From what I heard, it was approved by the city and Union Pacific a few years ago. Now, with the FM 2818 construction in full swing, getting out of that part of town is going to really sticky real fast (stickier than it already was). Meanwhile, Deacon Drive West's crossing has no sign of even starting yet.

Sometime in the late 80s/early 90s I remember CS, Bryan, A&M, and UP had some serious discussions on moving the tracks to the west. Ultimately the talks died off -- too expensive and no real need according to them. Like so many other issues locally, lack of foresight comes back to bite us in the backside.

Not to thread derail, but is there someplace I can see this final plans for the construction going on at 2818 between Wellborn and University/Hwy 60? How is cost of construction being covered? Local property taxes? Thanks y'all.

As I remember the discussions were very serious. UP told them a figure that I think was near 100 million dollars to do and if they were serious warm up their check book. Things became less serious after that.
Also need to remember until 1969 the state constitution required railroads that came within 3 miles of the county seat were required to route through city and have a depot. Likely why HTC built through Bryan and the reason that College Station exists and is name as such.
The tracks predate all these roads where crossings are desired. To railroads any crossing is a huge liability. This is part of the reason UP will not normally create a crossing without closing at least that many or more. On top of that crossings in quiet zones are an even bigger liability, and COCS wants the whole city to be a quiet zone.
Railroads and not easy to deal with, a real PIA, but my dealings with them has been far more civil than any dealings I have had with COCS. Maybe they are made for each other.

Thanks for those links. Looks like a lot of traffic lights on the second link.

UmustBKidding said:

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As I remember the discussions were very serious. UP told them a figure that I think was near 100 million dollars to do and if they were serious warm up their check book. Things became less serious after that.
Also need to remember until 1969 the state constitution required railroads that came within 3 miles of the county seat were required to route through city and have a depot. Likely why HTC built through Bryan and the reason that College Station exists and is name as such.
The tracks predate all these roads where crossings are desired. To railroads any crossing is a huge liability. This is part of the reason UP will not normally create a crossing without closing at least that many or more. On top of that crossings in quiet zones are an even bigger liability, and COCS wants the whole city to be a quiet zone.
Railroads and not easy to deal with, a real PIA, but my dealings with them has been far more civil than any dealings I have had with COCS. Maybe they are made for each other.

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The railroad crossing closings are a relatively recent thing, no? It didn't seem like until the early 2000s that they got picky with the crossings, and I think it was the late 2000s when a bunch north of downtown Bryan got closed. Looking at College Station crossings, the only "new" crossing in the last 20 or so years was Drake.

Even so, the railroad has definitely gotten the better deal when it comes to CS crossings. South of the university and north of Drake, the new crossings have either been 1:1 (Luther Street West -> Holleman Drive West; N. Graham Road --> Rock Prairie Road W.), two for ones (Wade Road & Straub Road --> Greens Prairie Trail), and then they took out the big Harvey Mitchell Parkway crossing several years ago, the only crossing to have five lanes crossing (the merging lane from Wellborn being the fifth).

The plan is to close Cain Road as part of the deal...at least they didn't close Cain Road yet while dragging their feet on the new crossing.

Not sure how its a good deal for the RR. Oh we have decided that we want to move a street, please move your crossing. They will not consider without at least a closing, many places many more than one. But still basically on the hook for up to $1Mil for something that gains them nothing. Even when the get paid it never covers their total cost. For example when the did the Greens Prairie Trail crossing COCS came back to UPR after they built it to their spec and said we need you to do again, we need ADA sidewalks on the west side of tracks so the standards will have to move back so the arms can cover them. Ya, NO!
The signal groups and engineering are years behind on projects moving stuff on big infrastructure expansions for things like interstate highways and large state highways and crossing relocations to replace and existing serviceable one are so far down in the noise I bet they don't even get a call back.