Before my time up here, but I'd guess that local entities threw so much money into the whole project that the trackage rights issue was not so important. The BN ended up with a single route through town, a new bridge over Hangman Creek, and shorter routes out of town (with the end of a helper district on the old NP side towards Pasco.)

Since it hasn't happened yet--the question is: What would the BNSF's position be if the Governmantal agencies involved in attempting to "steer" the project suddenly came up with the money to build a new double-track Spokane River bridge alongside their existing single-track bridge--eliminating a remaining bottleneck for their operations???