Westpark in 1997: Settling the Price and Moving the Trains

01 / April 1997

Westpark needed a place for its trains

Before Westpark could become a road, its trains needed somewhere else to run. Dan Feldstein’s April 1997 report described a settlement that allowed the railroad to move toward adding a second track along South Main Street. The plan was to transfer rail operations there and eventually stop running trains on Westpark. A strip of land across southwest Houston came with an operating railroad attached.

Metro had bought the Westpark right of way in December 1992, intending to build a carpool facility. By 1997, it was also studying a toll road. Four years of litigation over the purchase terms had held up the arrangement needed to clear the corridor. The dispute reached federal trial on April 7; after a week of testimony, the parties settled and an eight-person jury was dismissed.

Southern Pacific’s attorney, Daryl Bristow, thought hearing each side make a plausible case helped bring agreement. Ownership and leadership had changed too: Union Pacific had acquired Southern Pacific, and Metro had a new chairman. The settlement joined a property disagreement to the practical work required to make that property available.

02 / How the dispute began

A land purchase with a return option

The trouble began with a hurried package deal. A $42 million price for Westpark alone looked too high to Metro on a per-mile basis. Southern Pacific needed cash before year’s end to satisfy a bank. Metro offered to buy a larger group of railroad properties, including a line along U.S. 290, at a lower price per mile.

The package price was $75 million, with $45 million payable immediately. Metro lacked time to examine all the extra properties before closing, so the agreement allowed later review and per-mile refunds for properties it returned. It ultimately returned everything except Westpark. Metro calculated a $50 million refund, leaving Westpark’s price at $25 million; Southern Pacific insisted the corridor’s price was $45 million.

That arithmetic explains why a purchase meant to satisfy both sides instead produced competing lawsuits. They disagreed about what the return provision did to the price of the one corridor Metro actually wanted. Railroad land could be valuable for transportation, but packaging more miles into the transaction had made the central purchase harder to settle.

03 / Separate costs

The compromise kept the land price intact

The agreement left Westpark’s $45 million purchase price standing. Metro’s separate payment for the second South Main track fell from $39 million to $29 million. That reduction supplied Metro’s part of the compromise without rewriting the corridor price. Metro still had to pay for both the land it wanted and the rail improvements needed to release it.

Two smaller transactions accompanied it. The railroad would pay Metro $2 million for scrap track and equipment from Westpark. Metro would pay $200,000 for downtown right of way near the Amtrak station on Washington Avenue, intended for a Katy Freeway HOV connector to Franklin Street. The settlement therefore also included land for a different commuting route.

The railroad reduced its parallel-track costs by dropping a second Oyster Creek bridge in Sugar Land and using sidings for passing trains instead. Its South Main line carried about 16–20 trains daily, including grain, automobiles and petrochemicals. Rail managers were unsure whether the changes would increase traffic because Westpark already handled relatively few trains.

04 / A conditional next step

The HOV project still had another lawsuit

Metro’s proposed HOV lane would run east from Texas 6 to the Southwest Freeway near Hillcroft. A separate affirmative-action lawsuit had frozen federally funded Metro projects, so the property settlement alone could not release construction. The plan still depended on resolving that case.

The September 2001 preconstruction photographs give the cleared rail corridor a physical setting: ballast and grass beside roads, businesses and utility lines. They were taken years after this settlement. The bare strip east of Chimney Rock shows the space a future road could occupy; the 1997 story explains the railroad arrangements required before it could be put to another use.