WSPC working to develop rail car program

ML Chamber adds to list of transportation priorities

MOSES LAKE — The recent approval by the government to fund the launching of a rail car program was a major coup, but now the Washington State Potato Commission has to decide what comes next.

One million dollars was approved for 2005 in November by the House of Representatives to begin efforts to restore and refurbish refrigerated rail cars for transportation of potatoes, apples, onions, pears and other perishable crops from field to market.

WSPC Executive Director Pat Boss said that the next phase in the process is approaching the state legislature to request funding to operate the program "because the money that the feds gave was only for purchasing or refurbishing rail cars … The state now needs the money to run it."

Boss said a lot of people wonder why the state needs money for operations. The rail cars purchased or refurbished by the state through the federal appropriation would be stationed in different areas of the state, such as Moses Lake, Quincy, Pasco and Yakima, he explained — areas where a lot of produce or refrigerated commodities are either grown or processed.

"We're trying to get cars situated in places where there's demand for rail car," Boss said. He said many national newspapers have commented lately that a shortage of trucks and rail cars is pending, with changes in Burlington Northern's rail car fleet, a decrease in trucks due to trucking companies going out of a business and an increase in demand for truck and rail due to dredging issues on the Columbia and Snake rivers.

"The problem is, there was a huge amount of cargo going down the Snake and Columbia River," Boss explained. "You can't just all of a sudden have all of that cargo be stuck on trucks and trains. There just is not enough infrastructure in the area to carry all of that cargo. As a result, you have a situation where a lot of farmers, growers, processors and shippers, because of this shortage in rail cars, are having to wait several days."

It makes it more difficult for growers and the like to ship orders to customers on time, he said, meaning loss of sales and business.

The program is designed to have a car available at the Port of Moses Lake, Quincy or Pasco that a farmer could use to haul products to market. Boss said it is similar to the program used by the wheat industry to aid growers in the mid-1980s who were facing similar problems.

"We're trying to copy it by allowing produce or refrigerated shippers to have the same ability to access cars when there are shortages," he said. "In the end, our state, being in the corner of the country, has got to be competitive. If we can't deliver our products cheaply, efficiently and in a timely manner to Boston, New York, Seattle, they're going to go somewhere else."

The Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce is working with the WSPC to develop the program after Boss informed them, at a Chamber meeting to discuss area transportation priorities, of the problem with finding rail cars in time to ship fresh product.

Chamber president P.J. De Benedetti said the Chamber board will look at a letter to support the rail car program, and also a north-south commerce highway, improvements to Highway 395 and Highway 17 and a number of other items that they think would be valuable to the area, and hopefully to the state.

"We're probably going to have even more critical supplies and rail car shortages in this area if we don't have a pool of cars sitting here to help augment the supplies," Boss said, adding that even some frozen fry processors have commented that they are having problems getting rail cars during certain periods of time.

If state legislature provides operating money, Boss said that hopes are to get the program up and running in the late summer or early fall.

The program would be a fee program, he said, so that it would not be paid for by taxpayers.

"The money we've received from the federal government is kind of a one-time only deal," he said. "They're going to get us the money to get it started, but they expect that this thing is going to run on its own."

Boss said that the hope of the Chamber is also to get the line of track extended to attach Moses Lake to the Burlington Northern rail line. While it has access to that through Connell and Pasco, there is no track connecting Moses Lake to the main line running through Ephrata, Spokane, Montana and Minnesota, etc.

"Moses Lake is 17 miles away and we don't have a track that goes up there," Boss said. "If Moses Lake does get on that main line, you're going to see a lot more shipments going out of here by rail. If that's the case, what we're trying to do with this rail car pool program is position places like Quincy and Moses Lake to be sort of a central hub for rail cars that shippers can use to get on the track right away."