Tacoma Rail may have clocked the fastest-ever remedy to a neighborhood's complaint.

The rotten economy has slowed the railroad business along with everything else. That means fewer cars are hauling freight, and more are sitting idle. Tacoma Rail makes most of its money by running cars, but its managers are using sidings to store cars. The demurrage fees paid by the car owners help support the city-owned railroad.

Two sets of those cars were working for and against a healthy city.

Since early February, several strings of black tanker cars had sat idle on sidings between 72nd and 60th streets west of McKinley Avenue.

They were making money for Tacoma Rail. But they were irking residents in the neighborhood. Who wants an empty asphalt tanker sitting indefinitely beside the back fence? Who wants the taggers who can't resist that big black space to spray paint gang signs?

Glenn Sukys asked if we could find out what was, or had been, in the cars. He guessed they were empty, guessed asphalt and was right on both counts.

He wanted to know how long they'd remain what he considered an attractive nuisance in a neighborhood that's had some crime and foreclosure problems. As of Thursday, the answer was: Until people are buying asphalt again.

Sukys' questions got managers at Tacoma Rail asking themselves the right questions about the effect on the neighborhood and alternative storage.

Over the weekend they had the cars moved to a siding elsewhere on the tracks.

In the future, they'll be more mindful of the people whose homes abut Tacoma Rail tracks.

How remarkable is this?

It's huge. A major public utility moves dozens of rail cars within a couple of days of hearing complaints about them.

Of course, now that the cars are moved, a good deal of the junk people have dumped along the tracks is more visible. The old sofas and mattresses present the perfect payback opportunity: Tacoma's rife with neighborhood clean-ups in the summer. When the dumpsters come to the 'hood, the folks who live along the tracks can thank the railroad, and help themselves, by hauling that junk out of the right of way and into the trash.