By Howard Greninger
TERRE HAUTE — Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett will serve as chairman of a city/county steering committee to provide a general direction and scope of work for a long-range plan for railroad relocation.
Bennett sought the formation of the steering committee Tuesday during the meeting of a policy committee at West Central Indiana Economic Development District, which serves as a metropolitan planning organization to obtain federal transportation funds.
Terre Haute is to receive $450,000 from the Federal Railroad Administration’s Rail Line Relocation and Improvement Program, part of the new federal highway bill.
That money, the mayor said, likely will be used to pay a consultant to establish a rail relocation plan. However, the steering committee can provide what scope of work should be included and a direction for planning, Bennett said.
“We need to come in with some ideas and plans ahead of time so we can use those funds wisely,” Bennett told the committee.
Vigo County commissioner president David Decker will serve as vice chairman of the steering committee. Bennett seeks to add other members from the community such as Indiana State University, business, railroads and the state as well as federal House and Senate offices.
“There are some folks in the community that want to move all the railroads out of town. That would be great, but I want realists and know it will be a difficult task to do that. I don’t mind thinking forward and planning ahead, but some references have been made to Vincennes,” the mayor told the policy committee.
Bennett said Vincennes has abandoned a plan for relocating railroads because it cannot afford 20 percent share of a $300 million project. “They had six plans, with the cheapest at $150 million and the best plan was $300 million, so they will build overpasses,” Bennett said.
“We couldn’t even afford the least expensive option,” said Vincennes Mayor Al Baldwin in an interview Thursday. The city received a federal grant to study railroad relocation but officials decided those plans would likely never come about, he said.
The railroad relocation plans for Vincennes involved moving tracks to farmland and environmentally sensitive land, Baldwin said. “It became painfully obvious” the plans to relocate the railroad would never happen, he said.
In Terre Haute, Bennett said he “hears a lot of things and a lot of people want to do a lot of different stuff and have grand plans just to move them [railroad tracks]. I think there was some expectations set within the last year or so that it was just going to happen,” the mayor said.
One driving factor appears to be gone. That was the idea of creating an inland port near the Vigo-Clay county line.
State Rep. Clyde Kersey, D-Terre Haute, pushed for a bill before the Indiana General Assembly this year. The bill passed the state House of Representatives, and received a hearing before the Senate.
However, the Indiana Port Authority pulled its support, Kersey said, and the bill was stopped.
“I think maybe the opportunity has slipped away. Our best shot was in the Legislature,” Kersey said of an inland port.
Kersey said he has since sought assistance from U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and the county could be eligible for some federal funds to study an inland port; however, Kersey said, “We are under a time frame because that land could be sold. It was an opportunity that comes every 100 years but never developed like it should.”
Ron Hisenkamp, chief transportation planner for WCIEDD, said in order to receive federal funds, a railroad relocation plan must be included in the metro planning organization’s long-range transportation plan, with funds then programmed into a transportation improvement plan.
Bennett said he wants the committee to look at railroads for the entire county “and not just trying to find a way to shove them out of the city and into the county, but an approach that would make sense.”
“I don’t think the city ought to be controlling that any more than anybody else does,” he said. The mayor said he seeks “a nice big working committee instead of having people off doing things, thinking things or dreaming things up out of concert with everybody else.”
Darrel Zeck, public affairs director for the city, said the committee membership is expected to be finalized in a couple of weeks.
Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com. Tribune-Star reporter Arthur Foulkes contributed to this report.
