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When Rail Expansion is Crossing the Line FREE FLOW

Posted on: Thursday, 15 December 2005, 12:00 CST

By Don Phillips

Many years ago, in a certain wine-growing region of France, the state railroad was building a new high-speed line when officials ran into unusually strong local opposition.

Railroad officials were certain they knew how to deal with complaints about the noise and disruption that a new line could bring. They redesigned a bridge over a small village, making it a marvel of noise control. A new high-speed train could emerge from a tunnel and fly across this bridge at 300 kilometers an hour, or 180 miles an hour, while making almost no noise below.

They also bought several houses in the village, paying more than a fair price, to quell complaints that residents would be in the shadow of the bridge for part of the day.

Still the citizens protested, even more loudly, mystifying officials who thought the financial settlements they had agreed to were so generous.

As they dug the tunnel, the reasons for the protests became clear. Although the builders were careful as tunneling began, they began breaking through caverns filled with thousands of bottles of untaxed and therefore undeclared wine from the famous region. The railroad had stumbled onto an old community secret, which had been kept that way because the caves were never marked on otherwise carefully drawn maps.

That presented everyone with a problem. There were a lot of lawbreakers in the community. What should the railroad do?

The solution was unusually easy. As a government agency, the railroad simply bought the wine at a fair price and hauled it by the carload back to headquarters, where officials drank heartily for many years. The railroad was satisfied, the vintners were overjoyed, and even the homeowners who had been bought out were happy. It seemed property values had risen sharply with the coming of the new railroad, and the railroad sold the houses back to their original owners at the original purchase price.

This is a true story, told to a reporter under an agreement to protect everyone involved. But as railroads enter what may be a major era of expansion in Europe, the result of a European Union policy to promote the shift of freight from highway to rail, will all stories end this happily? Maybe not.

It is true that the railroads have a lot of support for new construction, ranging from the EU to the green movement, which sees the rails as an environmentally preferable way to reduce highway construction. But there have been a few wake-up calls lately.

In northern Italy, officials have been surprised, even shocked, by the strength of a movement against building a major new freight line from Italy toward Kiev. The railroad would cut through a rural mountain valley at tiny Venaus, and the local population has put a big foot down.

The valley already has highways crossing through it and is replete with industrial sites. But residents have had enough, and they have engaged in a formidable series of protests that have already drawn at least a tentative concession from Italian officials to discuss the problem.

Unlike the United States, the European Union understands the urgency of finding more ways to move freight and passengers. And a decision has clearly been made that rail is a more efficient and environmentally friendly way to move freight.

As more construction becomes necessary, however, Europeans need only look across the Atlantic for an example of what could happen if they do not work with citizens before the construction machinery comes lumbering up picturesque roads. In the United States, it is all but impossible to build any highway project quickly. Often, more than a decade must be spent dealing with protests, environmental studies and court actions.

It is doubtful that the residents of Venaus have wine hidden away in tunnels. But the two experiences, in France and Italy, suggest that as the network of European railways expands, officials will need to strike a balance between the need of the public for mobility and the need of local residents for relief and compensation when new projects are built.

Source: International Herald Tribune

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