Improvements are underway at some of the railroad properties in the City of Plymouth. City Attorney Sean Surrisi told the Board of Works Monday that discussions with the Chicago, Fort Wayne & Eastern Railroad have gotten off to a good start.
One project the city hopes to work on is repainting the viaduct over Michigan Street. “We are investigating putting together a proposal to send out to get some quotes of what that might cost,” Surrisi said. “And we’d mentioned some graffiti that was on one of the other bridges, and they actually went out later that day and painted over that.”
Surrisi adds that the railroad may also repair another one of its viaducts in the near future, “[City Engineer] Rick Gaul and I went out to the bridge at 3rd Street and looked at some of the rocks that are kind of washing down there, and he said that they’d send a crew out to assess what they could do to prevent that within the next couple weeks and hope sometime this summer that they could get in there and maybe put some walls or something up to maybe keep those rocks from sliding down.”
Board of Works member Shawn Grobe said that railroad officials were also supportive of the city’s desire to implement a quiet zone, “They said that they don’t have any pros or cons about that. It’s just a matter of us going to the Federal Railroad Administration now. I think the next step would be to investigate whether we want to hire a consultant to look into what the process would be. We’d need to formalize those plans before we do anything.”
Plymouth and the Chicago, Fort Wayne & Eastern Railroad have also discussing upgrades to the Liberty Street crossing. The city has also been working with Pioneer Railroad about repairing the crossings on the other railroad running through the city, including those at Harrison and Jefferson Streets.
