Here's the deal with Holyoke:
http://www.icleiusa.org/action-center/learn-from-others/Freight_Case_Study.pdf. They've set a goal of becoming Massachusetts' first carbon-neutral city, so big part of that was purging as many trucks off the road as possible and getting the local manufacturing sector oriented around their freight rail access.
Two big, related rail developments:
1. The Conn River Line upgrades for the Vermonter. Which in turn bought Pan Am Southern (the 50/50 joint venture of Pan Am with CSX national competitor Norfolk Southern) a brand new freight railroad capable of handling heavier goods in a quarter of the travel time it took before to get to get between their yard in East Deerfield and Springfield + Hartford. PAS (actually, more the Norfolk Southern half) has big plans to win back business that Pan Am's shitty service lost through the years. Stuff like Yankee Candle headquarters in South Deerfield, who were a big rail customer until they gave Pan Am the finger over a decade ago over chronically late deliveries.
2. Pioneer Valley RR, the shortline that runs between a Westfield interchange with CSX and Holyoke, recently restored its track connection to the Conn River Line at N. Canal St. so it could interchange with PAS (again, winning back business that Pan Am's intransigence pissed away). PV is the one that serves that whole labyrinthine maze of tracks around the canals in downtown. And they've seen a big uptick in business now that they're interchanging with the big boys at both ends of their mainline, and PAS is running more trains to interchange with them because they're very happy with the traffic PV is sending their way. Takes a lot of trucks off the Pike, I-91, I-291, I-391 to be able to run that Westfield-Holyoke conveyor belt from the less-congested transload spot in Westfield west of the Greater Springfield highway congestion.
It's the combo of those two recent developments which really make an incubator around downtown a business dev opportunity. Because the sharply increased freight rail service lowers the cost of shipping enormously at those sites (they can shop around with intense price competition from CSX's and Norfolk Southern's national reach, and Pioneer Valley will deliver it to their doorstep). And does so while taking trucks on the road. That's upped the real estate value of the old mills, so the town economic redevelopment board has developed a multi-prong plan for downtown. One is the "Innovation District"...starting with a big computing center they attracted to downtown. That's the crux behind the "pretty" canal redevelopment near the new passenger train station and Canal Walk...the non-rail businesses, biomed, research, robotic manufacturing. And then the mills facing the rail-access side (river-facing side of S. Canal St. and Water St., Commercial St.) they're trying to flip properties for more rail customers with requirement for environmental remediation at the sites and the tenants having to set up green facilities before they get the tax breaks. The biggest score they got was Yankee Candle opening its expansion plant and transload downtown, where they take railcars full of the wax pellets they melt and mix into their candles. You can see on Google Satellite there's quite a few freight cars tucked around all those tracks from the 5 or 6 current customers in and around downtown.
The fact that they have gotten the residents to buy into this is almost unheard of in these parts. Pioneer Valley RR has done a good job with community outreach and transparency, and they only run into downtown late-morning/early-afternoon M-F when everyone's at work so most people never see them. There was an article in the local paper a couple years ago about free caboose rides PV gave to the locals as a tour of all their tracks around downtown, and you had...like...soccer moms saying how neat it was that Holyoke had a real freight railroad serving downtown. That...never happens. Ever.
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Worcester sort of didn't have a choice in the matter since it's always been freight yard central. Less a grand revitalization plan and attracting new manufacturing than just embracing what was already there as a ticket to recovery.
1) Providence & Worcester RR has been headquartered at Southbridge St. where their two mainlines converge on Union Station since they started in 1971. Their HQ is the L-shaped brick building on Hammond St. sandwiched between the two rail viaducts. They're Worcester homebodies and pretty much operate their entire CT/RI/MA network out of Southbridge St. So they're one of the largest employers in the city with all the front office staff, all the maint staff and mechanics, and majority of their train crews based out of there. Have stayed fairly clean of environmental violations, which is always what most pisses off municipalities that host a rail yard (see Pan Am and Ayer, EPA fines therein...in spades). P&W expanded a lot in the last 10 years, with a new intermodal yard built down by new Route 146 on ex- city dump land, adding that to the city's tax base in an area where they're obviously not going to bother anyone. Going up 146 from the Pike interchange you can see almost a mile-long string of tankers and autoracks. When they have to expand again the ex- Barbers Yard area along I-290 between the Route 70 exit and the I-190 split is the other "nobody cares; nobody lives on that stretch of Prescott and Crescent next to the 290 eyesore" place they can fill up to their heart's content without bothering anyone. They were also the ones who struck the deal for the air rights cover-over of the Gardner Branch tracks just north of Worcester Union for the Medical Center complex.
2) The CSX relocation from Beacon Park. A very controversial one because of the land-takings, street grid reconfiguration, the fact that it's a truck transload putting huge amounts of big rigs onto the 290 exit at 122, the fact that the state was driving the whole thing over their heads, and the fact that CSX is a much colder behemoth to live with. So they drove a hard bargain. For awhile it looked like a NIMBY ploy. But in the end they wrung some key concessions:
-- A per-truck congestion tax into the local coffers. Tiny surcharge, and spread over zillions of trucking companies, but given the number of trucks that facility serves it adds up fast.
-- A congestion mitigation plan from CSX requiring all of the trucks to disperse by GPS-guided route to the highways of least congestion by time of day. Which means sometimes they'll take the scenic route in the contraflow direction to keep 290 unclogged, but it helps load-balance the highways. Truck companies have no say in the matter; that's part of the price of admission.
-- Concessions from CSX for annual funding donations. Mainly to the schools for scholarships, athletic uniforms, homeless shelters, and so on. Basically making it non-optional for them to get involved in the community. CSX doled out $1.8M to Eastern MA charities in 2013.
-- Concessions from CSX and the state about investing in neighborhood improvements. There's a CSX Neighborhood Improvement Fund and CSX Advisory Committee now. They paid the grants for the city's recent security camera installations on Union Hill to try to tackle the high crime rate up there.
-- Concessions from CSX and the state to build a green facility, use low-emissions switcher locomotives onsite, change their fuel mix for the Massachusetts locomotive pool to more biofuels, install solar panels on the buildings (although P&W one-upped them there and now generates half its yard's electricity from the rooftop panels at HQ).
Basically, this huge windfall of binding promises to be good neighbors or else. CSX then appointed a site General Manager to be the public face of the whole operation, and he's everywhere around town cutting the charity checks, giving the career talks at the schools, etc. And it's sort of stoked a hometown rivalry with P&W on stuff like the solar panels and who can dole out more high school scholarships. And it's worked out. CSX reaps massive revenues from that yard, the city gets large and growing checks from the surcharges, the city takes a pound of flesh in charitable donations every year, has their mandatory participation on the Improvements committee, and rising tide from more freight period being exchanged has also boosted P&W's bottom line and participation. With the neighbors not overly bothered by the yard because so far everyone's sticking to script. Also helps that Norfolk Southern is extending its reach into Ayer so there is some serious competition up I-190 keeping CSX well-motivated to push hard.
They totally nailed it on that contentious negotiation. It's a big revenue stream and giant wad of active-participation corporate muscle they can apply to other improvements in the city. Much of it going into their push to augment their colleges and medical centers with more biomed. So it's not even rail customers per se...but built on the backs of freight rail and the cheaper price for goods they get having the center of the New England intermodal universe right down the street. They'd really like it if Massport started acting on some of their freight-farm conceptual plans for attracting more biz at/around the airport and Goddard Dr., but the extreme overreliance on the "public" part of public-private for that is a lot dodgier and probably won't net what the location could conceivably net on a viable growth strategy. But whatever...that's not the last freight rail expansion within their borders that's going to kick in more revenue. And they certainly know how to negotiate with them.
