TUPELO – City officials dislike a plan to elevate the railroad tracks slicing through the center of town, as proposed by an ongoing study.

Mayor Jack Reed Jr. and several City Council members said during a retreat this week that they’ll likely oppose that option when asked for their opinion by study engineers.

But study engineers seem poised to recommend raised rails, anyway. They say it’s the most feasible of all options to ease Tupelo’s downtown traffic congestion, relative to the trains.

The final report hasn’t yet been issued, but all indications point to an elevated track that also calls for the relocation of a downtown train switching yard.

Just because that option is selected, however, doesn’t mean the city must implement every aspect of it.

The city can choose to move the switching yard but leave the tracks on the ground, said Kim Thurman of the Mississippi Department of Transportation, the agency spearheading the $2 million study.

“You can phase it in, and if the city wants to start with operational improvements, you’ve got the document and you can do that. But if you want to come back later and do the raised rails, you’ve got the document for that, too, and you can do that.”

Moving the switching yard would eliminate the need for trains to stop and start in the middle of town. It would also be one step closer to increasing the speed that trains can travel through town.

As part of the proposed raised-rails plan, Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s tracks would rest on an 18-foot bridge so they’d no longer intersect vehicular traffic. The bridge would extend from southwest Tupelo near Eason Boulevard, intersecting Crosstown, and ending at Joyner Avenue in the northwest.

The project would cost an estimated $407 million but would save Tupelo more than $800 million by 2030 by eliminating the need to stop traffic for each train, according to the study.

But the city officials agree with residents’ complaints that such an option would divide the city, reduce property values, present a safety hazard and mar the aesthetics of the community.

Adverse effects

The state Department of Archives and History also commented on the potential adverse effects of a raised rail to historic properties – notably, those in Mill Village.

Thurman said the Department of Transportation has proposed ways to mitigate those effects in a memorandum of agreement, which was sent to MDAH, the city of Tupelo and other agencies for review.

City Engineer John Crawley said he has the document now and will return it with comments shortly, but those comments likely won’t concern the overall issue of whether to raise the rails or not.

“At some point we need to choose an official position,” Crawley said, “and if it’s ‘no build,’ they won’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars if the city isn’t behind it.”

Contact Emily Le Coz at (662) 678-1588 or emily.lecoz@djournal.com