U.P. files to cancel trains on 900 South

Phil Gonzalez hasn't bothered to repair the cracks in his backyard patio — the weight of freight trains rumbling past just beyond his rear fence would split the concrete again.

The trains along the 900 South rail line between Redwood Road and 900 West have been pestering residents such as Gonzalez for four years, but now Union Pacific has requested permission from the federal agency that oversees railroad lines to abandon the line — leaving residents cheering.

The agency, the Surface Transportation Board, has until June 2 to grant Union Pacific's request, but unless there are multiple protests, the board will allow the railroad company to stop running freight trains on 900 South.

"I don't think you'll get any protests from people around here," said Marcella Marshall, who lives a few blocks from the line. "We've lived here for 40 years, and we always thought that it was a dead line. We couldn't hardly remember any trains going down it until they opened it up a few years ago."

Union Pacific opened the line late in 2001 to avoid a bottleneck along the Grant Tower rail line, which had two 90-degree turns that forced trains to slow to 10 mph — "think of I-15 and I-80 coming to a four-way stop," said James Evans, a former state senator who represented the Poplar Grove neighborhood.

The backups prompted Union Pacific to replace the light rails on its track on 900 South — which hadn't been used for years, residents said — with heavy rails designed to hold the weight of freight trains hoping to bypass the traffic jam at Grant Tower.

Residents almost immediately started complaining of the noise and foundation cracks they found in their basements. The city administration applied a quiet zone in 2004, but the Poplar Grove Community Council has continued to lobby for realigning the Grant Tower curves to make the 900 South bypass extraneous.

Union Pacific filed its petition to abandon the line Feb. 13, and the Surface Transportation Board published notice of the petition Friday in the Federal Register. The company's willingness to abandon the line came after Salt Lake City, the Utah Transit Authority, the Legislature and the federal government agreed to kick in millions to realign the Grant Tower curves.

The city will be responsible for roughly $11 million of the nearly $50 million cost; UTA and Union Pacific will pay approximately $15 million each, and the federal government has agreed to contribute $5 million. The Legislature's $3.5 million backing in the final days of the 2006 session put in the final money needed to realign the rail line. That $3.5 million will come from Salt Lake County, which has informally agreed to use its share of transportation money from sales taxes to help move the rails.