Crews begin railroad project

A joint project between the Missouri Department of Transportation, Union Pacific Railroad and Amtrak aimed at improving passenger rail service in the state broke ground last week just west of California, Mo.

On Monday, crews kicked off the project that will add aN $8.1 million, 9,000-foot railroad side track to increase capacity for freight transportation and reduce delays on the route used by Amtrak Missouri River Runner trains between Kansas City and St. Louis.
MoDOT Administrator of Railroads Rod Massman said the project will be funded with state money and a Federal Railroad
Administration grant. Last year, the General Assembly allocated close to $5 million for state rail projects, which will pay for about two-thirds of the project. The $3.3 million federal grant will cover the remaining one-third of the project’s funding.

A 2006 University of Missouri study identified three major bottlenecks along the rail corridor near California, Knob Noster and Strasburg, MoDOT spokeswoman Kristi Jamison said. The first project seeks to address a major bottleneck caused by a 25-mile stretch of single track from Sedalia to Jefferson City.

Shane Keller, assistant vice president of operations for Union Pacific Railroad Northern Region, said increasing commercial and freight traffic on Missouri rails prompted the company to invest more than $400 million since 1999 on track capacity and maintenance projects.

“The Kansas City-to-St. Louis rail corridor has experienced such a steady growth in freight rail traffic over the years that the corridor experienced capacity constraints,” Keller said.

Jamison said MoDOT projects that the second track in California will increase capacity of state railroads by 17 percent. Although more than 90 percent of rail deliveries have arrived on time so far this year, Jamison expects a 17 percent reduction in delays will attract more people to take passenger rails across the state.

The project is designed to add a second, parallel track to enable slower freight trains to move off the main line as they approach California, Massman said. Rerouting the freight trains will allow faster Amtrak trains to pass through the bottleneck without extended delays.

Jamison said the aim of the project is to encourage more people to use the Amtrak service to travel across the state.

“We’ve really strengthened the partnership to improve service so we can have more people using it,” Jamison said. “A more reliable line will lead to more use.”

More people having been using Amtrak to travel through Missouri, especially in the past year, Massman said. He said Amtrak use peaked late last summer as gasoline prices soared. Since that time, ridership has declined with the cost of gas, but Massman said the number of people taking the train is still much higher than it has been in previous years.

“Last March is when we really started to see a dramatic increase in people riding the train,” Massman said. “This project should improve Amtrak service and encourage more people to take the passenger trains.”

“This kind of targeted capacity improvement can make a real difference in improving the on-time performance of Amtrak trains and make our service more attractive,” said Mike Franke, Amtrak Assistant Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development.

Union Pacific is responsible for overseeing the project because all freight and Amtrak trains in the state run on Union Pacific lines, Massman said. Construction on the new rail siding in California is expected to officially kick off in late May, with December 2009 set as the target completion date.

After the project in California is completed, the line in Knob Noster will be the next priority for improving state rail service, Massman said. The project in Knob Noster is slightly different because there is already an existing rail siding in place. However, the 4,000-foot parallel track in Knob Noster is “extremely short” for freight trains, which frequently stretch more than a mile long, Massman said.

“The proposal there would be to extend that siding to make it at least 9,000 feet,” Massman said.

MoDOT is seeking to fund the expansion of the Knob Noster rail siding with federal funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The federal government will open the application process for stimulus funding for rail projects June 17, so MoDOT is already working on a bid proposal for the Knob Noster project.

Until the state knows whether it will receive stimulus dollars for the project, Massman said MoDOT will be holding off on contracting work for Knob Noster rails.

“We have to wait for the application because basically they would be funding 100 percent of the project, so if we don’t get the grant there is no money for it,” Massman said.