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Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) officials expect to select a consulting firm by early March to begin drawing up a new rail plan for the state.

The $500,000 plan will be funded out of $4.1 million the state received in FY2010 transportation appropriation funds. Missouri hasn’t prepared a rail plan since 2002, "and the landscape for rail has changed dramatically since then," says Rod Massman, MoDOT’s administrator of railroads.

According to Massman, four consulting firms responded to MoDOT’s request for proposals to draw up the plan, which will address three major areas:

•    the potential for public-private partnerships and funding sources to ease freight-rail traffic bottlenecks;
•    the necessary improvements to existing passenger-rail routes and interest in developing new routes; and
•    railroad safety improvement.

The $4.1 million grant also included $3.6 million for construction of a 10,000-foot third track to improve access to the Gateway Transportation Center in downtown St. Louis.  MoDOT officials’ negotiations with the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis, which is responsible for the rail lines that run through the downtown area, are moving along "very well" and may be completed in the next six weeks, Massman says.

The department has sent a request for qualifications to begin the track’s final design work, and may select a firm as soon as next week, he says. The total project cost is $4.3 million, with Terminal Railroad agreeing to fund 20 percent.

Meanwhile, negotiations continue between MoDOT and Union Pacific Railroad, Amtrak and Federal Railroad Administration officials to secure the agreements necessary for three projects that primarily will remove bottlenecks between St. Louis and Kansas City, a UP mainline along which 50 freight trains and four Amtrak trains operate daily.

"I'm very optimistic that we will reach an agreement [with all parties] sometime in the next couple of months," Massman says.

Those projects will be funded with $31 million in high-speed stimulus funds.

— Julie Sneider