Common Sense Prevails at the STB.
If you haven’t been following the news about the Kellar Branch rail line at the Peoria Chronicle, here’s a few tidbits from the STB’s latest ruling.
the Cities reiterate that they wish to convert part of the Kellar Branch into a recreational trail. But they provide no evidence or explanation to show that there is no longer public benefit in keeping the Kellar Branch as an active rail line.
The record also suggests the potential for the development of new rail traffic on the Kellar Branch in the future. Specifically, PIRY has indicated that at least two other businesses have expressed an interest in shipping over the Branch if PIRY’s service is restored, and CIRY has conceded that at least one new shipper is interested in rail service via the Branch. In these circumstances, we cannot find that the record presented on reopening supports withdrawing our protective jurisdiction over this property so as to defer to local interests at this time.
The City has not shown that the benefits of removing our primary jurisdiction would outweigh the harm to Carver Lumber, PIRY, and interstate commerce in general. The adverse discontinuance application will therefore be denied.
Sometimes this stuff can get a bit heavy which is why most people don’t understand it or even care, and I don’t claim to be an expert by any means, but in a nutshell the STB (Surface Transportation Board) ruled that PIRY (Pioneer Rail Corp) can also service customers on the Kellar Branch (which runs from Downtown and cuts through Peoria and the Heights out to Pioneer Park,) against the city of Peoria’s wishes, along with CIRY (Central Illinois Railroad) who is the City’s chosen carrier because they were thought to be the least competent and most likely to help abandon the line for a recreational trail. CIRY, for specific reasons unknown to me, changed their mind and has been working on bringing the track back to working condition.
So what does this mean and where does that put us? We have two carriers wishing to offer their services on the Kellar rail branch to service one customer with the suggestion of at least one and maybe two more customers who would like to ship economically by rail- something that has been proven cannot be done by utilizing the city funded ‘western connection.’
If the Peoria Park District and trail-only advocates would give up their pipe dream of ripping out the tracks we would likely attract more heavy industrial business to the Pioneer Park area once the cloud of uncertainty is lifted.
Personally, I would love to have a trail that connected from downtown out to the Rock Island Trail, and I do believe it would substantially benefit the quality of life issues that we all crave, but not at the expense of tax paying industry and jobs.
As I’ve said before, we can have this connecting trail, but only if the trail-only advocates deal with the reality of the situation and figure out an alternate solution instead of trying stunt growth and encourage businesses to locate out of town.
