Quote:
Originally Posted by Novacek
That's why the freight relocation fund exists. Because you've got all this freight running through the middle of cities/metros, leading to increased congestion (from closed crossings) and air pollution.
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But that's the major problem, its the inner city rail corridors where all the freight railroad support structures and customers exist as well.
The proposed rerouting of UP north-south trains onto the rail corridor used by all of its east-west trains, from San Antonio to Sequin, doesn't work. That line barely handles the existing UP east-west trains.
The proposed solution only moved the north-south trains east from a point just south of downtown San Antonio to a point near Taylor. While it removed north-south through trains from downtown Austin, it didn't from downtown San Antonio. You were still going to have local freight trains providing services to local freight customers. Freight customers that UP will still have to service.
And that's the problem that hit the fan, UP just got tired waiting for Lone Star Rail to assume maintenance on the existing corridor. Basically, the time was up and UP will have to reinvest money into the corridor for maintenance to keep local customers happy, So the deal is off. Lone Star failed to remove that burden from them. That was the incentive for UP to agree to the deal in the first place, not having to invest more money into the existing corridor, Lone Star was going to do that.