it was decided that small railroads were obsolete.
Ever drive I-70 between Kansas City and St. Louis? It is mind boggling and almost indescribable.
There are miles and miles of trucks going both ways, nearly clogging all lanes. No wonder the nation's highways are in trouble and need a fortune to fix. Could this also happen in the land of ethanol plants? It makes you wonder what our highways will look like when ethanol plants become even more commonplace on our landscape. Railroads might become the popular way to move this fuel, which can solve so many problems for America.
Oh, that good old 20/20 hindsight.
'Nuff said. - Gerald Kureger, The Aberdeen American News
RAILROAD QUIET ZONE AT IMPASSE
MUKILTEO, WA -- A plan to quiet down trains near Mukilteo, Washington's waterfront is having trouble leaving the station.
City and Port of Everett officials have yet to agree on who should be working with the BNSF Railway Company to add extra signal gates at the Mount Baker Avenue crossing - a move that would create a quiet zone, allowing trains to pass by without blowing their horns.
Officials had planned for the work to begin now, as the railroad company shifts its tracks westward to prepare for the new Mukilteo Sounder station. The Port of Everett has already earmarked $600,000 to pay for the new gates.
However, neither city nor port officials have worked with the railroad to draw up design plans for the project.
"The last thing we want is to lose this opportunity to get this done," Mukilteo Mayor Joe Marine said. "It makes sense to do it now."
Roughly three years ago, residents who live near the Mount Baker and Mukilteo Lane crossings approached the Port of Everett about reducing the amount of noise from trains. Port officials eventually agreed to implement a quiet zone, port spokeswoman Lisa Mandt said.
What happened next is unclear.
Port officials believe the city agreed to take control of the project to satisfy Federal Railroad Administration requirements, Mandt said.
However, Mukilteo officials believe the port may still be responsible for leading the project.
Mukilteo resident Pat Kessler, whose back yard overlooks the Mount Baker crossing, was part of the citizens group that worked to create the quiet zone plan. She's concerned the confusion surrounding the project could lead to costly delays.
"We believe we were promised that this would be done at this time," Kessler said.
In addition to installing extra gates, the city's quiet zone plan calls for using signal flaggers where the tracks from the Boeing plant intersect with the main railroad line near Mount Baker Avenue.
Flaggers may also be used to create a quiet zone at the Mukilteo Lane crossing.
Regardless of who's responsible for leading the project, more progress should have been made by now, Mukilteo City Councilman Kevin Stoltz said.
"We should have had it further along in the process so we could have been implementing the quiet zone at the same time we're doing the track work," he said.
Both sides say they want to see the project finished on time.
"This quiet zone is something the port is committed to, and we'll assist the city," Mandt said. - Scott Pesznecker, The Everett Daily Herald
PUTTING A SOCK IN TRAIN HORNS
LATHROP, CA -- Coming home at 02:30 from his shift as a transportation worker for Santa Clara County, Councilman Sonny Dhaliwal couldn't help but hear the whistle of a train.
"It's loud and it's constant," said Dhaliwal, who lives on the city's east side near the Union Pacific Railroad tracks.
So he decided to see what could be done about it and asked the city's attorney to look into it.
As it turns out, time may be on Dhaliwal's side. According to Warren Flatau, a spokesman with the Federal Railroad Administration, which enforces rail safety regulations, a new ruling passed just over a year ago "provides the first opportunity ever to silence horns under state law."
Historically, nearly every state in the nation enacted laws requiring railroads to sound their horns and whistles in advance of public crossings.
"You have to signal a minimum of 20 seconds before you (enter) the crossing," said Mark Davis, a spokesman for Union Pacific Railroad.
"The pattern required," he explained, "is two long blasts, a short and a long."
That pattern must be repeated until the train's first boxcar hits the crossing.
If crossings are close together, it can sound as if the horn is being blown through the community's entire downtown area, Davis said.
But with the new federal ruling, communities can apply to the administration to establish what's known as a quiet zone, which means no train horns at all or no horns at night.
The quiet zone must be a half-mile in length and contain at least one public rail crossing.
Local communities must have a diagnostic review done of each crossing for collision risk and determine if additional safety measures are necessary, including ways to prevent motorists from driving around gates, Flatau said.
About a dozen communities nationwide have thus far established quiet zones after passing the administration's rather stringent requirements. In California, San Jose, West Sacramento and Sacramento are all going through the process.
The most important factor is avoiding collisions.
"In silencing horns, we don't want to compromise safety," Flatau said.
Apparently, other Lathrop residents are bothered by the horns, too. Dhaliwal said he gets calls two or three times a week from residents complaining about the noise.
Councilman Steve Dresser wrote in an e-mail, "There is an engineer/conductor who uses (the horn) to play his/her favorite melody for what seems an extended time."
Manuel Martinez, 68, on his way into Lathrop's post office on 7th Street, said, "the volume's too loud. They blow too long."
Martinez has lived on N Street, a block away from the tracks, for 30 years.
However, Sandy Mell, 51, who for 27 years has lived on 7th, which is right next to the tracks, said the train horns "don't seem to bother me. Maybe I've gotten used to it." - Cheryl Winkelman, The Tri-Valley Herald
RAILROAD UP AND RUNNING: ROYAL GORGE ROUTE OPENS FOR NEW SEASON
Photo here: [www.krdotv.com]
Canon City's historic Royal Gorge Route Railroad is up and running this weekend after a winter break.
The railroad was built in the 1800's. It offers stunning views of the canyon and wildlife, and since 2002, gourmet dining.
Co-owner Mark Greksa and his wife were inspired by a wine train in the Napa Valley and are quickly expanding their services, "People can sit upstairs in classic vista domes for the best view of the gorge. They can do dining up there lunch or dinner again murder mystery trains, and then this year the wine-maker's dinners that are all Colorado wineries."
The railroad has served notables such as Teddy Roosevelt. The train takes off from Canon City every Saturday and Sunday through May 20th, when daily summer service begins.
For more information click here. - Anna Jensen, KRDO-TV13, Colorado Springs/Pueblo, CO
RENO OFFICIALS SAY TRUCKEE RIVER KEY TO DOWNTOWN PLANS
Graphic here:
[news.rgj.com] downtown (click to enlarge)&cachetime=0
RENO, NV -- Sprucing up more of the Truckee River is the focal point of a series of plans approved by the Reno City Council to revamp and energize the downtown district and attract tourists and locals alike.
Officials say the plans would complement the kayak attraction at Wingfield Park, movie theater, Riverside artist lofts and new restaurants and shops that opened along the river during the past 10 years.
The projects, as well as dressing up the gateways to downtown and finishing the homeless center, would be built with $16.5 million tentatively approved by the council and represent the future of downtown redevelopment efforts for the next decade, said City Manager Charles McNeely.
With 1,300 condominium units under way and more condo projects planned, "we're moving from a business district to a neighborhood," McNeely said.
Karen Craig, who helped launch the annual Artown festival, said the new projects will help the riverfront district hit a "tipping point" in providing things to do and places to watch people.
That creates a hub for locals as well as tourists. "Just like Artown - only physical," she said.
Tonya Robinson, 28, who opened the Aquarius hair salon in Arlington Towers along the river last month, was thrilled about the plans.
"My husband and I tube down the river," she said. "I just think it's wonderful. They've done a great job so far."
The city would use an assortment of sources for the $16.5 million. At least $6 million would come from bonds supported by leases on properties inherited from Union Pacific Railroad. An estimated $5.5 million from federal community block grants would be used to buy the post office.
The council also agreed to set aside $4 million from the railroad bonds to build a two-block plaza over the railroad trench and keep that project on its priority list. The council is hoping U.S. Sen. Harry Reid can obtain additional federal grants for the project.
The council still has some details to work out in deepening the river channel and building a canopy over the Mapes plaza. The list of projects will be reviewed by its redevelopment advisory committee and then reviewed again by council. Each one would face approval again as construction contracts, land purchases or developer agreements are prepared.
For four blocks of the Truckee River, a meandering inner river channel would be deepened to hold up to 5 feet of water, creating an "eco-channel" to support fish, kayakers and inner tube riders. It would be about half of the width of the existing channel.
The eco-channel would end near the National Automobile Museum. From there, another kayak park is planned near Grant's Landing, a townhouse project under way.
Extending the whitewater park all the way from Wingfield Park is not possible because there's not enough of a drop off to create any rapids, said Neil Mann, public works director.
A San Francisco urban design firm, Freedman, Tung and Bottomley, also is recommending that the city add more landscaping to Third Street, creating a parkway along the railroad trench as a starting place for building new neighborhoods.
Using this parkway, the existing river bikeway and a proposed pedestrian bridge linking Idlewild Park to West Fourth Street, the city would have a 3.8-mile bikeway loop downtown.
No cost estimate on that project was given in a presentation last week. The final draft is expected to come before the council in June. - The Associated Press, The Las Vegas Sun, Source: The Reno Gazette-Journal
TUCSON SOUTH SIDE BRUSH FIRES MAY HAVE BEEN SPARKED BY TRAIN
TUCSON, AZ -- Firefighters this morning fought 10 small brush fires along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks on the city's South Side Monday morning, a Tucson Fire Department spokesman said.
Causes of the fires are under investigation but may have been started by sparks from a passing train, said Capt. Norman Carlton.
The fires, ranging in size from 10-by-10 feet to one that was 100-by-100 feet, were between the tracks and South Nogales Highway in the East Valencia Road area, Carlton said.
A woman told firefighters she saw a train pass by then noticed a fire, Carlton said.
Four engines and a 4-wheel-drive brush truck were sent to put out the fires, reported at 08:39. They were out by 09:30, Carlton said. No one was injured and no buildings were damaged. - David L. Teibel, The Tucson Citizen
FLAGGS' ART TREASURE TROVE ON BLOCK
CHANDLER, AZ -- The burden of history is wearing on Neil King. Inside a friend's home in a tucked-away Chandler, Arizona neighborhood, King stands amid a treasure trove produced by one of the most prolific and famous families in Western art.
There are paintings, wood carvings, sketches, photographic negatives, fan letters and so much more.
King isn't a collector but a trader of auction goods and years ago simply won an auction for contents of an abandoned Scottsdale storage unit. For $75 he bought the legacy of the Flaggs, a well known but very private family originally of Scottsdale, and now the Mesa man regards himself as the spokesman for people long silent, the caretakers of artists long dead -- save for one.
Eighty-one-year-old Irene Flagg is still alive, although she has Alzheimer's disease and is a ward of the state health care system. After King won the auction in 2003, the company overseeing her finances filed a lawsuit claiming the property never should've been auctioned. The two sides recently reached a settlement, and now King must sell the collection, with the proceeds going toward Irene's care.
Graphic here: [www.eastvalleytribune.com]
Caption reads: Included in the art purchased by Neil King is a self-portrait of Dee Flagg. (Photo by Jennifer Grimes/The East Valley Tribune)
King wants to do right by the Flaggs. The best place for the collection, he says, would be in a museum. There, people could admire the art and scholars could research what made the family so special.
However, King is discovering many museums don't have the money to acquire everything and private collectors are interested only in certain items.
"If I've got to sell it piece by piece, it will sell," King said. But he'd rather not.
King doesn't know how much the entire collection is worth and is seeking an estimate.
The Flaggs -- parents and five children -- enjoyed an unofficial status as Arizona's artist laureates.
Their patriarch, James Montgomery Flagg, got his start at 14 when the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad commissioned him to paint landscapes. Coincidentally, he shares his name with another famous American artist: The man who painted the iconic Uncle Sam/"I Want You" recruiting poster.
Dee, the son who achieved the most fame, got his start selling carvings from the hood of an aged firetruck that he drove to Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California. In his prime, he created works as varied as life-sized gunfighters to a portrait of Glen Canyon Dam that hung in the Bank of Arizona's Page branch.
Another son, Monte, provided illustrations for early Parada del Sol programs, Arizona Highways magazine, and the annual reports for Salt River Project and Arizona Public Service. Old Town Scottsdale's famous metal cowboy? It's Monte's, and for its first years, it looked like him.
The daughters -- Irene, Rita and Claudine -- also contributed. One of the more stunning pieces in the collection is an enormous two-sheet drawing portraying a cattle roundup in butte country. Also, King says he's found evidence the women may have sold works under Dee's name.
The Flaggs' fall into obscurity was gradual, perhaps inevitable. Family correspondence catalogued by Hill and long-ago acquaintances paints a picture of equal parts talent and eccentricity.
In their later years, they lived in a rented Paradise Valley home, which was filled with art and junk. In 1993, they were evicted, and their items were taken. That's the source of King's find.
Now, King is trying to find a suitable repository for Dee's tools, scores of newspaper clippings, a wooden bust of actress Barbara Stanwyck, a gushing letter of thanks from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, charcoal paintings of American Indian children -- a fraction of the Flaggs' belongings.
He first approached two logical destinations: the historical societies of Scottsdale and Arizona.
"I would dearly love it," said Jo Ann Handley, the Scottsdale museum's manager. "Oh golly, what I would give to have that."
But can her organization pay an appropriate price? "There's no way in heck," Handley believes.
Echoed David Tatum of the Arizona Historical Society: "We don't have a budget for acquisitions."
Although no one yet has put a price tag on it, the vast array and volume are overwhelming. The appraisal will be high.
The Phoenix Art Museum's director has seen this before.
"Happens all the time," Jim Ballinger said. "Think of all the artists who leave behind hundreds of things through a productive career. The family doesn't know what to do with them; can't take it all and save it forever.
"So it gets destroyed, broken up, all sorts of things."
A.P. Hays, founder of the Arizona West Gallery and a board member of the proposed Scottsdale Museum of the West, was asked to appraise the collection, after King contacted the mayor's office and first was asked to learn the works' worth. The true price, Hays believes, depends upon what's considered valuable.
"If a museum has artwork or artifacts created by a relatively important person, the more material you have about the person's technique and style contributes to an understanding," Hays said. "It has value -- not necessarily great commercial value -- in explaining the art and the artist."
So King finds himself mired between finding the most lucrative deal while preserving the Flaggs' history. The conflict has caused him deep regrets over winning that auction. Seeing him through these tough times, he says, is his faith and the duty thrust upon him.
Said King: "I'm the spokesman for the family." - Mike Branom, The East Valley Tribune
TRANSIT NEWS
DRIVER HURT WHEN MAX TRAIN HITS CAR
HILLSBORO, OR -- A woman was hospitalized Monday morning after her car was hit by a MAX light rail train.
It happened about 08:00 at Third Avenue and Washington, just west of the MAX station.
Hillsboro, Oregon fire officials say the train crashed into the driver's side of the car, and the car got stuck.
It took crews about 25 minutes to extricate the driver. She was then taken by ambulance to the hospital. Three other people in the car and MAX passengers were not injured.
West side MAX service was disrupted. - KOIN-TV6, Portland, OR
VIADUCT VOTE REFLECTS A CITY AT A CROSSROADS: 'IT'S A CLASSIC SEATTLE FIGHT'
SEATTLE, WA -- Is it a highway proposal -- or the latest plutocratic threat to turn Seattle into a cosmopolis for the wealthy?
Some backers of the barely funded, grossly outmanned campaign against a tunneled waterfront highway suggest the debate puts Seattle at a cultural crossroads. They say the costlier tunnel jeopardizes Seattle's maritime-rooted, Boeing-bred, blue-collar heritage.
But tunnel backers counter that such talk is only the latest in another local tradition: alarmist Seattle lefties demonizing progress. One called it "comic-book Marxism."
Seattle voters have until Tuesday to mail in their ballots for the city's non-binding viaduct election. Their options: another aerial highway or a more expensive tunneled corridor.
Or, as some see it, a blue-collar solution or one step closer to becoming the next Vancouver, BC.
"Underneath all of this debate about the viaduct, that's the cultural subtext," said David Brewster, a political observer and journalist. "It's a very profound one."
For some, at stake is either Seattle's "egalitarian core," or a future as a "city that is a great place to be really rich," he said. "It's a classic Seattle fight."
Photo here: [seattlepi.nwsource.com]
Brewster said it resembles earlier debates over whether to raze Pike Place Market or to build a huge urban park. Voters rejected the "Seattle Commons," backed by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, in 1995 and 1996.
Such debates are perceived as battles between developers and the wealthy, relatively young Seattleites and the sort of longtime neighborhood residents who own typewriter repair shops and car lots.
Once again, the viaduct debate has old-guard liberals nostalgic for the 1960s and 1970s worrying "the city's losing its soul," Brewster said. "It's not that people actually want to stop this direction but they want to complain about it because they feel kind of devalued and pushed aside."
Big-business interests, developers, architecture and engineering firms, and other construction-based companies helped the pro-tunnel camp pay for a half-million-dollar campaign.
On the other side is a $25,000 anti-tunnel effort largely financed by developer Martin Selig, a Ballard oil company, a Fremont dock company and several dozen individuals who gave between $25 and $250.
"This is a question of where the future of Seattle is going," said Council President Nick Licata. "The elevated represents sort of the bread-and-butter of Seattle. The tunnel represents your more tourist-oriented, international-image Seattle."
Tunnel boosters "have in mind attracting a worldwide constituency to Seattle because of our beautiful waterfront," he said. "The elevated folks, in some ways, already feel confident that Seattle is growing fine. It is prospering well, and we need to keep to the basics."
Councilman David Della, another backer of the rebuild proposal, added: "I have family members who use the viaduct to go to work. They probably will not go down to the waterfront to look at a park or to bask in the sun.
"They use the viaduct to get to work and they just want to get to work safely. That's the culture we're trying to promote: to get working families to their jobs, to get goods to and from businesses and to protect the economy down there."
But tunnel supporters aren't buying it.
"This is about whether we open up our waterfront for everyone to enjoy right now," said Kelly Evans, who manages the tunnel campaign.
"Both of the options here would continue to move people and traffic through the corridor," she said. But the tunnel is "about reconnecting the city to the waterfront for everyone to enjoy."
Seattle historian and political pundit Walt Crowley described the contentions by Licata and "other Seattle-istas (that) the viaduct is a working-class necessity while the tunnel is a bourgeois amenity" as "comic-book Marxism."
"Speaking as someone who regards himself as a social democrat, I am very distressed by this kind of simplistic and reactionary logic," Crowley said in an e-mail. "Such a point of view would be laughed out of the room at any Socialist or Labor Party meeting in England, France or Scandinavia.
"The local leftist distrust of big capital and land use projects goes back to Metro and Forward Thrust. The counterculture left actually opposed light rail in 1968 and 1970, proposing bridle trails instead (I kid you not). The aim of creative government should be to expand the commonwealth for all classes." - Angela Galloway, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
HOW WE ENDED UP WITH THE GREAT WALL OF WATERFRONT BLIGHT
Photo here: [media.seattleweekly.com]
Caption reads: Seattle Municipal Archives
SEATTLE, WA -- Given the acrimonious political debate over the Alaskan Way Viaduct's replacement, leading to-but certainly not ending with-Tuesday's mail-in advisory ballot, you'd think the elevated eyesore was controversial even before its 1953 opening. Not true. Everyone loved it then, in part because the duplex waterfront highway was an entirely native solution to the downtown gridlock caused by U.S. Highway 99 dumping cars into both ends of town. It wasn't a new, forced mandate from Olympia or Washington, D.C., but the fruition of almost three decades of municipal planning-mostly forgotten now, and poorly documented then.
The great bypass route was actually conceived during the 1920s, well before there was any need for it. Seattle still had streetcars; private automobiles were rare; the north-south Pacific Highway 99 was new and clear; and the Depression would soon empty the streets of all but the most necessary traffic. It was then, on a 1927 visit to the Midwest, that local engineer J.W. "Arch" Bollong beheld the majesty of Chicago's new b-level Wacker Drive, which still roars today along the shore of the Chicago River (and which is best known from the final chase sequence in The Blues Brothers). Though his exact words-and indeed most of his biographical details-are lost to the sands of time, he essentially declared, "Damn, we gotta build us something like that back home on Elliott Bay." And build it we did.
It took another 26 years, basically the rest of the young traffic engineer's career, for the northern third of the viaduct to open on April 4, 1953, and it's unclear whether Bollong lived to see it. His presence isn't chronicled at the official ribbon-cutting ceremony, and I was unable to locate any of his descendants. But he would have been the happiest man in Seattle that day. Arch Bollong's story is one of triumph-a cheerful, optimistic, partisan's view of how problems could be solved with careful planning, popular support, the cooperation of public officials, and sound financing. All of which the viaduct originally enjoyed. In the words of 97-year-old former Washington Gov. Al Rosellini, whose political memory goes back to that era, "I don't recall there was any particular fuss about it."
Of course, that may also be because the city approved the project on Christmas Eve during a newspaper strike.
The secret history of the Alaskan Way Viaduct is one of little opposition and even less public scrutiny. The documents I followed through our city library and municipal archives aren't even remotely complete, and the gaps and literally X-Actoed-out pages hint at a broader problem that haunts us still: a lack of government transparency and accountability. No one can fully account for how the viaduct was built. No one seems able to clearly explain how it ended up under the control of the state. No one appears capable of stopping or starting its successor. Is it any wonder our long-fought clusterduct battle has such long roots?
Following his 1927 visit to Chicago,Bollong drew up an elaborate scheme of highway corridors throughout the city, of which the eventual viaduct was just one."A double-deck roadway should be built on Railroad Avenue," Bollong wrote in an official report to his superiors at the City Engineer's office. At the time, Railroad Avenue ran alongside Elliott Bay, following the route that's now called Alaskan Way. It was basically composed of offshore pilings and wooden decking topped with a maze of railroad tracks and interspersed with open "man traps" through which unlucky souls occasionally fell into Puget Sound. Bollong proposed that the mounds of inconvenient dirt then being blasted off Denny Hill be used as fill to widen and stabilize the avenue and build the viaduct above.
He bolstered his presentation with many photos and impressions of his recent trip. "This Wacker Drive in Chicago and the Riverfront Plaza in St. Louis hold a very close relation to our own Railroad Avenue," he wrote, "where plans have already been brought forth for the erection of a two-deck roadway, the lower deck to be used for commercial vehicles and the upper for fast-moving passenger traffic." The viaduct would also provide 5,000 parking spaces beneath it, he noted, "as business and the automobile go hand-in-hand."
Then, page 42 of his viaduct proposal reads: "See sketch attached." The next page has been neatly sliced out, like the centerfold in a vintage Playboy someone desperately wanted to keep.
At the time, Bollong's plan to build a highway over a rail-choked apron of rotting pilings was far-fetched and risky, not to mention that there was no money. Moreover, Railroad Avenue was still somewhat disputed turf. The region's two great rail monopolies, the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific, had dominated the waterfront since the late 19th century, when young, weak Seattle was desperate to move freight eastward. Their properties and wide rights of way were gradually diminished by the 1905 completion of the rail tunnel (removing a tangle of waterfront tracks from Washington to Stewart streets) and the 1911 creation of the Port of Seattle, which wrested most of the piers away from railroad ownership.
In the mid-'30s the city built a new seawall (yes, the same gribble-infested structure that needs replacing today), which essentially allowed Seattle to push its boundary west and claim the new dry ground beneath Railroad Avenue. The whole area became ripe for development-tabula rasa for certain old transportation plans rolled up in a desk drawer.
With the seawall in place, Bollong's dusty blueprint was now unfurled. That new land naturally drew the gaze of Mayor William F. Devin, a Democrat and stalwart FDR supporter who held office in consecutive terms from 1942 through 1952. While manpower and federal largesse were tied up during the war years, the city began a stealthy program of condemnation, clearing warehouses, businesses, and other obstacles to the viaduct's future path. Ultimately, the city spent $1.2 million, or 10 percent of the initial viaduct costs, on securing land for the right of way. None of this money was subject to public vote or any kind of special levy.
Indeed, concerned about a lack of oversight for these expenditures, the Seattle Municipal League, a good-government watchdog group founded during the Progressive Era and still around today, actually sued the city in 1940 for excessive borrowing for its condemnation program.
Which halted exactly nothing. People were paying attention to the war in the Pacific during those years, not the war along Elliott Bay. But as Allied troops steadily advanced eastward toward Japan, politicians including Devin began strategizing how to pillage the Federal Highway Aid Act of 1944, which promised a postwar bounty of funding.
The Muni League was particularly irate about the closed-door planning of the viaduct. "As far as we can determine, the only study given to the viaduct was at a meeting on October 19, 1944 at which the City Engineer [Charles L.] Wartelle discussed 25 items in his department's postwar program," the Muni League complained in a letter to the city, written after the condemnations were over and officials had begun angling for federal money. According to the League's letter, Wartelle had admitted in an October '44 meeting with the City Planning Commission that the viaduct project "may not be needed in the five-year period following the war. However, to play it safe, it was included in the program." Basically, the viaduct was being placed on the city's wish list in order to be eligible for the Federal Highway Aid Act. As with the officials who promoted Sound Transit in the '90s, a primary goal was to not miss out on available federal funds.
Viaduct planning continued through World War II. A few months after the Japanese surrender, a map appeared in the Nov. 18, 1945,Seattle Times that included Mayor Devin's plan. Shortly thereafter, a curious thing happened: The city's printers went on strike, effectively putting the Times, P-I, and now-defunct Seattle Star out of business. All that was left was the weekly Municipal News, which reported on Dec. 22, "Approval of construction of an elevated four-lane arterial on Alaskan Way has been recommended to the city council by the council's streets and sewers committee."
The strike didn't end until Jan. 12. But the next day the Times reported that a formal council vote on the viaduct had taken place during the news blackout. In the city archives, confirmation comes in the form of council Resolution No. 14138, which recommends that "the necessary preparatory measures be taken immediately for the construction of an elevated structure on Railroad Way" and that "the City Engineer is directed to proceed at once with the necessary steps to secure federal aid matching moneys for this project."
And what was the date for this resolution? Christmas Eve, 1945. Some gift.
The middle stage of viaduct history proceeded quickly and without much interest, like some vaudevillian brought on to juggle balls between acts. On Aug. 19, 1946, the council passed Ordinance No. 75292, creating a funding authority for the roadway. Costs escalated repeatedly, more ordinances condemned property and cleared rights of way, a new mayor was elected, the Times and P-I predictably cheered the project, and the Muni League continued to protest the planning process-or lack thereof. A 1948 editorial from the League decries the city's "cursory study" of the project. TheMunicipal News continues: "The viaduct was never approved as a project separate from the many other items in the public works program. Rather, the [City Planning] Commission gave a broad endorsement to the entire public improvements program."
Too little, too late. Hot air wasn't about to stop the concrete from pouring. Construction on the first third of the viaduct, from Battery to Pike, lasted from 1949 to 1953. It opened on April 4, with sled dogs, a beauty queen, and the ritual ribbon cutting. (The fake oversize scissors didn't work, and a pocket knife had to be employed. Prophetic?) The state Department of Highways had its own magazine at the time, Highway News, which includes the following piquant observation: "At this point it is interesting to note that unlike the Aurora Bridge [completed in 1932] and the Lake Washington Bridge projects [1940], the Alaskan Way Viaduct met no organized opposition and had very little fanfare. It seems practically everyone in the area agreed this was the route to take through the city."
Everyone, perhaps, except prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry (designer of Key Arena and other local landmarks), who told the Times, "It will block off all bordering buildings from the bay." And the city archives include a few prescient protest letters from citizens, like R.S. Hawley of the Central Building Company, who warned of the viaduct: "It would always remain an unsightly structure. It should not be many years before Seattle wakes up to the desirability and the need of redeveloping its waterfront in a high-grade manner, and when that time comes, it will be unfortunate to have a viaduct of the nature proposed encumbering our very valuable waterfront." Greg Nickels couldn't have said it better.
Two more sections were built by 1959, connecting U.S. Route 99 to its southern arm in our present-day stadium district. The state estimated that some 32,000 vehicles daily were diverted from city streets. (Today, the viaduct carries three times that amount.) For its first dozen-odd years of highway supremacy, the viaduct stood unquestioned and majestic along the waterfront, a marvelous concrete garland for a can-do age. As Bollong optimistically wrote in a 1947 traffic division report to his bosses, "Now-new worlds to conquer!"
Ramps at Seneca and Columbia streets were added in the '60s. This made the viaduct less of a thoroughfare and more a means of getting to downtown for residents of the North End and West Seattle. The trend was made more pronounced with the 1965 completion of I-5, which reduced traffic along 99 by two-thirds. Thus Bollong's original vision of a bypass route was subverted. I-5 became the bypass and 99 the back door to the city, where people mostly worked and didn't reside. By the 1970s, it came to be seen as a barrier to the waterfront; and by the '90s, with I-5 increasingly clogged, a bypass of the bypass, and an impediment to downtown living.
Still, since the state now owns the viaduct and high-handedly lectures us about its fate, it's ironic to note that the city actually paid the lion's share of the structure's cost. In a proud 1952 overview of the project in Civil Engineering magazine, City Engineer Ralph Finke itemized the $10.6 million tab thusly: $2.3 million in federal aid, $2.5 from the state, and $5.8 million from the city. This included the city's condemnation and right-of-way costs-though not, of course, the potential value of that waterfront land in the future.
Today one might reasonably ask, how did Seattle, the instigator and major partner in building the viaduct, lose control of its future destiny? How did Bollong's innocent Wacker Drive dreams get subsumed into a morass of interagency transportation planning? Therein lies a continuing mystery.
The viaduct, 50 percent funded by the city and 100 percent built on city land, was originally part of the U.S. highway system when it opened. Yet at the same time, the state was considered operator and owner of the highway, even before 99 was downgraded from a federal to state route in the late '60s. Basically, city and federal involvement with the highway ended with the ink drying on the checks. Seattle appears to have granted the viaduct's aerial right of way to the state in perpetuity. Where the specific city ordinance or state legislative act may lie within some forgotten archive, no one at WSDOT or SDOT has been able to tell me. Remember the vast warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark? It's something like that.
And this, too, is consistent with the viaduct's murky origins. "Washington's Highway Department has been regarded for years as a sort of dynasty that ran itself from within. And a rather expensive one, too," the Times' Ross Cunningham wrote in 1953. "The internal organization has helped elect and defeat several governors. One result has been that the Highway Department 'ins' stayed in power despite the outcome of elections."
We're about to see that confirmed once again.
I wish I could report a Rosebud, or even a lost ark, amid the musty troves of viaduct birth records, but they belong to the incomplete era of tattered carbons and faded mimeographs. (Which still smell better after 60 years, I might add, than the CD-ROMs and PDFs of today.) Over and over, I heard the same response from well-meaning city and state officials-"Records aren't so good from the 1940s." In part, obviously, this is because there was a war on: The press, public, and government workers weren't so concerned with observing every bureaucratic nicety. Not every meeting note made it into a file; not every document was filmed onto microfiche. The monument that lasted was the viaduct, not its paper trail.
And Arch Bollong was no Robert Moses, the legendary "Power Broker" who built New York City's great transportation grid-arguably ruining much of the city in the process-by collecting his own tolls and spending them as he saw fit. And our Department of Highways never had the nefarious clout of the Los Angeles Water Department under William Mulholland. There's no great villain in the viaduct saga, no single individual who can be charged with killing the waterfront, or at least planning its murder, during the prewar era. Because the waterfront as we conceive it now, a desirable public space to be integrated with the rest of the city, simply didn't exist in those terms back then.
Or, to put it differently: Forget it, Jake, it's China-duct. - Brian Miller, The Seattle Weekly
SOUTH SHORE TRAIN HITS CAR, KILLING TWO
GARY, IN -- A South Shore commuter train hit a car at a railroad crossing, killing two women, transit police said.
Witnesses said the driver was trying to beat the train across the tracks about 19:00 Sunday, said Robert Byrd, police chief for the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, which operates the railroad.
The women were pronounced dead at the scene, a crossing near County Line Road and U.S. 12 on Gary's east side.
The victims were identified as Jill Tutlewski, 26, of Portage, the driver, and her passenger, Julie Malkowski, 26, of Valparaiso, a spokesman for the Lake County Coroner's office said Monday.
Witnesses told transit police that the car drove around a lowered crossing arm in front of an oncoming freight train on a track that runs parallel to the South Shore, then tried the same thing in front of the commuter train.
The collision sent the car into a utility pole and scattered debris along a 100-yard stretch of track. There was only minor damage to the train.
The train, which had just left the South Shore station in Ogden Dunes, generally travels about 79 mph at that point, Byrd said.
"I just felt a 'thud,' then this grinding sound, then I saw one of the axles (from the car) come flying past my window," said 19-year-old Jessica Stanley of Middlebury, who was sitting in a car waiting for the train to pass. - The Associated Press, The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel
LIRR BANS ALCOHOL ON ST, PATRICK'S DAY
The Long Island Rail Road will ban alcohol on St. Patrick's Day in trains and at stations, railroad officials said.
"In an effort to maintain orderly travel for our customers attending the St. Patrick's Day Parade, alcoholic beverages will not be permitted," according to an LIRR statement released Monday. Alcohol will be banned on Saturday and the early hours of Sunday, until 04:00.
Any alcoholic drinks observed or found at the LIRR facilities will be confiscated by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police, the LIRR said. The LIRR will not sell alcoholic beverages on St. Patrick's Day.
Also, on St. Patrick's Day, the LIRR will offer 13 extra trains -- six westbound in the morning and seven eastbound in the afternoon -- to accommodate parade goers.
An MTA task force currently is reviewing the agency's policy of selling alcohol on platforms and LIRR and Metro-North Railroad trains.
Metro-North operates 16 bar carts at Grand Central Terminal and opens up to nine bar cars from noon to 9:07 p.m. weekdays on its New Haven line.
The LIRR operates 12 bar carts on the platforms at Penn Station, Flatbush Avenue and Jamaica stations during the evening rush hour. It offers on-board bar carts on two daily evening trains departing from Penn Station. During the summer, the LIRR operates bar carts at Hunters Point Avenue and provides at-seat beverage service on two Hamptons reserve cars.
Last August, an 18-year-old Minnesota tourist who had been drinking on an LIRR train was killed after she fell through a gap at the Woodside station and crawled in front of an oncoming train. She did not purchase alcohol from the MTA. - Jennifer Maloney, Newsday
THE END
| Subject | Written By | Date/Time (PST) |
|---|---|---|
 Railroad Newsline for Tuesday, 03/13/07 |
Larry W. Grant | 03-13-2007 - 00:49 |