Never mind that Tom Larwin, head of MTDB; Langley Powell, president of San Diego Trolley Inc.; Douglas Verity, general manager of the San Diego & Imperial Valley Railroad; and Martin Minkoff, who operates the North County Transit District’s Coaster, run more rail vehicles over Eighth Avenue in a day than the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. does in a week.

BNSF wants cars and trucks to cross its tracks near Eighth Avenue and Harbor Drive over a new $60 million bridge paid by San Diego taxpayers. The cost also includes a new bridge for Harbor Drive, over the southern portion of BNSF’s freight yard necessitated by the new Eighth Avenue/Park Boulevard bridge. With safety jurisdiction over all rail crossings, the California Public Utilities Commission staff is not just going along with BNSF, but is demanding that San Diego do what BNSF wants.

Never mind that Larwin, Powell, Verity, Minkoff and even the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers argue that a vehicle overcrossing is unnecessary.

Never mind that the citizens of San Diego are less likely to pay for a new $60 million bridge associated with the new East Village ballpark than they are to secede from California.

Never mind that the passenger-vehicle/freight-train accident count in Downtown San Diego is virtually nil over the past century. (If there’s a serious safety issue at all, it involves pedestrians, impatient with BNSF’s noontime staging, who dangerously walk over the couplings of the freight cars, a rare occurrence that likely would happen more often at Fifth Avenue if pedestrians are discouraged to use a massive, long new Eighth Avenue/Park Boulevard vehicle overcrossing.)

Never mind all that. If BNSF thinks it can get a “grade separation” at Eighth Avenue without paying for it, BNSF is sure going to try, and PUC staff sure seems willing to do its bidding. Veteran PUC staff counsel Patrick Berdge has gotten so nasty about it that he’s told Administrative Law Judge Maribeth Bushey to:

1. Deny San Diego’s application to put in some $2 million of improvements to the intersection;

2. Order San Diego to erect the bridge; and

3. Close the intersection entirely if San Diego refuses to build BNSF’s bridge.

That pretty much sums up the predicament San Diego city leaders find themselves in as they prep for a Sept. 25 “public participation hearing” at the State Building on Front Street, the latest in a series of efforts since 1999 to convert the Eighth Avenue rail crossing near Harbor Drive into part of the new Park Boulevard Bay-to-Park Link that will bring Balboa Park and San Diego Bay closer together with improved view corridors, landscaping and better pedestrian and traffic circulation.

Everyone is expected to testify Sept. 25 – Mayor Murphy, city staff, CCDC, MTDB, trolley folks, Downtown Partnership; the list must be longer if San Diegans don’t want to find themselves with a $60 million price increase to the ballpark redevelopment project. The next step would be a hearing with the involved parties in San Francisco in January, followed by the ALJ’s decision, followed by a possible appeal to the full PUC. As the bureaucracy moves slowly, time may run out even to complete the $2 million of improvements before the ballpark opens.

Let’s look at the alternatives:

1. Instead of spending a reasonable $2 million to improve the crossings and gates and turn Park Boulevard so it’s crossing the railroad tracks at a safer perpendicular than the more dangerous angle where Eighth Avenue currently crosses, the city’s application is denied and some hundreds of thousands of dollars in design work and PUC application preparation for these improvements are wasted.

2. The mayor is run out of town after $75 million in bonds are sold to pay for the $60 million bridge that could only break ground, at best, six months before the spring 2004 opener at the new ballpark since the engineering hasn’t started yet, leaving unfinished streets and a giant blocked intersection under construction precisely when unprecedented traffic converges, the nightmare bottleneck ensues and Padres fans deliberately park their vehicles on BNSF’s tracks to protest, among other things, that the darn view corridor will be blocked by the dumb new bridge that has to rise 32 feet to get over the trolley’s catenaries. Carol Wallace is seething because hundreds of trucks every day will be air-braking down and accelerating up the new bridge’s 7 percent slope beside her convention center, which loses business because of the noise. Pedestrians refuse to use the new bridge because they’d have to walk two blocks north to mount it, and so they walk to the Fifth Avenue crossing instead. Dole Fresh Fruit Co. sues the Unified Port District because access to its recently leased 10th Avenue Marine Terminal becomes limited during the two-year construction process.

3. The PUC orders the intersection closed, the Padres fans still protest BNSF movements, automobile circulation deteriorates, pedestrians are forced to Fifth Avenue, the Bay-to-Park Link remains in dreamland, and the issue gets tied up in court for a couple more years.

The Sept. 25 hearing is scheduled to start at 11 a.m. at the State Building, 1350 Front St. One might check with Stephanie Morrison at MNA Consulting to confirm the time. She’s at (619) 239-9877, Ext. 11. For more details, Deputy City Manager Bruce Herring, San Diego Trolley Inc. Chairman Harry Mathis, Larwin at MTDB, attorney Theresa McAteer for the city of San Diego, Peter Hall and Donna Alm at CCDC, and Dave Nielsen and Morrison at MNA Consulting are all up to speed.

Commissioner Geoffrey Brown is the PUC member assigned to the case. He’d love to hear from you and may explain why Berdge is so intransigent. He’s at 505 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, CA 94102.

After the ALJ makes her decision, called an opinion, next year, then Brown can concur or issue an alternate opinion as the case approaches the full commission for a final decision.

Says Mathis, who’s chaired San Diego Trolley Inc. for the last nine years, “We used to work in a spirit of cooperation with the PUC, but in recent years it has become more adversarial with people who are not as knowledgeable and who are not trying to work with us. This has been a problem for the industry.”