To avoid getting railroaded
Published 5:30 pm Wednesday, September 24, 2014
The hubris of the railroads 150 years ago stretches to today. As Richard White wrote in his 2011 history, “Railroaded,” “When nineteenth-century editorialists claimed that the fraud, deception and loss of capital that the railroads entailed ultimately did not matter, because Americans now had the railroad, they did not know what they were talking about.”
Leave it to 21st century editorialists, chastened by coal-export terminals and Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s it’s-the-law entitlement, to tilt at Big Rail. If only up-in-arms’ rhetoric made a difference to a multibillion-dollar industry with government and the law on its side.
BNSF’s closing of the underpass at Everett’s Bond Street earlier this summer brings its sharp elbows into focus. As The Herald’s Chris Winters writes, the closure of the pedestrian-only underpass that opens to a trail threading the Port Gardner neighborhood to Pigeon Creek Beach is another downtown amenity gone. The Everett Avenue bridge to the northeast is the substitute access point.
Linking the waterfront to downtown is a city-planning axiom. But there’s little that Everett can do. “We do have a few cards in our hand and we’re willing to play those and be as forceful as we can,” Mayor Ray Stephanson told The Herald.
One card is revisiting an earlier underpass compact between the city and the port, and ferreting out language that might be used to squeeze BNSF. But soak in biographies of James J. Hill and Leland Stanford and behold the less-than-zero odds of successful squeezing.
While a city council resolution illustrates conviction, it won’t move the unmovable. For that, the feds and Washington’s Congressional delegation need to be involved.
The railroad has its reasons. “BNSF has experienced numerous trespassing situations in that area,” BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas told The Herald. The rationale echoes John Steinbeck writing about railroad “bulls” during the Great Depression. The needs of the railroad always come first.
Controversy surrounding Northwest coal-export facilities has provided a citizen primer on tackling train-related headaches. How many of us knew that railroads only have to pony up 5 percent for mitigation as rail capacity swells? How many were reminded that most things involving railroads still fall under the federal sphere?
One hope with the backlash over coal trains is awakening lawmakers and the public to a 19th century relic: the entitlements given to the railroads and their indifference to local interests.
So start small. Urge Washington’s delegation to use its political leverage to reopen the Bond Street underpass.
