Downtown train traffic control falls victim to flood; priorities changed

Shopping and industry have mostly given way to entertainment districts and convention centers, but one thing remains constant in downtown Cedar Rapids: Traffic on the avenues halts for the frequent passage of trains.

Studies have come and gone, but the June 2008 flood disrupted the most recent effort to address the situation. After the flood, a grant that would have continued the study went instead to planning the city's new convention complex.

“I wouldn't say it's a high priority right now, but it is something that's still on the to-do list,” said Doug Neumann, president of the Cedar Rapids Downtown District.

A report prepared by Neumann after the flood estimates it would cost $65 million to design and build an alternate route for just two of the downtown line's four users.

“There's no source of funding for that at this time, but that would be the next step,” Neumann said.

Blocking the streets for more than five minutes is illegal under city code, which also bans railroads from crossing the downtown avenues between 3:30 and 5:30 p.m. (except Sundays).

“The crews try to work as quickly and safely as they can,” said Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis.

What's known as the Fourth Street Corridor remains a crucial part of the local economy.

“It's essential,” said Jeff Woods, marketing manager for the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Railway (CRANDIC). “With the yards where they lay and with Cedar Lake there, that's the only way that can be done, or it would be extraordinarily expensive (to change).”

“The railroad's been here a very long time, and the city's been built around it,” said Josh Sabin, spokesman for the Iowa Northern Railway.

Sabin's right: The first railroad to reach Cedar Rapids, in 1859, naturally routed its tracks to the industrial center. The city's earliest meatpackers and millers built on sites with rail access to receive grain and to ship finished products, a pattern repeated as new railroads and industries came to town.

Eventually more than a dozen tracks crossed the neighborhood. A six-mile line was built in 1886 between what's now the Otis Road area and Beverly Road, allowing some freight trains to bypass the already congested downtown.

From an 1899 peak of nearly 100 trains a day, dozens of passenger trains continued to operate through downtown every day through the post-World War II years. Passenger trains were gone from downtown by 1961, when Union Station was demolished to make way for parking ramps.

Most of the tracks were also taken up, and today transcontinental freight rolls non-stop south of the city. Now a single track, the old route through downtown, allows railroads to serve major industries such as Quaker Oats, Cargill and Penford Products and to exchange freight with each other.

Owned by Union Pacific, the track is also used by three of the four other railroads serving the city.

“It is a very complex operating situation at that crossing, and one that's been looked at several times over the years,” said Davis.

Union Pacific crews cross the downtown avenues at least once daily to deliver and retrieve cars from the Cargill corn wet-milling plant off Otis Road SE.

“Once or twice a day when needed, but sometimes there's other times when they have a heavy inbound shipment,” said Davis.

Moving cars to and from Quaker Oats also requires UP crews to cross the streets, Davis said.

Iowa Northern brings trainloads of corn from northern Iowa to the ADM plant in southwest Cedar Rapids. Those daily trains cross downtown on the UP tracks and then turn west near the Bottleworks building onto CRANDIC tracks to ADM.

CRANDIC itself uses the route two or three times a week to bring cars to and from Canadian National's yard north of St. Luke's Hospital. Woods said CRANDIC used to deliver coal to Alliant Energy's Sixth Street generating plant six or seven times a week, but the plant was closed after the flood.

Canadian National sends a daily train from the north that often blocks Second and Third avenues SE as it places its cars in Union Pacific's North Yard north of Quaker.