There was a special meeting of Peoria Heights’ Board of Trustees tonight. The topic? The Kellar Branch. They wanted to hear from Pioneer Railcorp and the Illinois Prairie Railroad Foundation (IPRRF) about the possibility of running a trolley on the embattled line.

Mike Carr, CEO of Pioneer, gave the main presentation to the board and Sharon Deckard, President of IPRRF, gave some additional info at the end. Then they both answered questions from the board and the audience. You can see a PDF copy (2MB file) of their PowerPoint presentation* by clicking here.

Heights Mayor Mark Allen explained that this was an informational meeting meant to help the Village Board make an informed decision about the future of the Kellar Branch. In two weeks, on March 28, there will be another special meeting where the Park District and trail advocates will be allowed to present their plan for a trail only going through the corridor and why they think that will be best for the Heights.

Carr and Deckard explained how trolleys had been successful in large and small cities and had in all cases led to economic development along the trolley rail’s corridor. In addition to the benefits of a tourist trolley, it was also emphasized that increased congestion, city expansion, and rising gas prices would lead to the demand for more public transportation options in the future, and having a rail corridor through town is an asset to preserve for future commuter use.

Judging from the reaction of the audience, which was heavily stacked with trail supporters, not many people believed the presentation. But hey, they all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round, as Gershwin would say. Mayor Allen explained that a feasibility study would have to be done before a final decision was made. But now’s the time to do it — before the tracks are torn up — because once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.

Well, technically, the land lease with the Park District allows the proposed trail to be reconverted back to rail use at any point in the future, but the costs of relaying the tracks and reimbursing the Park District for construction of the trail would be so astronomical as to make that option completely unfeasible.

After the meeting, I went to Peoria Pizza Works with Sharon Deckard, Gary Sandberg, David Jordan, a couple other railfans, and — are you ready for this? — Christine Smith of the Journal Star Editorial Board and her date. It was actually quite fun to get to talk to her, since I regularly lambaste the editorial page of Peoria’s newspaper of record.

You know what? I like her. Even though we don’t agree, and probably never will, about the Kellar Branch, she was very personable and likes to play devil’s advocate, which is one of my favorite pasttimes. I found out that she and Bailey (the senior editor of the PJS) both read my blog, which was flattering, although one could make the argument that they just do that as part of their job. Fair enough. It’s still nice to be read. 🙂

Since Shelley Epstein retired, there have been only two editors — Smith and Bailey. I joked that if one more editor left, we’d all know who was writing the unsigned editorials. I found out that Bailey edits Smith’s editorials, so that’s why they all sound like Bailey’s voice to some degree. I also found out that Smith wrote the “Bradley is not the bogeyman” editorial. We talked a little about that… but I digress.

Smith thinks the trolley idea is completely crazy. She doesn’t think it will get any ridership — that no one is going to be interested in riding a trolley… at least, not enough people to make it profitable. But she did admit that it’s worth doing a feasibility study on it; she just thinks it will vindicate her belief that it’s totally nuts. I say, bring it on.

*Full disclosure: I created the slides for the PowerPoint presentation. And yes, Pioneer will be paying me for my work in creating those slides. This is the first time I’ve done any work for them or received any payment of monetary or non-monetary value.