A group requesting face time with Kansas City Southern Railroad to gauge support for a pedestrian walkway on the old U.S. 80 bridge prefers a hush-hush strategy while it waits for an answer, its stated representative said Friday.
Attorney Buddy Dees, to whom an informal group of people called Friends of the Vicksburg Bridge have referred a response to a letter that gained key endorsers this past week, said the group met “several times” and isn’t above traveling to meet if they get an answer. He declined to identify the membership, saying it numbers about a dozen or so.
“We were being solicitous of the railroad,” Dees said in his office Friday when asked why the group was satisfied with operating in the shadows. “We want this to happen.”
The letter became public when the Warren County Board of Supervisors accepted it for information at its meeting Monday. It asks to meet with company officials before the end of this month and bore the signatures of Mayor George Flaggs Jr., county board president Bill Lauderdale, Vicksburg Warren County Chamber of Commerce advisory board president Don Brown and Vicksburg Convention and Visitor’s Bureau executive director Bill Seratt. On Thursday, the item did not appear on the Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Aldermen’s meeting agenda.
The 1.6-mile, 84-year-old structure owned by Warren County and managed by the five-member Vicksburg Bridge Commission closed to vehicles in 1998 over safety concerns, voiced mainly by the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. Louisiana maintains the Interstate 20 bridge and stopped allocating money to the bridge on west side of the state line after it closed to vehicles.
Its driving surface has become a popular place in the past four years for special events in addition to the Over The River Run, which began in 1989. That list includes 5K walks, the Bricks and Spokes ride to promote downtown, and, from 2009-13, a breast cancer benefit featuring bras strung along the old road’s railing. Today, wheelchair bikers and bicyclists will take to the old bridge for a “Walk, Roll and Stroll” benefit for Living Independence for Everyone, a Jackson-based charity for the disabled.
Two efforts since 1998 to fund a bicycle park on the old bridge in Vicksburg with federal highway money have petered out due to vehement opposition from Kansas City Southern Railroad citing safety as a reason. The most recent was in 2006, when KCS opposed it in writing to state and federal legislators from Vicksburg, the Mississippi Department of Transportation and then-Gov. Haley Barbour. A coalition of local government and tourism promotion entities had applied for grant money via MDOT to finance the project.
VBC’s budget has hovered around $1.2 million the past three fiscal years, with much of the income coming from KCS’ per-car lease it pays to cross the river. The rate is $4 a car up to 125,000 cars, then drops to $3.75 after that, bridge superintendent Herman Smith said.
Payments were $111,427.50 for September, reflective of 29,714 cars that crossed for the month, according to commission records. It was down from 30,033 in August, when the railroad paid the commission $112,623.50.
Cycling enthusiasts and others who support the idea say tourism dollars can only go up if the railroad came off its hardline stance of previous attempts.
“I’m going with a bunch of other cyclists to Hattiesburg to do the Longleaf Trace this weekend,” said Paul Ingram, an architect in Vicksburg and a cycling enthusiast. “And it’s because they have the bike trail. It would be a huge economic boost to this area.”
Dees cited in-progress efforts to convert the Harahan Bridge in Memphis to a pedestrian bike path as an example of rail companies wanting to be part of a community. The bridge connects Memphis with West Memphis, Ark. and is owned by Union Pacific Railroad. The $30 million project expected to begin this year is funded in part by a federal highway grant secured by the City of Memphis.
“They owned that bridge and wanted to do it,” Dees said.