Brownsville climbs aboard railroad plan - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Brownsville climbs aboard railroad plan - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review


Brownsville Borough may have boarded a train to nowhere.
Heeding the call of a veteran railroad conductor, borough council this week agreed to sponsor a high-speed railroad corridor that would connect Pittsburgh to Columbus, Ohio, at a cost of $18 million in federal stimulus money.
The Fayette County borough, however, would not be part of the corridor route.
Council unanimously approved a 17-page document that was submitted to the U.S. Department of Transportation late Tuesday evening, just in time to meet a midnight deadline for funding under the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program, or TIGER.
The planning document envisions Brownsville housing a "library" for information about high-speed railroads nationwide, according to its author, Robert Terry of Waynesburg. A train conductor with 38 years' railroad experience, Terry called the library a "storage shed" of records for all high-speed rail projects in the nation, all stored electronically.
Borough officials admit that landing the $18 million grant is a shot in the dark, but Terry had a vision and needed a governmental body — either state or local — to sponsor the plan. And there was no cost to apply.
He looked to Brownsville.
"It was a personal feeling," he said. Brownsville needs jobs, he said, and the goal of the stimulus package is to create jobs.
"I'm excited we have this opportunity to sponsor the plan," said Councilman Jack Lawver. "Rather than a negative, we hope it's a positive."
Brownsville rode a wave of prosperity in the era of coal and coke in Fayette County. It was once a robust railroad town, Lawver said, with as many as 100 railroad jobs. That was before the Monongahela Railroad was folded into Conrail in the early 1980s and the jobs went elsewhere. The town's steep decline began in the 1960s. Today, most downtown businesses are boarded up.
Several plans have been hatched for Brownsville's revival, then scuttled, including riverboat gambling on the Monongahela River and a training center for cyclists in the downtown area.
Lawver said council was aware the proposed rail corridor would not come near Brownsville. But "maybe someday we could have a spur here, a line that would connect us to the main line."
Councilman James Lawver, Jack's brother, said the high-speed rail plan "sounds like a good shot in the arm" for the community.
Terry said he thought the library idea would be key to attracting the attention of federal transportation officials, as nothing like it exists. He said the library would create as many as 25 jobs over three years, including technical positions, such as software engineers and "information specialists."
California University of Pennsylvania also applied for a TIGER grant. The school has proposed a $229 million magnetic levitation system to connect its downtown campus with apartment buildings and college recreational facilities two miles away.