High-Risk
RR Crossing Tabbed for Upgrades
The Independent
3/16/07
By: Stephen Huba
Stephen.Huba@IndiOnline.com
A Navarre Road railroad crossing identified as the ninth worst
in the state will be upgraded with gates and lights by next
February.
The south Massillon crossing, just east of Erie Street, only
has crossbucks and has been the site of three crashes since
1993, according to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
A 2005 accident resulted in an injury.
Its ranking as the ninth worst out of 6,000 public crossings
recently qualified it for funding from the Federal Highway
Administration.
“The aim is to upgrade every crossing in the state,” said Stu Nicholson,
spokesman for the Ohio Rail Development Commission. “If there’s
a particularly high number of accidents, that will tend to drive the ranking
of a crossing much higher on the priority list – or if it’s a crossing
not protected by active warning devices.”
The Navarre Road crossing was one of seven recently targeted
by the railroad commission for improvements. In each case,
the responsible railroad was directed to install flashing lights
and road gates.
The Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway, which owns the crossing,
has a year to do the work and must submit site plans and cost
estimates for the project by May 28. The cost of a standard
upgrade is estimated at $200,000, Nicholson said.
Crossings that are eligible for federal funding are selected
based on several criteria, including number of accidents, volume
of vehicle traffic and volume of railroad traffic, said PUCO
spokeswoman Julie Daubenmire.
About four trains use the Navarre Road tracks every day, while
vehicle traffic is about 7,000 a day, according to a PUCO inspection
report. The crossing has been inspected four times in the past
six years, once in 2004 as a follow-up to a complaint. The
most recent inspection was on Dec. 6.
“The inspectors determine what a crossing needs to come up to a better
safety standard,” Nicholson said. “They also become the project
manager for that project. We monitor that project all the way through to completion.”
Since 1997, the state has upgrade 2,000 railroad crossings
through a joint program of the PUCO and the railroad commission.
In 2005, the PUCO ordered railroad companies to perform safety
upgrades at more than 100 crossings throughout the state.
Vicky Moore, a former Canal Fulton resident whose son was killed
in a 1995 train accident, said Ohio’s system of upgrading
railroad crossings is “reactive” and too slow.
“Of those 6,000 public crossings, only 2,333 have gates. That’s
37 percent,” Moore said. “Most of the crossings in Ohio are not
gated and have sight obstructions.”
Moore’s 16-year-old son, Ryan, and two of his friends
were killed in the Lawrence Township accident. The tragedy
prompted Moore and her husband, Denny, to start the Angels
on Track Foundation, a non-profit railroad safety organization.
The foundation has been instrumental in pushing for safer railroad
crossings in Ohio, including several in Stark County. The crossing
where the Moores’ son was killed eventually did get gates
and lights. But in the year that it took to make the upgrades,
four more people were killed there, Vicky Moore said.
“It’s a flawed system,” she said.
Angels on Track has received two dangerous crossing reports
about the Navarre Road crossing through its Web site, www.angelsontrack.
org, she said.
The Navarre Road crossing is not far from another unsafe crossing – the
R.J. Corman Railroad tracks on Warmington Road, where, last
summer, a 70-year-old man was injured while driving his pickup
truck.
The man told police he did not see the train coming because his
view was obscured by trees. The crossing does not have gates
or lights, only crossbucks.
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