Forum details increased rail traffic impacts

The trains, they are a comin.’

At least more than currently pass through Cheney, and a group of residents want to keep their neighbors informed about the future traffic and how it could potentially impact the city and their livelihood.

The group is holding a “forum on trains” Wednesday, May 6, at the United Church of Christ, located across Sixth Street from Cheney High School. The forum will be moderated by Cheney City Councilman John Taves, and includes a panel of individuals to discuss local issues composed of Mike Winters, Cheney Fire Chief, Sean Dotson, Cheney School District associate superintendent and UCC pastor David Krueger-Duncan.

“The community forum will include concerns about the possibility of increased traffic for all kinds of trains, and also inform the public on the public hearings on the proposed Vancouver-Energy Oil facility and the proposed Longview Coal Exporting Facility,” one of the forum’s organizers, Nancy Street, said in an email.

The Spokane region, which includes Cheney, has already seen an increase the past several years in rail traffic, notably 110-car long trains hauling coal from the Powder River Basin area of southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming, along with trains taking oil from North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields to refineries in Western Washington.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway has acknowledged the potential for increasing traffic by proposing to spend an estimated $189 million in improvements to Washington rail systems, part of a record $6 billion the company is spending nationally on upgrades. One upgrade took place last summer with construction of a six-mile section of new, heavier track through Cheney.

New refineries and coal exporting facilities are being proposed in Western Washington, leading some rail traffic experts to predict an increase in coal and oil traffic through the Spokane/Cheney area. Adding to Cheney’s concerns is construction of a new, $26 million shuttle grain-loading terminal at the intersection of Craig Road and Medical Lake-Four Lakes Road, and a recent recommendation by the Spokane County Planning Commission for adoption of amendments allowing construction of intermodal rail yards in rural traditional zones such as on the West Plains south of Airway Heights along the Geiger Spur.

Spokane County commissioners have not taken any action on the Planning Commission’s recommendation, the county’s public information and communications manager, Martha Lou Wheatley-Billeter, said in an April 27 email. The commissioners held a workshop on the zoning change recommendation Monday, April 27.

The project at the intersection of Craig Road and Medical Lake-Four Lakes Road will have a storage capacity of two million bushels. By using a loop-track design, it will also enable assembling of 110-car long shuttle trains that will use 6.9 miles of track on the state-owned Central Washington branch of the Palouse River and Coulee City short line between the terminal and Cheney to hook up with Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s mainline.

In order to make the shuttle trains happen, the track from Cheney to the terminal needs about $7 million in upgrades, allowing for the heavier loads and increased speed to 25 miles per hour. The Palouse River and Coulee City Railroad has received $50 million as part of the state Senate’s proposed transportation budget, some of which will likely be spent on the track upgrade.

The May 6 forum begins at 7 p.m.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].