Amount requested: $17.36 million

Project description:

Repair and replace 28 railroad bridges along the Kenton Branch to serve the West Tennessee agricultural community. The Kenton Branch has been recognized as a key artery for the transportation of West Tennessee grain. The Tennessee Department of Transportation has provided rehabilitation funds to sustain the current quality of the bridges located along the Kenton Branch.

A number of these bridges, however, are more than 50 years old and are becoming less useful. More importantly, they were designed to carry rail cars of 263,000-lb capacity, which are now being phased out of the railroad network and replaced by 286,000-lb capacity cars, with even higher loadings envisioned in the future.

The enhancement and rehabilitation of the bridges on the Kenton Branch will accomplish the following:

• Enable grain producers to continue to ship by rail, which is a much more cost-effective manner of transport than trucking. It will further mitigate the potential traffic congestion that would result if they were forced to engage other modes of transportation because of the shortcomings of the bridges on the line.

• Continue to benefit the local communities that will suffer the escalation of local traffic congestion, increased vehicular danger, increased cost of road maintenance and greater pressure on local budgets already strained to breaking.

• Prevent the considerable erosion of the West Tennessee agricultural economy, which would suffer the competitive disadvantage of 10% less bulk per rail car and hence resulting in a 10% increase in the cost of product were they unable to ship in cars capable of the larger weight limits available to other regions.