Crosby: The railroad got the message

By BEcky Brooks

Man­ag­ing Editor

news@gazettepublishingco.com

City offi­cials have received con­fir­ma­tion that Nor­folk South­ern has received the city’s let­ter request­ing that the Cen­ter Street cross­ing be repaired and reopened.

“All we got back from them was from their legal coun­sel that we received the let­ter,” com­mented Safety Ser­vice Direc­tor Jef­frey Crosby on Wednesday.

Crosby added that Nor­folk South­ern Rail­road Co. did note that the same offer was still avail­able to the city. He added the let­ter added that rail­road offi­cials were dis­ap­pointed in the city’s decsion.

The city now is await­ing the rail­road to begin ren­o­va­tion of the Cen­ter Street cross­ing, which was closed nearly a year ago when Nor­folk South­ern removed a set of rails from that loca­tion and stream­lined the tracks into the yard north of the city.

Crosby said the agree­ment that the city has with Nor­folk South­ern — which allowed Cen­ter Street to remain closed this long — requires that the cross­ing be reopened in a rea­son­able amount of time once notice is given of nego­ti­a­tions ending.

The safety-service direc­tor com­mented that the city’s view of a rea­son­able amount of time is 60 to 90 days from the city’s notice, which was mailed out last month to the railroad.

“I would expect within the next 30 days they will start work,” he com­mented. “I’m really not wor­ried they won’t.”

At the end of last year, Nor­folk South­ern ini­tially pro­posed clos­ing five grade cross­ings in Belle­vue and the Ohio Rail Devel­op­ment Com­mis­sion pro­posed mak­ing ner­aly $200,000 in funds avail­able to the city for each grade cross­ing that the city would agree to close. Cen­ter Street remained closed as the city and rail­road con­tin­ued to nego­ti­ate. The rail­road com­pany made other pro­pos­als to the city though­out this year — with nearly all of them keep­ing Cen­ter Street closed permanently.

In a June, Mayor Don­ald Berkey sent a let­ter to Charles Moor­man, CEO of Nor­folk South­ern, propos­ing the rail­road annex its rail yard north of town into the city lim­its and then the city would agree to close both the Cen­ter and East street crossings.

When the city received no reply a month later, the city sent a let­ter to the rail­road inform­ing Nor­folk South­ern that Belle­vue wanted Cen­ter Street reopened.

Belle­vue city offi­cials have sent a let­ter to Nor­folk South­ern Rail­road inform­ing the cor­po­ra­tion it is time to reopen Cen­ter Street. (Gazette pho­to­graph by Becky Brooks)

Posted by Becky Brooks on Aug 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.