Working on the railroad
Train access presents challenges in Yuma County
WORKING ON THE RAILROAD
YUMA’S FIRST LOCOMOTIVE blasted into town over the Colorado River back in 1877, defying a federal order against completion of the bridge, enforced by a Fort Yuma commander backed by a contingent of two.
Today, trains still cross a replacement for that bridge built in 1923 on a daily basis, but the community and the rail
industry have changed dramatically.
Nearly 150 years ago, Yuma was being built around a crossing over the river without much else of an established economy, but in 2019, it’s an established agricultural powerhouse and military center, with growing food processing and industrial sectors.
Rail was eclipsed long ago by trucks and cars as the dominant mode of shipping cargo across North America, but was still a strong No. 2 in 2017 at 15.3% of total valuation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation.
Union Pacific and the other surviving freight rail providers are marketing their services as a flexible, secure and fuel-efficient alternative or add-on to shipping by truck, but its share of freight value declined by 0.2% from 2016, according to the bureau, mostly due to price increases for fuel shipped by pipeline or boat.
Meanwhile, Yuma County’s current industries aren’t particularly large users of what rail shipping capacity is now available. Economic development leaders are hoping to bolster job growth by increasing that capacity, but in many cases are finding it to be a “chicken and egg” question.
Union Pacific spokesman Tim McMahan said the company does not release data about its clients, citing confidentiality agreements.
However, according to a 2013 study on rail corridors by the Yuma Metropolitan Planning Organization, the agriculture industry is
responsible for most of the freight being brought to and from Yuma, even though most of its famous winter vegetable crops are too perishable to be shipped that way.
The largest single commodity shipped to and from Yuma County is grain, brought in for the McElhaney Cattle Company’s feedlot east of Wellton, and sent out from agricultural fields, especially during the summer.
Beyond that, city of Yuma Economic Development Administrator Jeff Burt said agriculture is “certainly a real user of rail service.”
“Any time you have something that’s in bulk, especially if it travels in refrigerated cars and/or travels long distance, rail comes into play. Plus, you’ve got inputs for ag that are usually in bulk as well, that have to go by rail, like different types of fertilizers, nutrients, things like that,” he said.
All of these uses are possible through existing spurs that have been in continuous use, said Julie Engel, president of the Greater Yuma Economic Development Corporation.
But Union Pacific has been taking any inactive rail spurs out of commission, by removing the switches that make it possible to use.
“The reason is the route that goes through Yuma is the Sunset Route, and it’s their high-velocity, high-volume route, coming right out of Long Beach and L.A.,” bringing the goods being shipped from Asia into the interior of the country.
“The last thing they want to do is stop, pull off a couple of cars, and try to get the train back on. So if you want to have rail service now, you have to be able to take off an entire unit train, so you’re not blocking traffic on that Sunset route,” she said.
That means building a mile-long spur to accommodate the length of most of today’s trains. That requires an investment by the client of up to $10 million or more.
“There are a lot of users in the (Avenue) 3E, 32nd to 24th street corridor that have rail, because they never stopped using it. As soon as some of our ag companies stopped using rail, they came in and pulled the switches, made them inactive. There’s no way to use those spurs anymore, and they will not reactivate them,” she said.
The best option Yuma County has for developing more rail access are a few large properties near the existing Sunset route, which have enough room to build a mile-long spur.
Two are in the east county around Wellton, and the other is in Yuma, along 32nd Street around Avenue 7E. The latter already has utilities available, while power would have to be extended to the two east county sites.
One local company, DC Logistics, works out of the UP’s main yard in Yuma, collecting spent batteries and battery casings for Johnson Controls, as well as plastics from FlexTronics in San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora.
Engel said DC can also take train shipments small enough to be loaded onto a truck and delivered to the customer,
acting as a “transload operator.”
Fostering such a business for Yuma County was one of two main recommendations in the 2013 YMPO study; the other was to study the feasibility of developing a railroadserved business park near the existing Sunset Line, most likely in the Wellton area.
The analysis looked at other possibilities for expanding rail service in the area, such as building a rail line connecting the Sunset line to the border, or deeper into Mexico to link with Ferromex, that country’s largest rail network, in which Union Pacific has a minority stake.
But the study, commissioned from consulting firm Parsons Brinkerhoff, found that the benefits of building those would be lower than the cost, under the scenarios looked at.
A theoretical alignment for a north-south corridor was identified in that study, along State Route 195.
Paul Ward, YMPO executive director, said the agency is preparing to update this study.
“I understand from the mayor (Doug Nicholls of Yuma) that there is some interest in having some sort of rail contact, how much there is I don’t know, but there is substantial interest in some sort of rail contact,” he said.
A major reason for the update is to more specifically identify a corridor where such a rail line could go, because housing that’s sprung up in eastern Yuma has begun to threaten the corridor recommended in 2013, he said.
“Any time you have something that’s in bulk, especially if it travels in refrigerated cars and/or travels long distance, rail comes into play.”
– Jeff Burt
Engel said the residential growth around Araby Road (the north end of Route 195) has already gotten to the point where that corridor wouldn’t even work, and she’s not sure where else it could go, given the location of the Barry M. Goldwater Range and other federal lands.
So she doesn’t foresee a quick way out of Yuma County’s predicament of sitting right on a major rail freight line, but not being able to use it as a selling point for new industry.
“The number of projects that we can’t compete for because we don’t have the rail is staggering,” she said.
Most of those proposals end up going to the west side of the Phoenix metro area or Tucson, which have much better rail access.
“No one understands that. They look around and say, ‘We have rail,’ and I’m like, ‘No, we don’t. We don’t have rail service, I should say,” Engel said.
McMahan, the UP spokesman, said the company is putting a higher priority on serving smaller users.
“What we do now, that we didn’t do a year ago, is use manifest trains. Manifest trains could be made up of different commodities, with copper cars, with tank cars, and we do it all the time.
We do it more now than we ever have before. Because our focus now is more on moving cars than moving trains.”
BIZ
| January-February 2020