IOWA CITY, Iowa — Officials in Johnson County, Iowa, will consider the Pop Up Metro rail transit system for a proposed service between North Liberty and Iowa City, the Cedar Rapids Gazette reports.
A group of elected and other officials will make a trip in August to Rockhill Furnace, Pa., where Pop Up Metro has set up a demonstration program on the route of the Rockhill Trolley Museum, to view the battery-powered commuter rail system. The visit will come ahead of the completion of a feasibility study for a Bus Rapid Transit system between the two communities that is expected to be completed in September.
The commuter rail proposal would use an 8.2-mile segment of the Cedar Rapids & Iowa City Railway, or CRANDIC, the 94-mile short line in the eastern part of the state. It would operate as a three-year pilot program, under which Pop Up Metro would lease the trains and related equipment to local interests as a live trial before investing in a permanent system
“We would be able to see some trends over time and if it worked for our region, we could think about more permanent solutions … or we could decide that the demand isn’t there and shift our priorities,” Mackenzie DeRoo, senior director of advocacy for Greater Iowa City Inc., said at a July 15 meeting of the Joint Entities, which includes representatives of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors, 11 communities, two school boards, and the University of Iowa.
The live-trial format is a basic tenet of the Pop Up Metro program, backed by Rail Development Corp. and its co-founder Henry Posner [see “Pop-Up Metro aims to provide affordable passenger operation,” Trains News Wire, Oct. 1, 2021]. The program aims to lease everything needed to start operations — the trainsets, which are remanufactured British multiple-unit cars; battery charging equipment; station platforms; training and maintenance; and other related equipment — at a low enough cost to convince organizations to try the system. While several entities have shown interest over the last several years, no one has yet put the Pop Up Metro system in service.
