Officials debate cost of losing rail yard versus altering Crosstown plan
Journal Record
September 23, 2008

OKLAHOMA CITY – Everyone asked to speak to state Senate members on Monday had opinions about what the state should do regarding the fate of the rail yard for Oklahoma City’s Union Station. What they didn’t have was an estimated cost to attach to their opinions. Whatever it costs to alter the alignment of the Crosstown Expressway project will be a savings compared to what will be lost if the Crosstown project ruins Union Station’s yard, said Garl B. Latham, president of Latham Railway Services.

Moving the proposed alignment for the new Crosstown just 300 feet would allow the new highway to avoid cutting through Union Station’s rail yard, taking out some of the tracks leading to the station. Oklahoma Department of Transportation Director Gary Ridley disagreed. Delaying the Crosstown realignment project for the sake of again reworking the alignment is a dangerous proposition, he said, as the existing Crosstown structure should have been replaced years ago.

Latham worked for years for Dallas’ DART passenger rail system. Officials for Amtrak and the city of Dallas greatly underestimated how much room they would need to build a multi-modal transportation hub out of that city’s Union Station.

The Dallas facility is close to the Hyatt hotel, which had sought to expand by purchasing more of the station’s property. Now the city would like to expand the train facility, but there is no more room. “I would encourage anything that could be done,” said Latham. “It would be of no small significance to lose this asset.”

A multi-modal hub would not only carry passengers, but would allow goods to be transferred from train to truck and vice versa – a feature impossible to build at Oklahoma City’s far-above-street-level Santa Fe Station. The Santa Fe Station lacks the land, the parking space, and many other amenities already in place at the Union Station.

Latham encouraged lawmakers to consider what future generations will need, as the price of gasoline is making train projects ever more attractive. Times have changed in the last 10 years, said state Rep. Wallace Collins, D-Norman. “Back when gas was a dollar-something a gallon, well, who cares?” Collins said of the proposal to run the highway through Union Station’s yard. “We had a different outlook then.”

The future might require Oklahoma to build an intrastate passenger rail system; if and when that day comes, it would cost much more to rebuild a facility like Union Station’s than it would cost to preserve the station’s yard.

Marion Hutchison, of a citizens’ group calling itself OnTrac, or Oklahomans for New Transportation Alternatives Coalition, brought excerpts from a letter by former Dallas DART official Marvin Monaghan. In his letter, Monaghan wrote, “it would be unfortunate for them (Oklahoma City) to make the same mistake.”

Hutchison and Latham could not say how much it would cost to alter the alignment of the new Crosstown, or how much it would cost to upgrade existing tracks to make them suitable for passenger rail. Depending on the route chosen, how many miles of track are planned, and the extent of the project, the price could vary widely. But the state could today start with passenger trains that run at between 60 and 70 miles per hour on existing track for little money, Hutchison said.

Ridley said he could not estimate how much it would cost to realign the project at this stage. So far, $315 million has been committed to the project, which is expected to require another $180 million to complete. ODOT officials just spent an unexpected $1.4 million dealing with an unexpected environmental problem – an acid pit left over from a turn-of-the-century factory discovered right where some structural pillar supports must be built.

In 2005, the 4.5-mile Crosstown realignment project was expected to cost $360 million, but the price rises ever higher the longer the project takes. Former state Sen. Dave Herbert said a proposal to build a brand-new high-speed rail line from Oklahoma City to Tulsa, capable of carrying trains moving at 180 mph, was estimated at $880 million.

Oklahoma’s only passenger rail service, the Heartland Flyer, makes one trip to and from Fort Worth each day, and that service is subsidized by Oklahoma and Texas at $2 million each. Herbert pointed out that all public transportation systems are subsidized by the government.“You could run that for 30 years before coming close to what we provided for an NBA team,” Herbert said.