BNSF, UP officials optimistic about getting federal funds for Fort Worth's Tower 55
(The following story by Gordon Dickson appeared on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram website on August 4, 2010.)
FORT WORTH, Texas Work on railroad crossings and rail lines near downtown Fort Worth could begin as soon as spring if the Tower 55 project is awarded federal funding, officials said Wednesday.
Officials from Fort Worth-based BNSF and Omaha, Neb.-based Union Pacific appeared cautiously optimistic that the project will make the cut for federal transit grants. A decision is expected in Washington in the fall.
The project, which could cost up to $94 million, includes improving or closing several dangerous crossings in and near the Rock Island/Samuels Avenue neighborhood. Among them are those frequented by Nash Elementary School students at Gounah Street and Cold Springs Road.
An extra 9,000 feet of north-south railroad track would also be built to reduce train congestion at Tower 55, which rail officials say is one of the busiest at-grade rail intersections in the U.S.
"This is something the railroads couldn't have come up with on their own. There's been a lot of leadership," BNSF spokesman Aaron Hegeman told members of the Tarrant Regional Transportation Coalition during a meeting Wednesday in Fort Worth.
Texas has asked for $40 million in so-called TIGER-II federal money.
The two railroads have pledged at least $50 million to cover most of the rest.
This year, North Texas officials failed to win stimulus funding for the project. Federal officials told them that Tower 55 was "a great, meritorious project" but fell just below the cut when $1.5 billion in TIGER I discretionary grants were handed out, said Tom Shelton, senior planner with the North Central Texas Council of Governments. "They ran out of money," he said.
After that setback, the railroads upped their original $32 million contribution to at least $50 million.
