Would you pay higher taxes to tackle train troubles in downtown Columbia?

Train traffic through Columbia is way up in recent years, and trains that once stretched half a mile now reach as long as 2-and-a-half miles, Mayor Steve Benjamin says.

A solution for the frequently bemoaned downtown Assembly Street train tangle would come at a high cost that could require higher taxes in the city.

Columbia residents could vote sometime this year on whether to raise property taxes for a train fix, Benjamin said.

“The only way to make that happen is to ask voters if this is a priority and if we’re willing to pitch in to pay for it,” Benjamin said.

More trains plus more people in the city has resulted in a troubling clash, said Benjamin, who discussed Columbia’s train problem during his annual State of the City address Tuesday evening at Columbia College.

Related story: Time to ‘muzzle’ the trains? Columbia considers becoming a quiet zone

“Yeah, the trains have always been here,” he said. “But there’s a lot more of them, and they’re a lot longer, and it changes the narrative significantly. And there’s a lot more of us. It’s a perfect storm.”

The thought is that local money would combine with state and/or federal grants to pay for a flyover railroad bridge on Assembly Street. At last estimate, that could cost around $80 million, Benjamin said, though that figure likely has risen.

Related story: City is taking another look at downtown’s train tangle

Columbia is caught in the center of a statewide network of railroads that’s booming, largely thanks to the success of the Port of Charleston and the growth of the Inland Port Greer. That makes Columbia’s train issues a statewide issue that requires a statewide solution, Benjamin said.

The city plans to apply for money from the State Infrastructure Bank. It also will be looking into funding from the state and federal transportation departments, Benjamin said.

The problem, says one state representative, is the state doesn’t have the money to contribute.

“I think the state should chip in money, seeing as how the city of Columbia and USC are huge economic drivers,” said Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland. But, he said, “there’s no money. We simply don’t have the money.”

Rutherford has taken a different approach to the train mess by filing a bill that would stiffen the penalties for trains that sit for longer than five minutes on state roads. He would raise the fine to $5,000 or $10,000 per lane blocked, depending on the time of day of the blockage.

Columbia already has a local ordinance concerning trains blocking roads, but the penalties are minimal and the law is rarely enforced.

“The party that needs to pay are the train operators themselves,” Rutherford said. “They are the ones that need to pay up so we can fix our train problem. And if they would stop blocking our roads, we wouldn’t have a train problem.”

This story was originally published January 31, 2018 at 3:20 PM with the headline "Would you pay higher taxes to tackle train troubles in downtown Columbia?."