I had a good conversation Wednesday afternoon with Fred Wise, head of the Florida Department of Transportation’s rail office.

He provided insight on some of the unresolved issues related to the CSX rail hub planned for Winter Haven that I blogged about a couple of days ago.

Wise said good progress is being made on the details of the $491 million deal that would realign CSX’s freight rail traffic in Florida and provide commuter rail to Orlando. The Haven hub is crucial to that plan.

It’s been a year since the deal was announced, and it still hasn’t been consummated. But Wise said that doesn’t mean the deal is in jeopardy. On the contrary, he said many difficult details have been resolved. But negotiators are still working through environmental research, surveys, details of operating agreements with CSX and the massive sale contract with CSX.

“There are a lot of loose ends,” Wise said.

He confirmed, however, that full implementation of the commuter rail deal requires that CSX relocate its Taft hub in Orlando. The Winter Haven hub is preferred location for that relocation. 

Wise said the state and CSX could finalize a deal before approval of the Winter Haven hub is assured and even possibly create the early stages of commuter. But the full plan can’t be realized until Taft is relocated.

Wise also praised the Lakeland business and government officials who have formed a task force to look at the CSX hub deal’s impacts on the city. He said they’ve pursued a much more “collaborative” approach with CSX and the state than have their counterparts in the Ocala area, who have been raising a ruckus about the realignment deal’s impact on their city since it was announced.

I asked Wise what that approach has gotten Lakeland.

He pointed to government assistance in a “diagnostic review” of crossings in the area. And for now, that’s about it, though he said CSX is committed to working with the city to ease train delays through town. The nature of that commitment is unclear.

Wise said the half-billion dollars earmarked for the rail realignment deal can really only be used for capacity improvements. It couldn’t, for instance, be used to upgrade crossings in the Lakeland area to constant warning time capability, which federal studies say improves traffic flow and safety.

Nor is the state about to force CSX, as part of the rail deal, to pay for upgrades, though Wise did say, “CSX is willing to look at those kinds of improvements.”

But that’s not going to happen quickly, Wise said. “[Neither CSX nor the state is] going to come down there with a check next week,” he said.

Meanwhile, in more confrontational Ocala, they’ve had a personal visit from the state DOT secretary who oversaw the rail deal; the state has committed to at least one new multimillion dollar rail overpass; and a consultant for the state recently presented options for relocating train traffic out of Ocala’s urban core, though to do so would be hugely expensive and difficult.

I don’t know enough about Ocala’s circumstances to make a judgment about whether a forceful response has helped or hurt its interests, relative to Lakeland. Maybe all of that was already contemplated by DOT. But it’s an interesting juxtaposition.

It also leads directly into this morning’s story in The Ledger, which appears to show intensifying opposition in Lakeland to the rail deal and its impacts.

It remains an oddity of this debate that the Lakeland City Commission has yet to have a discussion about the rail deal and its implications. It would seem that’s about to change.

Full Disclosure: I’ve noted this before in this space, but this is a good time to do it again. My wife, Julie, works part-time for the Downtown Lakeland Partnership. If anyone is curious, I did not attend the DLP meeting cited in The Ledger story above.

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