An urban planning student asking a question about railyards.

Hello all,

I am a graduate student at Virginia Tech University getting my Master’s degree in City Planning. I am currently doing research for a paper that has to do with Railyards.

I want to look at Railyard closures and their impact on the urban landscape. So I want to find out about any railyards that are close to cities and that have closed or that have plans for closure in the future. I would also like to know about any type of development that has occurred on former railyards around the nation.

I know what the major RR companies are and I plan to call them and ask for this info, but if anyone knows of any webpage that has this info listed I would appreciate the URL because it would save me a lot of time.

The idea behind the paper is that such a large amount of open land that railyards are composed of does not open up frequently in urban areas, especially large cities like NY and D.C. So when such a large swath of land does open up the potential for impact upon the urban locale is great. Whether it’s a stadium, housing, a mall, or whatever, the developments that are going up on these closed railyards are significant and I would like to better understand the planning process that surrounds their development.

Any info would be of great help.

Thanks,
Aurash

It is not necessary to actually remove a railyard in order to "freer-up" space for urban development, depending on the topography, though there may have been reasons why a railroad may want to depart its city center yards. It's been a while since I used to live in New York so the west side ex NYC line yards may no longer be relevant, but at the time I used to live, the west side line (now also used by AMTRAK to get to Penn Station) and some of the yards were actually decked over for a highway and parkland, by fortuitous trackage being along the river, and cliffs alongside above a heavy sensity residential area, high rise apartments, etc.

What a layman sees out on the street is simply what appears to be "natural" parkland, and the Henry Hidson Parkway. Little may they realize that undernearth these parklands and road is essentially a viaduct and decking over the rail line and rail yards. So depending on the intended land use for the "reclaimed" land over rather than in place of an active railroad facility, the impact of residential, commercial, or industrial development may be whatever one wishes to be, or none at all if in this case along the Hudson River sjore, the development turns out to be open land spacve for recreational parkland.

Farther south on this same line past AMTRAK operations, freight service is (or was) actively prsued first undeneath, then above grade as viaducts in in a number of cases, the rail line actually goes within commercial and industrial buildings to serve customers as well as rail yards. Because of the confined spaces of both the "tunnel" areas under the road and park decking, and of the rail lines passing through buildings, and as a continuation of the Hudson Division suburban service with which this West Side line branches into/out of, the line had been operated with 3rd rail electrification, but in yard situations where crews switching in the vicinity of active electric 3rd rail having to frequently step over, the NYC had a special triple power locomotice which could oprate electricallly directly from the 3rd rail, via battery power operating inside, or with a diesel engine which could operate outside as well as generating recharge of batteries.

Being half a world away and about a quarter century removed from where and when I am, I'm not sure orf how these lins and yards operate these ays, but the principle of shared use of activities (including active transportations facilities) using air rights over yards, bus depots, and even mainlines (isn't that subways too?) lets have cities have their cake and eat it too, and also add coffers to a public transportation operating asset! Perhaps it also should have been done more often in the past to put high rise apartments over the top of suburban rail stations, essentially having direct elevator service under cover of inclement weather to the train station platform to market the great accessibility of such a combination to get to work. Some of the Bronx stations along Metro North lines could be restored unde such schemes.

Of course, a lot of investigative work would be needed for feasibility, but I'd susprect that at least some of these "abandoned" stations could get a new lease on life as exclusive access for high density desidential developmernt of such concepts. And why not similar decking over the rail lines to create some parklands for open space recreation for these high rise communities in between.

Here in Perth, in Western Australia where open spaces are the norm, while the 1950's til now have created car nightmade cities based on suburban sprawl, a lot of seroius urban planning us starting to go back to the idea that higher density urbanism, with emphasis on rail, turns out to be noty a bad idea at all!


Sincerely.

Vytautas B. Radzivanas
Perth, Western Australia

I can think of several out west that occured recently. Downtown Sacramento has been working on an area once dominated by Southern Pacific. The area is to be developed as a Mall and transportation center. Just down the road in Stockton the former Southern Pacific Yard was abandoned in favor of the new facility of the adjacent Western Pacific site. Mergers lead to a lot of excess capacity in the rail industry that leads to sale of excess property like unused rail yards. One thing you need to look at in rail yards that are to be used for development is the amount of environmental damage that will have to be repaired before buildable land is ready for development. The environmental work can be a real foot dragger in the process.

Buildings such as Coaling towers maybe so well built that the price of takeing them down would far exseed the amount of money being invested in the land. I once saw a story on CNN that covered a story about an old Coaling Tower with about 8 stalls that was built by the MILW in the mid 1940's that was going to be taken down with TNT to make way for a houseing project. Needless to say after nearley 4 trys and also haveing a special detachment of the U.S. Military come in the building with stood all trys in leveling it. What ws discovered was the concrete suports went down 300 feet to bed rock and the construction paractice was 3/25 inch steel sheets one in side the outher in a box with in a box type construction with an even spaceing of about 1 foot of concrete between each steel wall also had rebar installed makeing the coaling tower into a bunker strong enough to with hold an earth quake. The houseing project went on minus the lot where the tower stood.

As regards SRS' post, railroads and railroaders tended to overbuild things. A set of clothesline posts that my grandfather built were nearly as hard to tear down as that coaling tower.

Regarding railyards, it probably bears exploring how they may be affected by years of spills and pollution. They may be subject to 'brownfields' regulations in the same way as other industrial sites, and would certainly affect available funding and use in the future.
Malley

Malley wrote:As regards SRS' post, railroads and railroaders tended to overbuild things. A set of clothesline posts that my grandfather built were nearly as hard to tear down as that coaling tower.

Regarding railyards, it probably bears exploring how they may be affected by years of spills and pollution. They may be subject to 'brownfields' regulations in the same way as other industrial sites, and would certainly affect available funding and use in the future.
Malley

I would agree with you Malley. One site worth looking over if one has the time would be to look over the EPA web site and files they contain many listings for rail yard spills and accdents going back many years. Lost of info and impact studys charts and what was or is being done to clean up the site(s) in question.

Moved to the appropriate forum.

-otto-