As with Gateway, Portal, the Baltimore tunnel work, and a variety of other perennial favorites. I was getting ready to be enthusiastic about its chances before someone brought up Rahm Emanuel this afternoon.
Property taxes also encourage the land to be used profitably. Localities want the land to produce economic activity. Long abandoned railroads don’t do that and probably never will. Localities are looking to somebody else to find a productive use for the ROW.
Mike,
Right ! There are always two different sides to every issue or two different ways of looking at things.
As an example I can cite what happened here in Indiana about 15 years or so ago. There was a move afoot to spearhead a constitutional amendment to the state constitution that would have outlawed ALL property taxes. Well, guess what, not everyone was in favor of that and some of those people were opposed for exactly the reason you cited. So, the compromise that was worked out was that they kept our property taxes but placed a cap on them. I think it’s 1% of assessed value for homeowners and 3% for businesses. Not sure, I’d have to check again.
However, I guess my own personal point of view is that I do not like property taxes for the reason that the owner(s) get taxed based on what someone decided the property is worth and NOT on the owner’s ability to pay that tax.
So, if a rail line is only very marginally profitable before tax it could well be unprofitable after tax. What are the railroad managers supposed to do if their shareholders are pressuring them to eek out the maximum profits for the Company?
So, the communities along the line lose their rail freigh
So Fred, we’re (taxpayers) are supposed to prop up failing businesses? I know we sometimes do, but it shouldn’t be the norm.
Uh, well, I agree with you on that one. You might be misunderstaning what I’m trying to say. It’s simply this: High taxes discourage investment and, if they’re high enough they can actually ENCOURAGE disinvestment.
So, if a business is profitable but not profitable ENOUGH to pay the property taxes, the owners or investors or whatever take their ball and leave.
It seems like everytime taxes do get cut, the business economy responds in a positive way. If you want to keep your marginally profitable rail line that serves your community, the first thing you should try is to get rid of the property tax.
I have seen time and again where a community provides a tax abatement when they want to lure a new Meijer store or some other business. Why not do that for the rail line?
But abatements, I think, are kinda unfair. I would support getting rid of property taxes and go with a progressive income tax where the more money that gets made, the more able the person or business is to pay it.
Regards,
Fred M. Cain
CSX is not a marginally profitable enterprise that could not afford its property taxes. It is a fully profitable enterprise that seeks to shed costs by most any mean
Late to the party but a couple of comments here regarding the B&O St. Louis line. I grew up in Southern Illinois and the line saw about 4 trains each way daily out of St. Louis in the 70s then slowly lost business as carload traffic moved away due to mergers and other factors.
St. Louis to Washington intermodal probably doesnt exist due to government being the big industry in Washington. It does move between St. and Harrisburg, Pa (20T/21T) on NS which are big trains. Today’s 21T thru Cleveland was about 13,000ft. I didnt count the containers (all stacks) but probably about 300 both domestic and international. The train is actually a Harrisburg/Kansas City pair but drops St. Louis at Decatur.
CSX operates St. Louis to Northeast via train Q008 which handles hot UPS traffic, TOFC and containers, both international and domestic. It typically has about 200 containers/trailers and works Indianapolis and Syracuse…no doubt splitting there for Boston and NYC.
Carload traffic is handled by Q364 which works Avon Indianapolis to Selkirk. Big train, usually 150 plus cars of general freight and autoracks. There simply is not enough carload traffic moving via St. Louis to the Northeast anymore. Between NS and CSX there seems to be sufficient service to the Northeast…probably not the best service, but sufficient.
Regarding property taxes, I am slowly shifting my view of taxes. I do not care to educate my grandkids in house…been doing it some the past few months and it is tough work. Waste in government? Sure. I for one am not ready to blaze a trail to drive my car…nor am I ready to pay tolls for each and every segment.
Ed
Balt & Ed,
Some thoughts on your posts here. As the days go by, I’m learning more and more as to what happened to this once important line.
Someone was kind enough to send me an internal paper that was generated by The Chessie System. You see, the line was closed, not by CSX but by Chessie under the direction of John Snow.
A study was done on the line closure and it was concluded that it would result in substantial savings in spite of the fact that they KNEW full well that intermodal service would suffer. And, suffer it did! My own take on this is that back at that time King Coal was the “Golden Calf” or the real “bread and butter” of the railroad and they probably thought losing some of the intermodal business was no real big deal. But they failed to see 40 years into the future and all the talk and fear over “climate change” that could well eventually flush King Coal down the drain.
As for the Washington DC area generating a lot of intermodal traffic, I have wondered about that myself. However, I do suspect that there is a lot of potential in the Philly and Baltimore areas – especially when (or is it if?) they ever get the clearances enlarged in the Howard Street tunnel in Baltimore.
So, could we get the old B&O mainline restored? Sure. But it wouldn’t be easy. Ohio would be more difficult that West Virginia. The abandoned line in WV is “rail banked” which means that if an entity wanted to restore rail service, they would have the law on their side in spite of the cries and screams from the cyclists.
Ohio, unfortunately, would be far, far more problematic. They would probably have to construct a bypass around Athens. I have written to both the WVDOT and a state rail agency in
[quote user=“CG Tower of Trainorders.com”]
No greater debate that gets the blood flowing of B&O fans is the decision to abandon the line between Midland City, Ohio and Chillicothe, Ohio and from Red Diamond, Ohio to Parkersburg WVa and beyond. With the 20 year anniversary of the actual abandonment and removal of service key pieces of this line approaching, it’s appropriate it’s being brought up again.
The story, as related to me by a Chessie VP that was at the meeting is as follows:
It was the end of the fiscal year, 1985, the President of the Chessie System and the Chairman of the Board for Chessie, called all of the VP’s together to discuss where the company was. Well, the numbers weren’t very pretty and the operations department was in the red. The VP of Operations, quickly surmised that the Parkersburg “branch” (as it was called), would be a logical way to make up the difference. The operations VP had obviously put some time into this as he then began to spew data, numbers, run times, etc…he came prepared to make a solid argument for this line’s demise. Operations plan was to divert the traffic, lay off most train crews, MofW, Signal, clerks, etc…gradually the line would die, and they could rip it out. The not only made up the operation budget deficit, but the operations VP pointed immediately to the fact that they could continue to make a better profit by avoiding the operations nightmare that was the Parkersburg Sub (more on that in a bit).
Balt,
Thanks for forwarding that piece. That was a good run down and history. As I said before, when planning for the future, a lot of planners and officials base their decisions on what is happening right now. They have a hard time seeing further into the future than 5 or ten years. I think I can answer “CG Tower’s” question: “Was it a mistake?” YES! I think it was.
The trouble with these kinds of “mistakes” is they are not fixable. The line is gone.
Two other examples that I can cite are the losses of the Milwaukee Road’s line to Puget Sound (a very sad tale) and that of the Rock Island’s Golden State line across southeastern Iowa.
I can sympathize with a railroad manager who might want to abandon a long branch serving a few lumber yards of an LP Gas facility that produces at most a couple of loads a week. But unfortunately, that is not the case with these once all-important lines.
Regards,
FMC
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Coal ain’t coming back.
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Now that it’s been doubletracked, the old B&O Chicago line can handle all the traffic.
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Face it, except for Cincinnati, the St Louis line misses every major city along the way.
Coal ain’t comin’ back but that exactly makes a point for the line’s revival. It would be a good route for CSX for intermodal from Philly & Baltimore to St. Louis where they could connect with the UP & BNSF.
The B&O double track line to Chicago has been turned into a steel super highway, but it goes to Chicago, NOT St. Louis.
Although I still don’t think this is possible, just for fun, I am in communcation with a gentleman from the Ohio Rail Development Commission. I would like them to at least take some kind of an inventory of the abandoned right of way.
If Biden and the Congress can agree on a huge infrastructure spending spree, that could possibly help fund the thing.
We built super highways in the 1950s and '60s. I wonder if the time has come to reexamine that and do something different. Perhaps Biden might even agree with that although, to be honest, I wouldn’t have voted for him 
Regards,
FMC
If you have most of your intermodal service going to and from Chicago, you have multiple connections to and from various points in the West with UP and BNSF. Where do intermodal connections in St. Louis go besides Texas?
The costs of making the Cumberland - Cincinnati B&O line able to handle 21st Century clearance traffic (double stacks & auto racks) in addition to the minimal non-clearance traffic on the line, makes restoration of the line cost prohibitive.
But the Big 4 route does. With mergers and consolidations, St Louis isn’t what it once was. You also have to take into account where your western partner built up their infrastructure. There’s a reason UP bought C&NW and why the BNSF southern transcon ends in Chicago.
Be it the ex-B&O from Cumberland to Cincinnati, the Milwaukee Road Pacific Extension, or Raton Pass, Fred seems to always not understand:
*Just because the railroad was in service once, doesn’t mean it can or should be again;
*Routes with steep grades are perpetually inefficient;
*Fewer miles do not coincide with faster cycle time;
*If an investment this large were to take place, it’s much more cost-efficient (to build and to operate) to add capacity on the current lower-cost routes.
Very true. Not only that, but so does BNSF’s Northern Transcontinental and its Central Corridor – both not readily accessible at St. Louis.
The main point in favor of Chicago is that all the Class I railroads (except KCS) have major main line track to Chicago. CP doesn’t go to St. Louis, KCS’s access is by the most-circuitous of ex-GM&O branch lines, and CN’s presence in East St. Louis/Madison is on branch from DuQuoin, IL. CN has much better interchange locations at Chicago, Memphis, and New Orleans with CSX, NS, UP, and BNSF.
BNSF’s presence in St. Louis is mostly on a north/south routing on either side of the river. There is the ex-SLSF line to Tulsa and Avard, but it’s far from high speed and is an up-and-down roller coaster (at least to Springfield, MO). NS could interchange at St. Louis with BNSF and UP, but they have their own main line t
In economics class you learn that land is one of the basic components of the economy. Basing property taxes on what the land is worth tends to keep it in its most economically viable use. Purchasing or owning land is like buying anything else, if the buyer does not have the ability to pay, than he probably shouldn’t buy it. Taxes are a cost of doing business. If you didn’t have property taxes, then speculators would buy up all the land, and charge you a $milion to buy any of it.
And Zoning and Taxes have been used many times to force people off land that has been in their families for centuries by making the taxes more than the owners can afford. Racial cleansing.
O.K. This is what I’m looking at here. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up here nor do I claim to either support this or oppose it. But I was looking at Joe Biden’s website here:
https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/
Then if you scroll down far enough on that page you will come to this:
- Sparking the second great railroad revolution. Biden will make sure that America has the cleanest, safest, and fastest rail system in the world — for both passengers and freight. His rail revolution will reduce pollution, connect workers to good union jobs, slash commute times, and spur investment in communities that will now be better linked to major metropolitan areas. To speed that work, Biden will tap existing federal grant and loan programs at the U.S. Department of Transportation, and improve and streamline the loan process. In addition, Biden will work with Amtrak and private freight rail companies to further electrify the rail system, reducing diesel fuel emissions.
Now here’s the thing: I feel like I’ve sat through this movie before. So getting your hopes up is very, very premature.
But like I mentioned in an e-mail to the guy at ORDC, states need to start making plans just in case funds do become available. There might be possible funding for rebuilding a line like that - or not.
It didn’t hurt me at all to make an effort on thi