Congress
Debates How to Cut Deaths at Railroad Crossings
Scripps Howard Foundation Wire - infoZine
Saturday, July 23, 2005
By Ansley
Haman – Washington D.C.
Members of Congress are working on a bill to reduce the number
of deaths at railroad crossings, which increased 11 percent,
to 368 in 2004, after a decade of decline.
"The railroads built this country, and those tracks have been there for
over 100 years, but we cannot keep our heads buried in the sand," said
Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., ranking member on the House Transportation and
Infrastructure Railroad Subcommittee at a Thursday hearing.
Of the 2004 accidents, railroads reported only 79 percent to
the National Response Center, a federally mandated clearinghouse
of transportation deaths, said Kenneth M. Mead, inspector general
of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Railroads did report all of the accidents to the Federal Railroad
Administration, but often up to two months after the event,
making it impossible for federal officials to investigate,
Mead said.
Lack of federal investigations may be preventing a solution
to these crossing deaths, said Vicky L. Moore, trustee for
Angels on Track, a nonprofit railroad safety advocacy group.
Moore lost her 16-year-old son, Ryan, in an Ohio train collision
in 1995 and has since worked to improve grade crossings.
Of the 376 most serious railroad crossing collisions from 2000
to 2004, federal agencies investigated only 53, Mead said.
Agencies investigated less than 1 percent of all train accidents
in 2004. National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Railroad
Administration officials told the committee they do not have
the resources or manpower to investigate each crash.
Railroad companies attributed more than 90 percent of the accidents
to automobile driver error or inattentiveness.
"Until we honestly know what causes these accidents, we cannot address
this issue," Moore said.
Mead recommended that railroad accident reports should be accompanied
by local and state police reports so that federal studies could
be more comprehensive.
Subcommittee members discussed such fixes as requiring stop
or yield signs at every grade crossing without lights or gates.
Installing gates at each crossing would cost billions. An alternative
would be enforcing rules requiring railroads to clear rights
of way for better visibility at crossings, Moore said.
"How can you yield to something you cannot see?" she asked.
All railroads budget for clearing of railways, said Edward
R. Hamberger, president of the Association of American
Railroads. CSX has a $30 million program to clear-cut vegetation
along tracks, he said.
Replacing all grade crossings with overpasses is prohibitively
expensive - each can cost up to $10 million. Hamberger said
railroads favor blocking road traffic at some railroad tracks.
Local governments often leave crossings open to avoid confrontation
with community groups that want the convenience. The railroads
and the committee members supported a federal policy to decide
which crossings to leave open.
Hamberger recommended driver education programs such as Operation
Lifesaver, a nonprofit organization that has been educating
drivers about railroad crossings in 49 states since 1972.
Mead criticized the Federal Railroad Administration, which
fined railroads for only 5 percent of critical safety defects,
including malfunctioning signals and sight-line obstructions,
identified by inspectors. Those fines totaled $271,000 in 2003.
The Federal Railroad Administration has since put a new plan
in place and fined one railroad $298,000 for violations related
to a collision in Henrietta, N.Y., Mead said. The crash resulted
in two deaths at a crossing where railroad employees had disabled
a warning signal seven days earlier. The New York attorney
general's office aggressively pursued the case.
"That level of penalty can be expected to focus railroads' attention on
crossing safety," Mead said.
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said train accidents in his state
resulted in 26 deaths in 2004. He proposed legislation that
would require the closing of 1 percent of all public and private
grade crossings per year over the next 10 years. Those would
be ranked by priority according to potential hazards, he said.
Congress will continue to hold hearings examining railroad
crossing safety and what should be done to prevent collisions.
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