Though it may be in a plan somewhere, is having heavy rail access to the port of Boston really that important to the city's, region's, and country's economic competitiveness? Given how the area around it is developing, having heavy freight trains rumbling through there would seem incongruous at best. There are numerous ports up and down the east coast with way better rail access; why can't things that require rail just ship out of those ports instead?
I get that the Port wants it - of course they do. But at what point does that become the tail wagging the dog of development in the greater downtown Boston area?
New England ports only have a chance if they hone their specialties, since they're never going to compete with PANYNJ, Halifax, and the like. Port of Boston has already done a pretty good job of that with the Autoport at former Moran Terminal, and by being very focused with where they drive container biz at Conley Terminal to target the gaps in drayage distance and shipping costs vs. NY. You've also got regional examples like Quonset Point in RI that have done well by having laser-like focus on their specialties, and some recent revivals seeing an uptick in business like Portland and Belle Dock in New Haven.
So it's not useless. It just has to be more targeted than simply "well, we gotta do something to keep up with the Joneses". Ruthless efficiency more than grandeur. Since Massport's had some recent successes and has studied Port of Boston to death, they've got their data house in order on what probable uses will bring highest return. The only thing that's going to screw with that is City politics.
What's envisoned for Marine T. (skimming the bullet points in the 2013 rail study) is:
- Cold storage warehousing. Biggest specialty use seen for this part of the port. The metro region is at a disadvantage by not having a full-service Hunts Point-like district providing a measure of local price control over perishables. Walsh had advocated for that...the BDPA, not so much. Marine T. can help with that task, and perishables are one of the commodities that already travels by rail from Everett Terminal where fridge cars from New England Produce Center stock your supermarket shelves with fresh veggies...so it's not that big a stretch to expand from there. Outbound fish shipments to the Midwest were seen as possibility if the proposed Tide St. spur had tail tracks close to the seafood warehouses.
- Overdimension or overweight containers. Equipping Marine T. to handle nonstandard container sizes that don't fit the extremely rigid standardization of Conley Terminal. These would be more appropriate for rail than truck. Seen as #2 overall need since more of these containers will be coming with the Port dredging, and Conley simply isn't equipped for them.
- Bulk shipments of distillery grain (e.g. Harpoon needs 20 carloads/yr.)
- Beverages (e.g. Harpoon estimated to be worth 45 boxcars/yr., beer already moves by rail in modest quantity in New England)
- Imported building materials, lumber, structural steel. Ships more efficiently to distribution centers via lumber rack railcars than by truck. ID'd need for steel-loading facilities ports and rail, since few places in Northeast that can do that.
- Cement. There's a cement plant at end of existing track that was a rail customer until Track 61 was temporarily severed for Big Dig construction and they switched to truck. CSX did a test run a few years ago to see if the tracks were operable that far because they wanted to start re-using rail, but for whatever reason they couldn't come to financial agreement.
It's a hodgepodge, but there's enough here to do a dozen-plus cars per night 6 nights a week on a CSX local out of Readville that comes into Widett Circle after commuter rail shuts down for the night. They'll get in and out so quickly it'll barely cost them anything to run the train, and they'll definitely be making a tidy profit on it.
To me, the days of Track 61 being under the purview of the FRA should be numbered at this point. Move toward abandonment.
Doesn't work that way. No one can initiate a drive to will a line into abandonment. The only way that can be done is CSX filing an abandonment docket with the Surface Transportation Board to extinguish their operating rights. And in the process Massport, as the primary cosignee served by those freight rights, must file a supporting statement to that abandonment docket.
That is the only way it can be done, and absolutely no one...not line owner MassDOT, not the state, not citizen action...can compel an unwilling carrier to abandon against their will. CSX's trackage rights to Track 61 are free-as-in-beer as a condition of the Beacon Park relocation deal, so they have no financial interest in expunging those rights. And there is no "use it or lose it" clock, either. Port of Boston's two other inactive industrial spurs, the Mystic Wharf Branch in Charlestown (Massport-owned) and the East Boston Branch in Eastie (MBTA-owned), each have had dormant Pan Am Railways trackage rights since the mid-90's which that carrier is still sitting on in perpetuity. CSX has even more reason to sit on Track 61 for the long term because all this Red Line test track activity ends up buying them brand new rail infrastructure when it ends up reverting back to freight service.
Massport, should it feel its business interests are threatened by a CSX abandonment docket, also would have the right to file an adverse abandonment and probably get the docket struck down by the feds with ease. The Executive Branch wouldn't necessarily be able to give them a unilateral order to stop, either, given the peculiarities of Massport's charter and semi-autonomy (at best it's an "it's complicated" answer on checks and balances). If CSX wanted out and Massport filed for adverse abandonment, they would be able to offer assistance to broker substitute carrier rights as a means of keeping its toehold...even if the new carrier is just going to sit on the inactive line some more. There is one such very readily available carrier: Fore River Transportation, the state-owned (MA Water Resources Authority) terminal switching freight railroad that runs the "poop train" of processed Deer Island sludge in tankers from Quincy Shipyard to CSX Braintree Yard. They'd be eminently qualified to switch Southie.
This is all by-design. MassDOT got a steal on the throw-in of Track 61 in the big Worcester Line sale package in exchange for giving up a lot of control in the form of free-as-in-beer trackage rights to the port and indemnities to CSX to preserve and improve their freight access to Boston via the L-shaped Framingham-Walpole-Readville route. There's no "go away" ransom that's going to materialize for CSX and no "stand down" mandate that's going to get laid on Massport. If they wanted to take 61 off the FRA network, they would've negotiated the line sale very differently than they did. The conditions they did go by were all intent on keeping it on the FRA network.
It's staying on the FRA network. It's not in any way bereft of passenger opportunities on the FRA network, though none of them to-date are as high-leverage as the BCEC seems to want us to think. But with mostly renewed infrastructure they can look at those things in addition to the nocturnal freight. But make no mistake...no citizen advocacy's sheer force of will is going to suddenly make it a rapid transit line divorced from the FRA network. The state wouldn't have made the deal they did if they placed high empirical value on keeping a rapid transit option in-pocket.
I'll credit stick for developing a creative solution that also ties into the Seaport mobility issue, but it's not workable for various reasons that F-Line pointed out.
