(The Omaha World-Herald posted the following Associated Press article on its website on April 16.)
LINCOLN, Neb. — Drivers in Nebraska spend an estimated 6,350 hours a day waiting for trains to go by.
The state has 4,000 public and 2,700 private rail crossings. Some drivers have to wait along the busiest rail corridor in the nation, between Gibbon and North Platte, where each day about 132 Union Pacific trains pass through.
More than inconvenient for motorists, rail crossings are dangerous. Five people were killed in Nebraska in 2000 in public railway crossing accidents. Nationwide, 425 people were killed that year in public and private crossing incidents, and 1,219 were injured.
Those are a few of the reasons that Rep. Doug Bereuter, R-Neb., asked Congress to hold a public hearing Tuesday in Lincoln on the need for more federal money to help close rail crossings.
“He thinks Nebraska is a place where these people need to come to grips with what is really going on,” Bereuter spokeswoman Carol Lawrence said about members of the House Transportation Committee’s subcommittee on highways, transit and pipelines.
The Union Pacific Railroad would like to close as many rail crossings as possible, spokesman John Bromley said.
“In a perfect world, we’d like to eliminate every one of them,” Bromley said. “They are a maintenance, safety and public relations problem. People hate to be blocked at crossings, and they hate to hear air horns.”
North Platte recently completed an extensive system of street viaducts, eliminating all crossings and the need for 1,064 daily train whistles in the city.
Still, rail crossing closures can be controversial, particularly if people believe emergency response teams will be hampered by having fewer rail crossings to choose from, Lincoln County Commissioner Joe Hewgley said. Other concerns include getting large pieces of farm equipment over the bridges, Hewgley said.
“Some people have been very supportive of it, some people have been very opposed to it,” said Hewgley, who has dealt with the issue in Lincoln County.
Nebraska receives about $4 million a year in federal aid for rail safety, which can be used for projects like building bridges over railroad tracks and setting up signals at rail crossings, said Ellis Tompkins, rail and public transportation engineer for the State Roads Department.
The state, local governments and railroads also spend a total of about $4 million a year on rail safety projects.
But Nebraska alone needs $425 million if it is to build some 85 potential bridges across railroad tracks in the state, Tompkins said.
“Eight million dollars a year doesn’t go very far,” he said.
Bereuter agrees that more federal money is needed, Lawrence said.
Neither Bereuter’s office nor state officials were prepared to name a specific amount of federal money they would want.
However, the six-year federal highway bill is being prepared for passage sometime this fall or early next spring, Tompkins said.
“We hope to impress upon the subcommittee the need for some additional funding for rail safety projects in the Midwest and in Nebraska,” Tompkins said.