Camanche agrees to vacate rail crossing
May 22—CAMANCHE — Camanche City Council on Tuesday unanimously agreed to a $100,000 deal with Canadian Pacific Kansas City Southern Railroad to vacate the City's Fifth Avenue rail crossing.
The decision followed a public hearing that lasted nine minutes and at which two Camanche residents spoke in opposition of vacation.
"I think that we are going to have more health hazards. We're going to have probably some deaths eventually," Dr. John Dixon said. "$100,000 is like spitting in the wind."
Gregg Maxwell spoke about changes he has observed in the length and number of trains that travel through Camanche now as compared to 20 to 35 years ago.
"It was bad in the past," he said, "and it's only gotten worse."
The City of Camanche had initially been approached before the merging of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern Railroads and was offered $200,000 in exchange for vacating two of the City's seven rail crossings, or $300,000 for the vacation of three.
Similar negotiations had been conducted by representatives of Canadian Pacific with other cities located along its route. Seven of the 10 cities to negotiate agreements with the Railroad are located in Iowa, including Clinton, LeClaire, Washington, and Fruitland. Muscatine and Bettendorf each negotiated receiving $3 million and Davenport $10 million.
The City countered the offer presented by Canadian Pacific, asking $2.5 million, for reasons including emergency services access concerns. The Railroad refused.
The Surface Transportation Board, a federal regulatory authority, announced in March 2023 the merger of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern Railroads to create the first single-line freight rail network connecting Mexico, the U.S., and Canada.
The Board's review process had included a formal environmental review elicited by the proposed increase in rail traffic from seven to eight trains per day to 21-24 trains per day. The results of the study indicated that apart from adverse impacts caused from train noise at some locations, the potential adverse impacts of Canadian pacific's proposed acquisition would be "negligible, minor, and/or temporary."
Part of the merger, Camanche City Administrator Andrew Kida explained earlier this month, was to increase the capacity of spurs along the route to allow for trains to pull off the main rail line and allow oncoming rail traffic from the opposite direction to be able to pass through quicker and avoid blocking crossings and stopping flows of traffic for extended periods of time.
As a result, the Canadian Pacific Kansas City Southern Railroad seeks to extend the spur at Fourth Avenue in Camanche back to Fifth Avenue, the least used of the City's rail crossings. The Railroad again approached the City of Camanche with an offer in April.
"In the beginning, we would have received about $800,000 for closing two crossings," Kida explained during Tuesday's public hearing, "but we would have had to give two crossings and the Council was not willing to do that at the time."
In exchange for vacating the Fifth Avenue rail crossing, Kida said, "The Canadian Pacific Kansas City Southern Railroad will compensate the City $100,000, and we will be able to match that with a DOT grant for traffic safety within the City of Camanche."
Specifically, the DOT funding that the City will receive is to be used for barriers at the Third Street crossing where the rubber access through the middle of the crossing is to be replaced with concrete and the approaches also improved.
