Caution required at railroad crossings
Zach Tuggle
Mansfield News
Journal
Jan. 9, 2017
GALION - Trains blocking railroad crossings in North Central
Ohio create potential threats, say officials tasked with monitoring
the situation.
The safety of drivers and those who live nearby are in the
greatest danger, according to Crawford County Sheriff Scott
Kent. Concerned citizens tend to report such incidents to local
law enforcement agencies.
"We do get calls a lot," Kent said. "It almost
seems like a normal thing anymore that we get a complaint."
Kent said most calls come from people who live near railroad
crossings in rural areas, but that trains do sometimes stop
within the limits of area cities. Officers visit the location
to confirm the blockage, and record the date, time, location
and various pieces of information from the train.
"The law says five minutes is all they're allowed
to stop and block the crossing," Kent said. "We usually
give them about 15 minutes."
Trains are allowed to move very slowly across intersections
without fear of penalty. Those that remain stopped longer than
the allowed time are given a $1,000 fine.
"It's been rare, but we've seen trains with no crews on
them at all blocking the roads," Kent said. "They
call that an abandoned train, and that carries a $5,000 fine."
Emergency personnel cannot use roads blocked by trains. Galion
Police Chief Brian Satterfield said officers can call the railroad
and ask them to send a crew to 'break' the train, which creates
a gap across the crossing once the cars are disconnected. But
since trains are very long, that process takes time.
"If we had some sort of serious emergency, it would still
be faster to go around it," Satterfield said.
Kent said school buses will wait at blocked crossings for a
little while, but will occasionally be forced to turn around
and find a new route. He said he recently read a report about
a bus that was stopped by a train for more than an hour.
"You always have to worry about a student's safety if
the bus has to back up to a place where it can turn around," Kent
said.
The Angels on Track Foundation, which supports rail safety,
has recently received several calls about trains stopped in
Galion, according to Vicky Moore, the organization's director.
"A gentleman who called says this has been an ongoing
problem," Moore said.
Moore said trains have also stopped very close to the crossings
in Galion, which she's afraid will tempt motorists to drive
around the gates, exposing themselves to being struck my trains
on the second set of tracks at the intersection.
The Ohio Rail Development Commission is aware of that situation,
according to Julie Kaercher, the agency's public information
officer.
"If you are caught going around a gate, you will absolutely
be ticketed," Kaercher said. "Of course, nobody should
be going around the gates anyway — that's why they're
there, to keep people from having a collision."
Kaercher has asked the railroads to place their stop signals
farther away from the crossings so that the trains will
not activate the gates while they're stopped.
"If (the trains) can stop sooner, then the gates
will never go down so people won't see the stopped train and
go around the gates," Kaercher said.
But there's no way to force the railroads to stop further back
from crossings, since they are a private business parking their
trains on land that they own.
"They're trying to alleviate some of that problem though," Kent
said. "A real problem is that trains are longer now — all
the roads are roughly one mile apart, and these trains are
all over over a mile long."
Until a solution is found, officials can only remind people
to drive safely while fining the railroads when necessary.
The Richland County Sheriff's Office filed five such charges
on Dec. 27, and Kent said his office is preparing a few that
he plans to take to court later this spring.
ztuggle@gannett.com
419-564-3508
Twitter: @zachtuggle
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