Thursday, September 6, 2012

CA may go to STB to force the Daylight on UP

Buried at the end of a fairly routine story on the Coast Daylight comes this rather interesting tidbit:

According to SLOCOG Board of Directors President and Paso Robles City Councilman Fred Strong, if the agencies can’t make any progress with Union Pacific within the next three months, the issue may be kicked up to the state Surface Transportation Board, which could enter the process as a third-party arbitrator.
Rodgers said everyone on board is pushing to have the project on track by Spring 2015.
It will be interesting to see if they do end up playing hardball with Union Pacific over it. If they do, and the STB forces the Daylight on Union Pacific, passenger rail with not only UP but the other major railroads should see a minor boost, if for no reason other than simple fear of having a heavy burden laid upon them by the STB, whether realistic or not.

4 comments:

  1. I'm surprised that it's taken this long for anyone to even think about this idea. If this is done enough times, then the Class I RRs will be on their best behavior. UP's tactics are downright appalling and the RR needs to be called out on them.

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  2. Replies
    1. Delayed things for over a decade by claiming that they have too much freight that goes on the route to handle extending a train from San Luis Obispo to San Jose (and then Oakland via public owned track).

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