Last January, a small team of city planners from across the U.S.–known as the Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team (R/UDAT)–spent a weekend in Springfield sizing up the city. It then released a beautification scheme that included pulling up the Third Street tracks and consolidating them onto the railroad corridor that runs along 10th Street. The Third Street right-of-way could then be transformed into a recreational trail.
The Third Street tracks “provide a psychological barrier that separates the Capitol Campus to the west and the eastside neighborhoods from the rest of downtown,” R/UDAT argued. “This barrier has created a set of developmental patterns that work against healthy neighborhoods and downtown.”
The suggestion is controversial–and even contradictory within the planning team’s own report, which also described the tracks along 10th as part of a “great divide” cutting off the Eastside from the rest of the city. R/UDAT “found it impractical” for “environmental reasons” to move both the Third and 10th street tracks to the perimeter of Springfield and conceded its plans will “intensify the existing barrier between the downtown and the eastside neighborhoods.” To compensate, R/UDAT suggested countermeasures that benefited the Eastside, such as revitalizing 11th and Cook streets and beautifying Capitol Avenue all the way from Second to 19th streets. R/UDAT estimated it would cost $13 million to move the Third Street tracks.
But adding trains to 10th Street will only “reemphasize the iron divide” and have a “devastating effect” on the Eastside, says Polly Poskin, vice president of the Harvard Park Neighborhood Association. She suggests that the city move all three tracks–along Third, 10th, and 17th streets–outside of the city.
Now Hanson Engineers will spend $200,000 in state funds to study ways to shuffle around the tracks. Hanson project manager Jim Moll stresses that his firm is only studying whether moving railroad tracks is feasible in the first place. “People need to realize that the outcome of our study could be a recommendation not to do anything,” says Moll. He explains the final report will take many factors into account, including the social and economic impact. Hanson was once involved in efforts to relocate tracks from along Wabash Avenue and the southwestern part of town to along I-72. The original planning for that project began in the early 1960s and wasn’t completed until the early 1990s, Moll says.
The tracks have always brought trouble: “All the railroads in town create traffic problems,” Moll says. “Trains block crossings, and crossings are very dangerous. There are a large number of them in the city and eliminating them would be a real improvement in safety. These are things that everyone notices. Trains go through this town and cause a lot of disruption.”
Hanson representatives will talk about their upcoming study from 9 to 11 a.m. this Saturday at Union Baptist Church, 1405 E. Monroe. The event is sponsored by Unity for Our Community. An on-line version of R/UDAT’s final report is available at www.springfield.il.us/RUDAT/main.htm.
This article appears in Apr 10-16, 2003.
