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Time to move the tracks

Fresno has waited long enough for rail consolidation.

Now that the warm glow of swearing-in ceremonies is past, the new Fresno City Council and newly installed Mayor Alan Autry appear ready to get to work. They face a lengthy agenda of problems and opportunities; one item that should be very high on that list is solving the decades-old curse of the old Santa Fe rail line that splits the city.

Rail consolidation has been an issue in Fresno since the city first started growing to surround the tracks, which bisect the town from southeast to northwest. The tracks, now owned and operated by Burlington Northern Santa Fe, have been an obstacle to traffic and a hazard to the citizenry for more than 80 years now. It is past time to realize an old dream: moving the BNSF trains -- and Amtrak, which shares the track -- to the west, onto new tracks roughly paralleling the existing Union Pacific lines and Freeway 99.

That dream has withered in the past when confronted by two seemingly insurmountable obstacles: the high cost of such a massive engineering job, and the absence of the requisite political will on the part of Fresno-area leaders. Of the two, the latter has actually been the more difficult to overcome. That's been true, in part, because the pressure from the grass roots hasn't been sufficient to move the leaders in the right direction.

That's no longer the case. The public appears ready to move on this problem, and it's time for the political leaders to seize that energy and harness it to a workable plan, complete with financing. The signs are good. City Council members and Mayor Autry have made strong statements in favor of consolidation, as have members of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors and other important players.

It won't be easy; the last time we looked seriously at the cost of the project, the estimates were in the neighborhood of $200 million. Now that figure may be doubled (a study under way should tell us more precisely). But that price tag shouldn't put us off, as it has in the past. The only surefire way to keep the cost of this essential undertaking from continuing to rise is to just go ahead and do it.

In an era of state budget surpluses and a commitment on the part of Gov. Gray Davis to infrastructure needs, the Valley's legislators may be able to bring us a lot closer to being able to fund the project. Their effort is essential.

Our half-hearted attempt to do something about trains cutting through the heart of the city -- the multimillion-dollar remaking of the Shaw and Marks intersection with the BNSF tracks -- amounted to a surrender. That decision was made in a context that suggested true consolidation -- along the entire length of the tracks within the city, not just in one part of town -- was the best we could do, that full consolidation was and must remain a pipe dream. We've done that too often hereabouts, settling for what we think we can get rather than insisting on what we really need. That has to end. Second- or third-best is no longer good enough for Fresno. Big dreams can come true. Rail consolidation is a great place to start.