Is there an economic and/or social benefit to re-activating train lines on Salt Lake's West side?

• Position: Up Front - Column

yes

Mike Furtney

Regional Director, Public Relations

Union Pacific Railroad

Today, we enjoy a lifestyle that flourishes in large part due to a rail network that moves goods across the continent daily. That benefit cannot be understated or damaged by tampering with a process that serves us all so well.

Sacrifices are necessary for such a system to function effectively. When the original rail routes were designated in the 19th century, most of the West was open land, with few towns. Many communities, seeking that vital economic connection to a rail line, vied with each other to obtain it. As towns became cities, people settled along the tracks as available land shrank. Some areas, including Salt Lake City, received additional rail routes to accommodate new markets and industries. Brigham Young built rail lines, some of which are still part of the UP system today.

By World War II, most rail lines used today were in place, and U.S. railroads often held onto older lines that might be used to carry new trains unanticipated 50 or 100 years earlier. 900 South, built and operating for nearly 100 years, is just that type of route, once much busier than during the 1980s and 1990s, but its availability gave Union Pacific an alternate route to avoid increasingly congested tracks near Grant Tower. This flexibility is an illustration of the larger efficiencies gained by railroads free to adjust as market requirements change.

Union Pacific believes firmly that there is a social benefit to the currently higher train frequency over 900 South. If it were not possible for U.S. railroads to keep some tracks in inventory, and to increase their usage when needed, such a condition would impose time-consuming and costly elements, to the detriment of the economy.

Portraying 900 South as unique, or alleging that it causes extraordinary hardships for local residents, is mistaken and fails to consider the many locations in the Union Pacific 23-state network, and all other railroads, where other cities' residents live near tracks carrying more trains than 900 South. Other accusations of discrimination are equally wrong and ignore the inability of early-1900s rail builders to predict today's community development. Every U.S. consumer makes daily accommodations in his or her lifestyle to allow our economy to function effectively.

The system works. Our economy is sound. And anyone proposing fundamental changes does so at the risk of damaging our industrial foundation...