Rails as placeholders

King County Executive Ron Sims has produced a portfolio of purchase and easement agreements for the Eastside Rail Corridor with enough details and caveats to make a lawyer swoon with giddy affection.

For the plainspoken, there are also multiple, unvarnished commitments to preserve the 42-mile BNSF freight corridor for future use as a high-capacity passenger-rail line.In the spirit of safeguarding — in Sims' words — this tremendous regional asset, there are no immediate plans to remove the existing rails, even though their useful life may have expired. They represent a valuable placeholder to reinforce the passenger-rail potential.

The continued, purposeful physical presence of the rails will help guide and shape public discussions as plans proceed with a parallel and complementary hiking-and-biking trail.

In places where joint uses of the corridor might be squeezed and congested, the rails help define the cooperation needed and the accommodations to be anticipated. Questions also lurk about unknown legal complications with federal rules on rail and trail proximity. Does one trump or preclude the other?

Scrutiny of Sims' agreement with the railroad and the Port of Seattle falls to the Metropolitan King County Council, which has been receptive to the regional transportation potential the corridor represents. Council members have a complex deal in front of them.

This is a long way from the initial proposal for the county to swap Boeing Field for the rail corridor. The Port will buy and hold the corridor in the new arrangement. The desirable goal of a future conversion of the corridor for rail and trail is unchanged.