![]() Federal Rail Administrator Ron Batory recently sent letters to the leaders of more than 160 railroads asking them to consider avoiding blockages at crossings, according to an email from an FRA spokesperson. The FRA has taken a voluntary approach to blocked crossings. Especially for the smaller communities where it’s vital that we get our first responders out and about,” he said.įor an interactive version of the map above, click here. “We’re just wanting to be a good neighbor with the railroads and hoping that they do too. “The number of actual freight cars hasn’t changed materially, but you have a change in the length of the freight cars being used just because business has changed during that time.”Ĭooper would like the railroads to build a new siding so longer trains can pull off and not block Davis’s crossings. It’s in the intermodal business,” said Gray, who said he sees no way around blocking crossings. “Today the growth business for the railroads is taking trucks off the highway. The median train shrunk by two freight cars between the first quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2019, according to the Association of American Railroads, the industry’s lobbying arm, which measured the length of about 8 million trains.Ī train of 150 cars-the FRA’s unofficial definition of a long train-carrying iron ore would run about 3,500 feet long, but an intermodal train of the same number of cars might measure 33,000 feet, according to John Gray, the AAR’s senior vice president of policy and economics. The difference is in the length of cars, not their number-reflecting changes in the types of freight carried. The longer trains lead to crossings being blocked more often and for longer periods, state and local officials told the GAO, citing anecdotes of children in Ohio and Texas crawling through stalled trains to get to school. Two of the seven reported their average train lengths had grown 25 percent since 2008, with some trains stretching as long as three miles. Industry Changesįreight train length has increased in recent years, all seven Class I freight railroads told the Government Accountability Office, according to a July report to Congress. “We don’t want to choke off the rail industry, but at the same time I think it’s important that we maintain safety,” he said. He said he may draft legislation or legislative language to address blocked crossings. “The rail industry says it’s a state issue, but states aren’t allowed to do anything,” said Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials. The FRA doesn’t even define a blocked crossing, and the powerful railroad industry association-which spent $13 million on lobbying over the first two quarters of 2019-is working to make sure it stays that way. Frustration over blocked crossings has united state and local officials across party lines as trains grow longer 38 states had some kind of law on delays when the Federal Railroad Administration last counted in 2013.īut state and federal courts have consistently knocked down the statutes in recent years, and there’s no federal standard for train length or how long a stopped train can block crossings. Thanks to a new Oklahoma law that prohibits blocking a crossing for more than 10 minutes, Cooper and his officers can now issue tickets to freight trains-and they have, three times as of mid-August. The officers made it in time, but the memory sticks with Davis Chief of Police Dan Cooper. Three rail crossings stood between the department and the caller all three were blocked by a stopped freight train. It should have taken officers in the town of 2,800 about one minute to get there. The call came in: a person was threatening suicide just 2 1/2 blocks from the police department building in Davis, Okla. Industry, administration don’t want one-size-fits-all federal rules.States, localities losing court fights to ticket trains that block intersections.
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