Cedar Rapids, Iowa, looks at relocating railroad lines

Shopping and industry have mostly given way to entertainment districts and convention centers, but one thing remains constant in downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa, The Gazette reports. Studies have come and gone, but the June 2008 flood disrupted the most recent effort to address the situation. After the flood, a grant that would have continued the study went instead to planning the city's new convention complex.

"I wouldn’t say it’s a high
priority right now, but it is something that’s still on the to-do list," said
Doug Neumann, president of the Cedar Rapids Downtown District.

A report prepared by
Neumann after the flood estimates it would cost $65 million to design and build
an alternate route for just two of the downtown line’s four users.

"There’s no source of
funding for that at this time, but that would be the next step," Neumann said.

Blocking the streets for
more than five minutes is illegal under city code, which also bans railroads
from crossing the downtown avenues between 3:30 and 5:30 p.m. (except Sundays).

"The crews try to work as
quickly and safely as they can," said Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis.

What’s known as the Fourth
Street Corridor remains a crucial part of the local economy.

"It’s essential," said Jeff
Woods, marketing manager for the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Railway (CRANDIC). "With
the yards where they lay and with Cedar Lake there, that’s the only way that
can be done, or it would be extraordinarily expensive (to change)."

"The railroad’s been here a
very long time, and the city’s been built around it," said Josh Sabin,
spokesman for the Iowa Northern Railway.

Sabin’s right: The first
railroad to reach Cedar Rapids, in 1859, naturally routed its tracks to the
industrial center. The city’s earliest meatpackers and millers built on sites
with rail access to receive grain and to ship finished products, a pattern
repeated as new railroads and industries came to town. Eventually more than a dozen
tracks crossed the neighborhood. A six-mile line was built in 1886 between what’s
now the Otis Road area and Beverly Road, allowing some freight trains to bypass
the already congested downtown.

From an 1899 peak of nearly
100 trains a day, dozens of passenger trains continued to operate through
downtown every day through the post-World War II years. Passenger trains were
gone from downtown by 1961, when Union Station was demolished to make way for
parking ramps. Most of the tracks were also taken up, and today transcontinental
freight rolls non-stop south of the city. Now a single track, the old route
through downtown, allows railroads to serve major industries such as Quaker
Oats, Cargill and Penford Products and to exchange freight with each other. Owned
by Union Pacific, the track is also used by three of the four other railroads
serving the city.

"It is a very complex
operating situation at that crossing, and one that’s been looked at several
times over the years," said Davis.

Union Pacific crews cross
the downtown avenues at least once daily to deliver and retrieve cars from the
Cargill corn wet-milling plant off Otis Road SE. Moving cars to and from Quaker
Oats also requires UP crews to cross the streets, Davis said.

Iowa Northern brings trainloads
of corn from northern Iowa to the ADM plant in southwest Cedar Rapids. Those
daily trains cross downtown on the UP tracks and then turn west near the
Bottleworks building onto CRANDIC tracks to ADM. CRANDIC itself uses the route
two or three times a week to bring cars to and from Canadian National’s yard
north of St. Luke’s Hospital. Woods said CRANDIC used to deliver coal to Alliant
Energy’s Sixth Street generating plant six or seven times a week, but the plant
was closed after the flood.

Canadian National sends a
daily train from the north that often blocks Second and Third avenues SE as it
places its cars in Union Pacific’s North Yard north of Quaker.