• Linear Corridor Purchase . A linear corridor purchase may be used to convert rail tracks to include both freight and passenger service where freight service is declining, but not obsolete. For example, in 2001 Utah created a Transportation Corridor Preservation Revolving Loan Fund and in 2005, the state legislature passed a bill that allowed counties to impose a vehicle registration fee for corridor preservation. Additionally, in Utah, a merger between Union Pacific Railroad Company and Southern Pacific Railroad in 1995 spurred a series of studies and projects related to rail acquisition and shared track arrangements. In 2002 Utah’s Transit Agency (UTA) purchased 174 miles of rail corridor. The rail corridor in the Salt Lake Area is shown in Figure 48, which includes the shared corridors (blue), corridors owned by UTA (red), and the corridor with an access agreement (green). To establish uniform policies and procedures for the thirty-seven municipalities, five counties, and three unincorporated counties that the rail line traversed, an interlocal agreement was negotiated (Loftus-Otway et al., 2008).
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