Proposed railroad repair funds now on sidetrack

Hopes that the Palouse River & Coulee City Rail Authority could receive a $60 million stimulus grant were dashed last week.

The authority sought the funds to replace track that would allow trains to travel more than twice their speed.

Joe Poire, executive director of the Port of Whitman, told port commissioners Tuesday that the governor and state Department of Transportation declined to write letters of support for the project.

The port represents Whitman County on the four-county rail authority which was formed to oversee maintenance on the 243-mile railroad system.

With the port as the lead agency, the authority applied for a grant from the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program.

“So this kind of puts us in a Hail Mary phase,” said Port of Whitman Commissioner Dan Boone.

“You best throw in the Qur’an and everything else, because it’s going to be a slim chance we get this,” Poire commented.

Gov. Chris Gregoire endorsed three projects for funding from the program. One calls for rebuilding the SR 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington, one for a rebuild of the Alaska Way viaduct in downtown Seattle and one for the north-south freeway in Spokane.

Poire said the railroad application was a long-shot in preparation of asking for more federal funding in the future.

“We knew it was going to be an uphill fight on this TIGER grant,” he said. “But we thought we could use this as a spring board for a future federal rail appropriation.”

Washington State has spent more than $27 million on purchasing the track and catching up on maintenance deferred by the track’s previous owner, Watco.

He said the rail authority should be well-armed with economic information to show how further investment in the railroad would benefit the region, state and nation. The authority has posted that information on a new web site: http://www.pccrail.org.