What do you do when a company exhibits questionable competence, endangers the citizens of Peoria, and breaches their contract with the city? If you’re the city of Peoria, you award them another contract for more work.
Just to recap: Central Illinois Railroad (CIRY) tried to fulfill their contractual obligations. Late last year they tried to take some lumber up the Kellar Branch to Carver Lumber Company. What many people don’t know is that the Kellar Branch includes a pretty steep hill where it climbs the bluff. CIRY was using a vehicle called a Trackmobile to haul the lumber up the hill. Trackmobiles are designed for moving train cars around in a train yard, not for hauling lumber uphill; they don’t have as much power as an engine. As a result, they lost traction and the train barrelled down the hill backwards at 30 mph through several grade crossings. That runaway train could have killed someone, but thankfully didn’t. After that, they never again attempted to use the Kellar Branch — in breach of their contract with the city.
Not only did the city not enforce that contract (to Carver Lumber’s detriment), but now they want to hire the same company — a company with questionable competence — to do some rail crossing work on Allen Road to the tune of $187,847.
There are several things wrong with this picture:
- It does not appear that the City got multiple quotes and this was the low bid. For such an expensive project, one would think they would have bid it out. If they did, they didn’t disclose that information to the council in the Request for Council Action.
- The experience the City has had with this company is not exemplary. As noted above, they have been in breach of contract and have endangered the lives of Peoria citizens by their gross negligence. Why should we trust them?
- The quote submitted is apparently not itemized. There is hardware as well as labor included in that number of $187,847. How much are they charging for labor? How much for parts? Shouldn’t we at least get an itemized quote? It could be that it is itemized on “Exhibit 2B” which is unfortunately not included in the material available online.
- Recently, this same company filed a non-itemized quote with the Surface Transportation Board claiming it would cost over $500,000 to bring the Kellar Branch up to operable working condition, yet Pioneer Industrial Railway submitted an itemized work order indicating it would only cost around $10,000. See my previous post on this issue for more details. Doesn’t this indicate to anyone that CIRY’s cost estimates at least have the potential of being inflated?
One other thing: this work is not being paid by the city, but by IDOT. Does IDOT know anything about the history of this company? Did they have any part in this choice? In fact, why isn’t IDOT doing this work themselves? IDOT’s Bureau of Railroads provided an estimate for track repair on the Kellar Branch back in 2000 (which was used by the city to try to prove repairs are too costly). If they can provide estimates and repair work, and if they’re footing the bill anyway, why is CIRY involved at all?
I certainly hope someone takes this off the consent agenda on Tuesday and asks city staff some hard questions about it.
$187,000 to add 2 lanes to an existing (and rather new) crossing? Doesn’t sound very kosher to me? I’ll do it for $100,000. Where do I sign up?
CIRY wants to quit serving Carver entirely (see their filing that said it was not economically viable to serve Carver from either “the east OR WEST”). Of course, if CIRY abandons the “western connection”, that nukes the City’s trail fantasies and shows up the staff for the bunch of numbskulls they are. So CIRY gets a fat no-bid contract, eh? Let’s see here, 2 + 2 = ???, or is the City staff correct in assuming that the public is stupid and powerless? Are they going to hear from the mice???