The closed crossing at Lake Street.
In 2015, the City of Shreveport closed the Lake Street crossing just to the east of the Holiday Inn to work with Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to get a so-called ‘Quiet Zone’ established.
The Mayor’s Office intended that the crossing would reopen, better and quieter than before.
[box] CITY OF SHREVEPORT OFFICE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS OLLIE S. TYLER, MAYOR AFRICA PRICE, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC RELATIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS Press Release ______________________________________________________________________________ March 3, 2015 Lake Street to close for two years beginning Friday Drivers may need to take an alternate route starting Friday if Lake Street is within their travels. Lake Street will be closed at the railroad crossing between Commerce Street and the Sci-Port Discovery Center on Friday, March 6. The crossing will be closed for two years while the City works on a design and construction of a “Quiet Zone” project. The Zone will allow trains to cross Lake Street without having to give an audible warning to vehicles. The cost of the improvements will be jointly shared between public and private donations.[/box]
That is not what has happened. For the nearly nine years since, the crossing has stayed closed, and the City has seemed no closer to getting a Quiet Zone. Several weeks ago, the businesses along Lake Street who feel they have been the most impacted by the long closing began advocating again for the resolution that had been promised by the City in 2015, or barring that, a reopening of Lake Street without a Quiet Zone.
Their petition to that effect on change.org has so far garnered 608 signatures. The request of the petition was that the City include the cost to create a Quiet Zone and reopen the crossing in an upcoming Bond Issue. That Bond Issue will be presented to the Shreveport City Council for a vote, which may allow it to be decided by Shreveport voters in a 2024 spring election.
Will the effort be successful? Erik Lewis, the Manager of Public Projects with UPRR, hopes not. In an email to the City, he said that “Union Pacific considers this crossing closed”. He goes on to explain that Union Pacific has since ‘realigned tracks and switches’ which means any attempt to open the crossing would cost ‘in the several of millions, if not upwards of $10M due to the need to relocate track and switches…” and that this expenditure “would not be approved by UPRR operations after the recent removal.”
“Leaving the track in this state, he says, is the “cheapest, quickest, and minimum risk path on obtaining a Quiet Zone at this location without subjecting the city to a lengthy, arduous, and expensive process…”
Lewis also states that LaDOTD has ‘expressed concerns’ about the street being reopened due to the decline in the number of accidents at the intersection since the street closure. “All of this to say that UPRR’s position is that the crossing is to remain closed.”
Both the DDA and the Downtown Shreveport Development Corporation (DSDC) hope that this is not the last and final word, and believe that the businesses that agreed in 2015 to a two-year closure deserve updated answers in order to chart their way foreward.
