I’m not sure if an opinion piece is appropriate here, so please let me know if this doesn’t fit the theme of the community, and I’ll avoid sharing such thoughts in the future.
I’m extremely frustrated with the car centric culture in my area. I live about 25 miles west of a quarry. Every day I watch trains go up and down the railroad mostly carrying gravel. This railroad stretches for several hours by car in each direction, connecting several large cities and even passing a few tourist attractions, and despite our traffic congestion problems there is little interest in trying to use this rail for actual people.
One company moved in and started running a new passenger rail service. Within a few weeks, we had protesters at the railroads complaining that drivers don’t understand railroad crossings. I saw posters about how trains were killing residents when drivers park on the tracks and get hit. I don’t understand! Where do you think the train is going to go? They don’t exactly come out of nowhere. They follow the tracks! And we’ve always had trains passing through our town before. At a later local election a candidate ran on the premise that they’re going to protect home values and our children by reducing or eliminating the number of trains passing through our town. This candidate did win our local election and sadly they succeeded in cutting down on rail investment.
Fast-forward a couple years later. Passenger rail stations were built at the endpoints of this rail to ferry tourists. I drive parallel to this rail on the way to work several times per week for almost 45 minutes each way, 20 minutes of which is heavy traffic. I get to enjoy watching people ride the train while there’s no stop anywhere near my house because our local government has sided with homeowners that a passenger rail station is “simply too dangerous.” I would have to drive over an hour to the nearest passenger rail station to ride the train, and I can literally see the tracks from my apartment.
Every time I see that train I feel bitter. I could save so much money if these boneheads would have let them build a train station in our town. Absolutely ridiculous! The train is there. The rail is there. I don’t understand why a train is such a personal, existential threat to your way of life.
Are they also protesting the frieght trains that are often heavier and noisier? Or just the trains that let “poor people” get around?
Every rail in an urban area near me has signs saying not to block the track. Every crossing on a busy road has lights and crossing bars. Every low traffic crossing has warning signs and a STOP before crossing.
These signs are for drivers, drivers are trained to recognize them and they resemble all the other road signs drivers are expected to follow.
If your area is using similar signage then this is 100% on negligent drivers. If they replace that rail with a road are drivers just going to run the red or gridlock the intersection like they currently treat the rail crossing?
I wasn’t aware of any complaints about the trains for years prior to the passenger rail company joining in; it was only when trains carrying people entered the picture that the protesting began claiming that these trains are unsafe and unwanted, but the arguments I’ve seen on signs etc. aren’t related to passenger rail specifically. Perhaps the passenger rail stoked fears that the rail traffic would expand further.
Every railroad crossing is clearly marked, with multiple redundant flashing signals and moving barriers that get directly in the driver LOS. I’ve seen drivers push through the barriers to squeeze just ahead of or behind a moving train a handful of times in the past five years, but that’s about the same number of blatant red light runners I’ve seen in the same.