Puget Sound Regional Council<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nKing County Executive Dow Constantine said the release on Thursday of a new study supports the unprecedented groundswell of opposition to coal train exports, by documenting the economic impacts of up to 18, mile-and-a-half long coal trains coming through the heart of communities in the Northwest.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt borders on madness to dig up a big chunk of North America, tie up traffic across the train route, and then ship off that coal to another country so they can bury us economically, and accelerate the decline of the global climate,\u201d Constantine said in a county media release. \u201cThat is an economic model that creates very few jobs, even while hindering economic development and mobility here in central Puget Sound and saddling the region with significant costs to upgrade infrastructure at train crossings.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The study commissioned by the Puget Sound Regional Council, \u201cEconomic Evaluation of Regional Impacts for the Proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal at Cherry Point,\u201d confirms that much of the direct cost to King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties is related to increased train traffic \u2013 traffic delays at rail crossings and the cost of infrastructure improvements. Among the findings:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Passing trains will increase wait times for traffic along the BNSF Railway mainline by an average of 65 percent \u2013 with a 147 percent increase in Marysville.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 The amount of additional time roads could be blocked by Gateway Pacific Terminal trains would range in places up to nearly 90 minutes per day.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Improvements will need to be funded at 34 of 101 rail crossings to keep traffic moving.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Up to $200 million will be required to build new under-crossings or over-crossings for grade separation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Life-saving ambulances and fire engines could be held waiting at 21 crossings that are close to hospitals and fire stations.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Low-income and minority populations in King and Snohomish Counties will be disproportionately hurt by train operations \u2013 especially in Kent, Auburn, Pacific, Fife, Seattle, and Everett.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Last week Constantine convened more than 50 elected leaders from Washington, Oregon, Montana, and British Columbia to call for a full accounting of the true risks and costs of coal and oil trains on their communities, and to bring their voices together for a safer energy future.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Coal trains could cause an average 65 percent increase in traffic wait times at rail crossings, with no benefit to local economy, according to an economic impact study by the Puget Sound Regional Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":6185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-6184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6184"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}