As I have been saying, as the price of gas/diesel goes up the demand for railroad transportation increases. This includes the NWP/NCRA.
By John Lindblom
STAFF WRITER
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Right now, it is a concept that seems well off in the future. But listen closely and you may hear an increasing rumble. Like an approaching freight train, which, as a matter of fact, is exactly what the concept is.
Specifically, it is the concept of hauling freight to and from the Upvalley on the existing Wine Train Napa Valley rails, recently introduced by the Wine Train’s new CEO and President Gregory McManus.
“People have approached us to start carrying freight and we are looking at expanding the freight side of it,” said McManus, who has been on the job less than three months.
“I don’t know how many thousands of pounds of goods come in and out of the valley and I will be looking at that — one to see how much it would reduce costs, and two to see if it would take that many vehicles off the road.”
According to McManus, freight consultants say that a thousand pounds of material can be carried 427 miles by freight train on a single gallon of fuel.
The idea of adding freight-hauling capabilities to the Wine Train seems to have resonated positively with some, but not all, Upvalley spokespeople. Overall, it is a much better received idea than making the Wine Train a commuter-friendly service that would let passengers from Napa off in St. Helena, which, because of staunch Upvalley opposition to it, has never occurred.
Locals chime in
Restaurateur Cindy Pawlcyn immediately embraced the freight-train concept.
“I’m highly in favor,” she said. “It would take a lot of stress off the roadways. We have to quit pretending that we don’t have issues with petroleum prices. I think the more alternatives we can come up with the smarter we are.”
Conversely, Guy Kay, long a detractor of the Wine Train, is far from sold.
“I have no problem with moving goods on railroads; I think that’s a good idea. Whether or not the tracks are up to the specifications required to move freight is another question,” said Kay.
“Rail transportation today is done by piggyback,” he continued. “The rail cars go into a terminal, (freight) comes off the rail cars then they are pulled by tractors and trucks to their final destination. So, my question is, if the Wine Train is going to be a freight line or partial freight line, where is the terminal? I don’t think it’s going to be in downtown St. Helena.
“So, while I think it’s a good idea on the surface, it requires a lot of analysis. I don’t think we’ve done that.”
Trojan Horse?
McManus said earlier that there are no studies of how the Wine Train tracks might accommodate the transportation of freight and that “changes would have to be made in the infrastructure (because) the Wine Train rail is based at going at a certain speed (15 mph vs. 45-50 mph for freight haulers).”
McManus also said he thinks that public interest — even for the heretofore “no-way” issue of hauling commuters on the Wine Train — could heat up as prices at the pump reach $6 to $7 a gallon..
Given that possibility, former St. Helena mayor Lowell Smith said he wonders if the freight-hauling concept is a Trojan Horse to open the way to letting passengers off the Wine Train in St. Helena. “I think freight as a concept has validity — there is a market up here for freight trains and they (Wine Train) have all the infrastructure in place to utilize it,” Smith observed. “On the other hand, if this is just a diversion strategy — ‘we’re going to bring freight up here and it will be sitting in the laps of 500,000 people a year in St. Helena’ — well, that’s 500,000 of them and 5,000 of us.”
McManus, the son-in-law of the late Vince DeDomenico, the Wine Train founder and a man who was at odds with the Upvalley until his death last year at 92, at first blush appears to be someone people here can work with affably. Smith hopes so.
“In their strategy before they chose to litigate rather than mitigate — that’s the whole dilemma we got into,” he said. “If mitigation is their strategy now, it’s certainly new and needs to be looked at.”
Keeping options open
McManus, who came here from Hawaii, claims he knows little about history of DeDomenico’s feuds with the Upvalley, but credits his father-in-law with being a visionary in starting the Wine Train.
“What Vince did was maintain the infrastructure of the transportation corridor,” McManus asserted. “A lot of towns and cities have given up their transportation infrastructure and are now looking back and saying, ‘Why did we do that?’ It’s costing them tremendous amounts of money to go back and recapture that.”
City Manager Bert Johansson acknowledged that preserving the transportation corridor was a critical move that leaves the door open to possibility.
“Having the railroad right of way for a future transportation corridor is worth talking about,” he said.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
The flood project and Napa Valley Wine Train have reached an agreement that will allow a major railroad relocation to begin this fall, both parties announced.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is scheduled to award a contract for $40 million or more this summer to move track, build two railroad bridges and make depot modifications.
These changes will remove the railroad as an impediment to flood waters and set the stage for excavation of a flood bypass channel and the start of flood protection along Napa Creek.
But first the local flood project and Wine Train had to agree to the details of the railroad relocation.
“This agreement serves the community by moving us closer to flood protection and by preserving the transportation corridor that is of great value to all of us now and in the future,” Greg McManus, CEO and president of Wine Train, said in a prepared statement.
The federal contract will raise about a half mile of track between Third Street and Soscol Avenue to the north. The current bridge over the Napa River will be elevated and a new bridge built over the planned bypass.
The railroad work is expected to begin this fall and continue through 2010, assuming federal funding is sufficient to keep the project on schedule.
