Traffic stuck on wrong side of tracks?

WINDSOR – A growing number of Windsor residents, including the town’s fire chief, are voicing concerns that a sudden spurt of heavy industrial development could begin to choke traffic with mile-and-a-quarter-long trains blocking roadways.

But officials of the Broe Cos., the Denver-based developer of the Great Western Industrial Park and owner of the Great Western Railway, are working overtime to allay those fears, assuring residents that rail traffic won’t block firefighters and police responding to emergencies or tie up commuters driving to or from their Windsor homes and jobs.

Windsor-Severance fire officials met privately Feb. 23 with Broe’s rail safety director and the manager of Broe’s Windsor real estate development, a step that might lead the way to a formal study of the effects rail traffic will have on the town.

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“We’re coming from a point where we’ve never been really concerned about rail traffic,”

Windsor-Severance Fire Chief Jerry Ward told the Business Report. “Now we want to understand, as this thing evolves, just what the impact will be. We just don’t know that, and we’ll need their help with the answers to our questions.”

Ward and others say they want those answers before the town acts on a Broe request that the industrial land be annexed to Windsor.

The heart of the issue is the Great Western Industrial Park, a 700-acre tract just east of the Kodak Colorado Division campus in Windsor that represents half the 1,400 acres Broe bought from Kodak in a land deal last year.

Grand plans

The industrial park, under the direction of Broe subsidiary Great Western Development Corp., is slated to accommodate 8.2 million square feet of manufacturing and warehouse space.

The fear among some Windsor residents arises from the indisputable fact that Broe will recruit industrial users of the park that would become customers of the short-line Great Western Railway.

In 2004 Broe played a pivotal role in attracting glass bottle manufacturer O-I Inc., formerly called Owens-Illinois Inc., to a site just northeast of the industrial park. That’s where O-I opened its $120 million plant last year. The company is a major customer for the rail service, as 3,000 train cars annually haul sand, lime and other glass-making ingredients to the site.

Last year, Broe landed Front Range Energy Inc., now building a $50 million ethanol plant on 80 acres. As with O-I, Broe brought in another 3,000-car-per-year rail customer, this time with trains hauling corn to be processed into the fuel additive.

Now, Windsor residents and business owners are asking who the next 3,000-car Broe client will be, and whether more will follow.

“That’s what they’ve said they want to do,´ said Pete Highland, whose east Windsor auto repair business sits near a point where slow-moving Great Western trains snake toward their industrial customers. “They’ve said from the beginning that the point was to bring in more rail customers.”

But Alex Yeros, the managing director of Great Western Development Co., the Broe subsidiary that is spearheading the business park, said the spike in rail use has already peaked, and that prospects for bringing in other large users is iffy, at best.

“We’ve been very lucky in attracting O-I and Front Range Energy to the area,” Yeros said. “Those are two very rail-dependent companies. It’s not likely that we will find many others like those. You don’t see large industrial users locating in this area.”

Rickety rail

Broe bought the rickety Great Western Railway 20 years ago. It’s a century-old relic from the days when sugar beets were the region’s economic backbone and railcars were the carrier of choice for hauling beets into, and sugar out of, plants in Greeley, Windsor and Loveland.

Some of the problems with the antiquated rail structure that critics say will become worse as Broe brings in more users are evident on a drive around town. Dozens of rail lines – main tracks, spurs and sidings branching like arteries and capillaries – crisscross the landscape.

On a half-mile stretch of Colorado Highway 257, the roadway that runs along the western boundary of Broe’s land holdings, three grade crossings – one of them directing rail traffic in the direction of the bottle and ethanol plants – cross the highway. At one grade crossing, a switch located almost within the roadway directs railcars to a spur.

Neighbors – Highland among them – say Colorado 257 traffic is halted several times daily, sometimes for prolonged periods, while cars are being switched.

Mishaps sometimes occur, as in late January when two Great Western carloads of pinto beans pitched sideways off a broken section of track just a few yards west of Weld County Road 15 and just north of U.S. Highway 34, spilling cargo and tying up the line while crews cleaned up the mess.

The derailment was a minor accident and not reflective of the condition of Great Western’s rail network, according to the railroad’s vice president in charge of rail safety.

“The rail broke, and they went over,´ said Great Western Vice President Paul Crawford. “That’s pretty unusual.”

Crawford said federal regulators closely govern Great Western, as they do every other rail carrier, and make weekly inspections of track conditions and set speed limits.

Study time

Safety issues aside, rail traffic increases remain unknown to Windsor officials and some, particularly emergency workers, say an independent study is needed.

Later this spring the ethanol plant will begin processing corn that will arrive in so-called unit trains, 100-cars long, stretching a mile and a quarter. At the Great Western track speed of 10 miles an hour, it would take such a train 12 minutes to clear a crossing.

“We’ve got four crossings right here in town, plus all the stuff around Highway 257,” fire chief Ward said. “If they bring in 100-car trains, that’s going to shut down all those crossings at the same time.”

Ward said he would seek a series of meetings that would explore the potential for a steep rise in rail traffic, and ways that the town, the fire department, the railroad and its customers and the Colorado Transportation Department could collaborate on solutions.

He said he was encouraged by Broe’s expressed willingness to cooperate in the study process, one that he hoped would bring town and fire officials, Broe, Kodak, O-I, Front Range Energy and the state highway department to the same table.

“I told them I needed their support in this investigation,” Ward said. “They said they would cooperate. They’re the only ones who can share with us what they’re thinking. Time is what we’re asking for.”