The Federal Rail Administration's public meeting in Springfield today lasted more than two hours. Members of the Springfield rail corridor study citizen advisory group appeared frustrated, confused and unable to agree on any major issue.
The current study of preferred rail corridors in Springfield will be folded into a new statewide study of the St. Louis to Chicago line. One major change is that the new study will include a fourth option of keeping passenger rail on the 3rd street corridor while moving freight traffic to the 10th street corridor.
Incredibly, one member of the Springfield rail study citizen advisory group asked representatives of the Federal Rail Administration (FRA) why that fourth option had not been considered earlier in the first study.
I would ask the same question of the advisory group. Why didn't they insist that the fourth reasonable alternative be included in the existing Hanson Engineering study? Were they lead to believe that they weren't allowed to consider anything other than the three alternatives presented to them? Did the city leaders who insisted on local control of the study discourage consideration of any additional options? Did it simply never occur to them to seriously consider anything other than 10th street corridor consolidation?
Much of the public language used by the study group suggests a reluctance to view passenger rail as a separate issue. The FRA official said that the fourth alternative "should have been part of the process all along." It appears that the new study is necessary partly because the current one failed to seriously consider all reasonable alternatives.
At another point in the meeting, FRA officials were asked why the advisory group hadn't been given copies of the existing Hanson Engineering study. Once again, that question could have been directed to Mayor Mike Houston and County Board Chairman Andy Van Meter who both have the study and have commented on it in the press. In fact, the FRA official said city leaders are free to make the Hanson study available at any time.
I suppose Houston and Van Meter are free to characterize the study in any way they choose as long as it isn't available to the public. They bypassed the citizen advisory group when they took the study's conclusions directly to a friendly newspaper instead of making it available to everyone. They both remained silent during the meeting while several members complained of not having seen the study.
Comments from the advisory group revealed a total lack of unity. One member claimed that most everyone would prefer that all trains be routed outside of the community. Later, another member said passenger rail inside the city along 10th street would be a good thing because the new public transit multimodal facility will drive east side economic development. And even though it would drive economic development on the east side, we're told it will harm development of downtown and the medical district if placed along 3rd.
I have yet to figure out how the same multimodal proposal could drive development on one corridor and destroy it on another. I give city council member Gail Simpson credit for recognizing that good mass transit can be an economic development tool. This fact seems lost on those representing the medical district. The most frightening part of the meeting was to see how many people in the room have an outdated, 1960's automobile-centric mindset about transportation planning.
Yet another member spoke about NAACP's opposition to 10th street consolidation because it would unfairly burden the east side with the negative impacts of freight traffic. He was one of several people in the room who suggested that the advisory group was unfairly stacked with people who had their minds made up from the start.
Mike Houston closed the meeting by saying that resolving the issue will take the community coming together in agreement. Good luck! Despite a stacked advisory group and a massive public relations effort in favor of 10th corridor consolidation, it's clear that city residents are still deeply divided.
It was an interesting meeting. I'll write more from my notes when I have time.