(The Associated Press distributed the following article on June 18.)
CHICAGO — Illinois is the nation’s rail hub, and the state is also the nation’s center of railroad crossing gate failure, according to a published report.
Federal Railroad Administration data requested by the Chicago Tribune shows that Illinois had 20 crossing gate failures in the first five months of this year; the worst record among the states.
The newspaper noted that Texas, the state with the largest number of railroad crossings, was in second place, but with only 10 such failures.
And in 2002, gates in Illinois failed when trains were approaching 94 times. Such failures occurred 37 times in Texas last year, and 25 times in California.
Texas has 5,054 signal-controlled railroad crossings, while Illinois has 4,628, and California is in third place with 4,428.
No long-term information on the problem was available because the railroads were not required to report crossing signal activation failures to the federal government before 1996.
John Blair, the senior railroad safety specialist at the Illinois Commerce Commission, told the Tribune that the 94 activation failures reported in Illinois last year represent “critical defects” that had the potential to cause an accident.
Blair said ICC inspectors found 1,104 less critical signal defects in 2002.
Blair said that the commission is hampered by having only three inspectors, so a complete check of crossing equipment in Illinois takes several years.
Safety officials say the most dangerous failures are when gates fail to close as a train approaches, but false activation is also a major problem.
“Gates down with no train coming can make drivers impatient,” said Dennis Morgan, the director of safety at Metra, the Chicago-area commuter train authority. Metra has 565 crossings in urban area.