ACT NOW Support the Southern Rail Corridor

The Eastside Pioneers Neighborhood Association (ESPNA) is very concerned, like most of Rochester, about the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern (DME) and Canadian Pacific (CP) railroad’s ever increasing profile within our community. We are alarmed by the speed of these huge trains in such a densely populated area. We need to act now, before November 1, in order to have any impact at all on the transportation issue that is now before us.

Since the Canadian Pacific (CP) railroad acquired the DME, in 2008, there has been a noticeable increase in activity on the railroad corridor. The lengths of the trains have become longer and the DME has installed new heavy welded rail through our city and our neighborhood. Only a few weeks ago they raised the speed of their trains through Rochester to thirty miles per hour. Even more worrisome is that some of those fast moving lengthy trains have rows of black ethanol tanker cars equipped with the volatile hazardous chemical signs on them.

It is interesting that the DME-CP railroad had chosen recently to incrementally increase the speed of their trains to thirty miles per hour through our community. It is almost as if they were trying to sneak the trains through Rochester. In fact this whole process thus far, laying welded rail through our city and neighborhood, increasing the lengths of the trains, adding more ethanol cars and now increasing the train speed reminds me of the story of the boiling frog. The story goes that if a frog is placed in boiling water it will immediately jump out but if a frog is placed in tepid water and gradually heated the frog will not realize what is going on and boil to death. The story is often used to illustrate people’s inability to react to important changes that occur gradually.

I think that perhaps the DME-CP railroad is hoping for a similar outcome. The ESPNA neighborhood and our community, however, will not be lulled into a sense of complacency by the CP-DME railroad’s incremental build up of train traffic nor will we be fooled by assertions that this is a safer railroad because it is operating on new welded rail. We do not believe for one minute that due to poor economic conditions they are tabling the Powder River Basin project. The Eastside Pioneers Neighborhood Association and the citizens of Rochester are unalterably opposed to this reckless effort to run this high speed, fully armed torpedo, through our densely populated medical community. It makes little sense whatsoever to lay this interstate highway in an area that is clearly not suited for today’s heavy rail freight traffic needs.

The ESPNA is strongly encouraging members of our association and of our community as well to support the Southern Rail Corridor initiative now under consideration by state and federal officials. Take action today by contacting the Minnesota Department of Transportation atwww.dot.state.mn.us/planning/railplan/ . Let them know that you support SRC’s efforts to save our community and to update our rail transportation infrastructure. Tell them that these fast moving, fully loaded unit trains that could be transporting everything from coal to hazardous chemicals do not belong in the heart of a densely populated metropolitan area. Also tell them that other cities, around the nation, facing similar transportation infrastructure problems, have updated their rail transportation systems by also moving them to more open, less populated areas, outside the city core thereby allowing for a safer, more efficient operation of rail freight traffic.

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