Commuter rail, Hollygrove traffic jams closer to solution
12th July 2021 · 0 Comments
By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer
The chance for a dedicated passenger railroad link between Baton Rouge and New Orleans took a positive turn last Tuesday, yet the potential sale of the Kansas City Southern railroad to Canadian National also raised a tantalizing transportation possibility.
If approved, the State of Louisiana could finally move forward with constructing an exit on the Earhart Expressway near the Orleans Parish line – potentially connecting motorists to the I-10, and ending the deadly wall of cars which daily bifurcates the Hollygrove neighborhood.
Canadian National made its final pitch to regulators for preliminary approval of its $33.6 billion acquisition of Kansas City Southern railroad. That far outpaces the offer of its rival Canadian Pacific, who refused to raise its $25 billion bid (though CP has continued to seek Surface Transportation Board approval for its combination with Kansas City Southern, if the CN deal fails to get approval.) Nevertheless, Canadian Pacific’s failure stands as Louisiana’s gain. Canadian National has maintained that it can address the competitive concerns of the merger by selling 70 miles of track between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, which duplicates routes currently in use by both railroads.
Governor John Bel Edwards has said that his administration has already been in talks with CN to acquire the route in order to provide dedicated passenger rail service between the Capitol and the Crescent City – with trains stopping at Armstrong International Airport, immediately adjacent to its railway path. Canadian National has embraced Edwards’ proposal, and highlighted it as part of its merger application with the STB.
Other stops could include major suburban population centers between the two cities, such as Laplace and Sorrento, as well as shopping destinations like Elmwood, and medical centers such as the Ochsner Hospital Main Campus, each of which the KCS railroad corridor sits directly astride. It also runs directly beside (and under) the end of the Earhart Expressway.
The interstate level road stretches from Hollygrove to River Ridge, running into surface level streets which cause major traffic congestion, particularly at the Orleans Parish line. However, that was not how the Earhart Expressway was originally designed. For decades, drivers have been able to turn off of Airline Highway, take an underpass beneath the main KCS rails, and then cross a spurline to merge into the expressway. However, automobiles coming in the other direction from Jefferson to Orleans could not exit – even though an exit was constructed off of Earhart originally. It’s still visible as one approaches the overpass into Hollygrove. But it’s blocked. Cars just cannot exit there, and drive up onto Airline – and then proceed to the almost immediate entrance ramp onto Interstate 10 via Tulane Ave.
Having an entrance onto the Earhart Expressway without allowing an exit has never made any sense, but Kansas City Southern Railroad would not allow automobiles to cross over its supplementary tracks – which run under the overpass. With the merger, the state could allow cars to pass under that overpass to Airline, sparing the Hollygrove neighborhood with a wall of automobiles which bifurcates the residential area each morning and afternoon.
Repeated proposals (including many editorials in this newspaper) have urged KCS to allow in-bound cars to exit the Earhart Expressway before the overpass at the Orleans Parish line, thus allowing them to go Airline and the I-10. Subjecting Hollygrove to daily traffic jams almost seemed like a form of environmental racism. However, KCS has been deaf to such concerns, somewhat unnecessarily.
The tracks – which KCS cites as a block to constructing an auto exit road off of the Earhart – constitute little more than a spur line to the riverfront docks. This spur line is completely unnecessary for regular passenger service between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. In point of fact, these tracks are virtually unused for freight service, yet this short bit of track line has been a mile of rails with which Kansas City Southern has never been willing to part – until now.
If Canadian National is allowed to sell its 70 miles of track to the state for passenger rail service, as their STB antitrust filing pledges to do, the Edwards administration could easily dispense with this railway spur, and turn it into an access road to Airline – at little cost. The exit ramp is already constructed off the Earhart Expressway. It has been in place for decades. All it needed was a road to connect it with Airline Highway. If built, this new short roadway would run under the existing overpass and connect to the current underpass accessing Airline (which cars use to go onto the Earhart Expressway). In other words, the exit road would not disrupt the proposed passenger rail line in any qualitative fashion.
The merger, of course, is not a done deal. More than 2,000 letters were filed with regulators with most of them supporting the KCS acquisition, but some highlighted the strong opposition from rival Canadian Pacific railroad and several hundred commenters who raised concerns about the merger hurting competition. “We are confident that our voting trust meets all the standards set forth by the STB and believe that, after a fair and thorough review by the STB, it should be approved,” Canadian National CEO JJ Ruest told The Associated Press.
Regulators will decide later whether to approve Canadian National’s plan to acquire Kansas City Southern with a voting trust. If it is approved, KCS shareholders would get paid before the STB embarks on its full review. CN’s bid for Kansas City Southern includes $200 cash and 1.129 shares of its stock for every KCS share. The deal also includes about $3.8 billion in Kansas City Southern’s debt.
The Surface Transportation Board’s current merger rules remain untested as it has not approved any major railroad mergers since the 1990s. Historically, the board members have maintained that any deal involving one of the nation’s six largest railroads needs to enhance competition and serve the public interest to get approved. They have also worried about any destabilization of the industry, which could prompt additional mergers. Feeding into these fears, Canadian Pacific has contended that allowing CN to buy Kansas City Southern would hurt competition across much of the central United States because those railroads operate parallel rail lines that connect the Gulf Coast to the Midwest. CP officials have also said that CN’s plan would add to rail congestion in the Chicago area, and it would likely inspire other railroads to attempt mergers.
This article originally published in the July 12, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
