(rshsdepot) Sacramento, CA

["Bernie Wagenblast" <brwagenblast_@_comcast.net>]

An editorial from Thursday's Sacramento Bee.

Bernie Wagenblast
Transportation Communications Newsletter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/transport-communications


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Time to talk trains Sacramento needs to end the depot debate

A train depot is a key gateway into the community. Sacramento's decaying
station is a telltale sign that the city and the railroad don't have their
collective acts together.

There never has been, nor is there now, anything close to a political or
financial consensus on how or where to build the sort of facility that
seamlessly moves passengers from trolleys to regional trains to buses to,
perhaps some day, a high-speed rail line down the Central Valley to Southern
California. But the status quo is increasingly unacceptable and an
embarrassment to the city and its leaders. A fast-growing region needs
viable transit and an attractive hub that both respects the value of
preserving the old depot while building a center that meets the needs of the
future.

What would such a transit hub look like? Our crystal ball reveals one
scenario that, while not ideal, is clearly achievable.

First, the old depot stays where it is. The city, despite some
back-of-the-napkin talk nowadays, does not pick up the depot and move the
7,000-ton structure 400 feet northward, to a site where the Union Pacific
Railroad wants to move the track. A new sister train station emerges behind
the depot and next to the relocated tracks. The old depot and the new center
are physically linked - by a walkway, a promenade, a people mover or some
other structure - with the old depot functioning as both a gateway to this
transit center and as a grand public space. Surrounding these two structures
are the other ingredients of a multimodal transit center - the berths for
inter-city buses, the trolley stop, the porticos for Regional Transit buses
and the parking structure.

Is this our favorite scenario? No. Ideally, the old depot itself would
transform into the new multimodal center. And the Union Pacific would
transform from its soul-less self into an institution that values its own
historic structures and partners with the cities along its rail lines rather
than holding out for endless subsidies. And Interstate 5 just west of the
depot would disappear into a tunnel so that this ugly elevated structure was
no longer a physical barrier that poses a logistical nightmare for building
a multimodal station at the existing site.

All of that's just a dream, of course. Sacramento could decide to hold out
for that dream. Or it could decide, as it basically has up to now, to not
decide. The depot preservationists, the multimodal futurists, Amtrak, the
Union Pacific and the City Council could talk themselves in circles many a
Tuesday night down at City Hall. Proposals such as the one to levitate the
depot will rise and then die once it comes back to money. And in the end,
nothing will happen.

That is not in the railroad's or Sacramento's or this region's interest.

Think about that future. Downtown won't be on just one side of the tracks,
as it is now. It will straddle both sides. The dormant railyards will be a
vibrant extension of today's downtown. (Maybe with an arena somewhere in the
midst, maybe not. The crystal ball is cloudy on that point.) Then this fight
in 2004 about moving the tracks vs. preserving the depot will seem strange.

This isn't an either/or choice between having a multimodal transit hub and
saving the old depot. Both goals are desirable and within reach. The city
should act to make both a reality. Otherwise, expect Sacramento to continue
to have the saddest big-city depot in the state for years and years to come.

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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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