Hey, want to buy a railroad?
The State of South Dakota is selling 532.5 miles of rail line, acquired as part of a great Janklovian fit of socialism in the early 1980s by which we acquired 1,316 miles of defunct Milwaukee Road line for $54.1 million. We’ve sold off chunks since then, but now the state is ready to unload all that remains of this socialist network.
The Department of Transportation has posted relevant documents online, including detailed descriptions of each line, maps, loan agreements, and other information helpful to bidders. The Invitation for Proposals specifies that all bids must be submitted via the South Dakota Electronic Bidding System by this Thursday, November 21.
It’s hard to tell how much money one might make by owning a railroad. On the 4.2-mile Wolsey Interchange, for instance, the state reports making $29,557 a year on an annual lease, but we spent $4.01 million in 2007 to build it. The 15.3-mile Yale Line generates several hundred dollars a year, but we spent $1.16 million fixing it up in 2009. The Sioux Valley Line from Elk Point to Canton draws $38K a year in property leases and permits and a comparable amount in annual lease revenue for transport, but I count $18.2M in rebuilding investments over the last ten years. How much of those investments the state can recoup on selling these lines is anyone’s guess.
According to the public Q&A page, at least one community is considering purchasing a stretch of the system to convert the rails to recreational trail. The IFP says the State Railroad Board will choose bids that “are in the best interests of the State of South Dakota,” so highest bidders won’t necessarily win; if a community can make the case to the board that a recreational trail would be better for the state than a one-time infusion of cash from a commercial buyer, they have a shot at securing the line.
I like that….”in the best interest of the state of South Dakota”….The state has done all the repairs and rented them out for peanuts. It was my understanding that the railroads had an option to repurchase the first stretch for what the state payed for it. After the taxpayer did the repairs. The Sioux Valley line is constantly being damaged by the Big Sioux river and only the Hudson ethanol plant and LG Everest use it. I’m betting that one will be a bargain!
It is too bad that this country has decided to move all freight by truck and let the taxpayer foot the bill for the roads the trucks ruin. Europe has done just the opposite by building up their railroads. I am on an international automobile blog. A member there bought a car in Sweden….took the train from southern France to get the car…drove it part of the way back and then loaded it on the train while he took a sleeper berth…..unloaded it near his home in the morning. We haven’t been able to do something like that for most of a hundred years.
Rail is the most fuel efficient way to move freight and the least cost over time. But that doesn’t help out the oil industry.
We need to contact the State railway board and have them re route the
532.5 miles of rail line from Pierre
to Winnipeg , Canada.
Winnipeg is 550 miles from Pierre and if we could load Queen Kristi and the rest of the GOP bastards from Pierre on that train they would only have 18.5 miles left to walk to their new home in the North.
I’d frisk the Queen before she got on board though.
Good point Clyde, I would argue that the future transportation of this will be forever hindered by this lack of vision. Kevin Costner wanted to build a line from Rapid City to Deadwood for a multi million dollar resort. Of course he could have gotten the money for it as it was not a hard thing to do at that time, but some landowners, who had purchased the old right of way, put that down. The South Dakota Supreme Court sided with them and economic development was crippled because of that ruling.
“The South Dakota Supreme Court has determined that private landowners along the route of an abandoned railroad between Whitewood and Deadwood own the rail bed.
In a decision dated July 8, the justices determined that when a railroad company ceased its usage of the tracks, the land ownership reverted back to the landowners.
The Northern Hills Regional Railroad Authority had argued that the land remained in public transportation domain, keeping its use available for a subsequent rail line at a later time.”” Rapid City Journal July 16, 2009
It took 13 years for them to make the decision, but that was finally made. The decision to sell this jewel that we own is a huge mistake. No more will that right of way be available for any kind of transportation needs for the future. Selling this right of way shows how far the republican party of South Dakota has veered from a course of vision from Janklow to outright blindness by GNOem and her accomplices. We should be able to at least vote on it so we all have a voice in either keeping it or selling it. All facts and possibilities should be known beforehand though.
Jerry it is really a shame, IMO, that the Black Hills and Southern road through most of the hill’s was turned into the Michelson trail rather than being kept a tourist steam rail road. The 1880 train languished for decades but is now a major tourist attraction. Being able to ride it, or another steam train, through most of the Black Hills, I think, would be a big draw.
So Jerry I wonder if that decision would void the ancient easement that would have allowed a railroad to be built to the Hyperion oil refinery project. Supposedly one of the main attractions to that site.
I would have thought that Northern Hill’s RR would have been in the right. Wonder who the owners of the property are.
From what I understand, once a property is sold or deeded, the change of hands becomes permanent. An owner or owners of a small bit of that deeded land, now have permanent control over it. In this case, it took 13 years to solve the issue by the South Dakota Supreme Court. 13 years is a long time to be in limbo on a project that was projected to be worth millions and provide hundreds of jobs in the hospitality and other supportive business. It almost seems like the Court just waited it out with the intent that everyone would move on because that’s exactly what happened.
South Dakota has proven again and again that it’s a poor place to do business unless that business is monkey business. We give away tax dollars as if they were candy to those who can afford to pay the tax and then go after land owners who are struggling to stay alive (literally) to pay more.
BTW, I had forgotten about the Hyperion oil gimmick around Elk Point. That divided a lot of neighbors into camps that I think still is a little bitter. Thanks for the reminder.
That makes me wonder if the whole purpose of the state getting out of ownership would be to sell it to those who would haul hazardous material without the worry of the state being sued for a derailment. Owners can litigate these things for decades and then if they lose, they sell out and move on. The new American way is kind of like Butch and Sundance robbing those trains only bass ackwards from what they did. Fits right into the rest of the corrupt state of affairs we live with every day here. We are the Panama of the union.
That’s a long stretch of track to the south. Does it haul grain? Wondering if farmers need that track.
What tracks move Wyoming coal through SD? Or does it go through Nebraska?
The Wheat Growers have said in the past that they wanted a line between Mitchell and Kadoka or at least to Murdo. That Missouri River bridge crossing was pretty extensive for them and they’ve moved past that to Presho. The train is still viable and even more so as the climate changes. We shouldn’t pass on what made us a state in the first place. One of these days, we will have different outlook on trade and the importance of agriculture to feed the whole sorry lot of us. We will need to move that and we may not have the fuel to make that happen or the will as we watch our sky become filled with smog and smoke.
The rail that was between Kadoka and Rapid City was supposed to be utilized as at trail for bicycles, walking and horse travel. There still exists rail crossings over creeks and an almost new bridge across the Cheyenne River. Cooper Garnos sponsored that in the legislature, as I remember. This trail was also supported by Stan Adelstein, who always had a vision for business in South Dakota. Guys like him are not being replaced and that is a damn shame.
The coal trains move through Nebraska. Once upon a time, they were gonna utilize the track that goes through Pierre to haul coal but to make the grades work, in some areas, it would cost a whole bunch. Those coal trains move along at a pretty good clip so there would have to be extensive work along with the widening of the right of way and the bypassing of some of the towns that are on the line for that all to happen, so it didn’t.
Cory posted a great map of the rail system in South Dakota. The short line from Belle Fourche south through Rapid City and then into Nebraska, is mostly bentonite as far as I know.
Here is a link about the rail systems of the past to present https://www.sdpb.org/blogs/arts-and-culture/vanished-south-dakota-rise-and-fall-of-the-railways/
Wonder if Cory has any cost assessment’s for keeping up the road’s that truck’s ruin in South Dakota.
I read somewhere that the Minnesota DOT has studies that claim that a semi truck does 1400 times more damage to the roads than a car. Don’t think that licencing fees are 1400 times higher though.
Doesn’t help our roads any that the state makes sure there is almost no policing of trucks in the state. Overloaded is the norm.
Back when I worked Hy-Vee warehouse, the old nightmare on Elm Street, our trucks rolled into Minnesota on short fuel and had to fill up so Minnesota got the road use taxes from iowa.
Several years ago iowa jacked up the state gas tax a dime per gallon to replenish road repair funds. And this 10 cents per gallon was dedicated to road repairs.