(The following article by Jeffry Scott was posted on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on August 10.)
LITHONIA, Ga. — Lithonia Mayor Darold Honore stands beside the train tracks that cut through the heart of his troubled little town and talks about railroad woes.
“Sometimes trains will sit on these tracks for hours, blocking off Main Street,” he said. “But even when they’re moving, they’re a nuisance.”
He points to a spot on the tracks about a quarter mile to the east.
“They start blowing their whistle there, and it really disturbs the night,” he said. “If they had a crossing gate on Main Street, they wouldn’t have to blow the whistle and wake people up.”
Residents in this town of 2,100 in south DeKalb County have complained for years about the blare of whistles and of streets blocked by freight trains stopped to load granite from local quarries.
Kids often climb over the parked trains, and about six months ago a man’s arm was severed by a train, apparently after the man fell asleep on the tracks.
CSX officials did not return repeated calls from a reporter asking about the trains and the lack of a crossing gate on Main Street.
In Georgia there are about 7,000 railroad crossings, according to the Georgia Department of Transportation. Most are marked only by a white wooden X with the words “railroad crossing” stenciled in black.
The GDOT ranks the crossings by level of risk, based on the number of accidents and other factors, and upgrades safety measures by installing crossing gates and flashing lights at the ones consideredthe most hazardous.
That does not include Lithonia, though residents’ complaints about the trains have taken on a new urgency as the city tries to revive its fortunes and image after almost a year of upheaval, including near-bankruptcy and a failed attempt to recall the mayor.
Lithonia is still in debt, owing about $250,000 to various entities. The Police Department is back in operation with a skeleton staff after its squad cars were idled for 31 days in May because the citycouldn’t afford insurance.
Since January, Police Chief Willie J. Rosser has been pushing for answers from CSX, which operates the trains. He sent a letter to the Federal Railroad Administration asking for help.
In January 2003, according to an e-mail to the city from Leslie Spurlock of the Federal Railroad Administration, city officials, CSX officials, and the previous police chief, Manuel Norrington, met and reached an accord about the parked trains.
If one was stopped on the tracks for “any great length of time,” according to the e-mail, the chief was to call CSX and the operator of the train would move it.
But Rosser said last week the trains are parking on the tracks again while either waiting for other trains to pass or because they are backed up at a nearby train yard.
Rosser said the trains don’t block emergency vehicles, which can drive a block off Main Street to Max Cleland Boulevard and cross the tracks through an underpass. But he’s not happy with CSX’s response, either.
“I’m not going to say the situation is resolved,” he said. “We still have a lot of complaints.”
Lanard Cullins, a community development consultant for Lithonia, said he has been frustrated for years by CSX’s seeming indifference to the city’s concerns.
“They leave the train parked out there whenever they want to for as long as they want to and there’s nothing we can do about it,” he said.
David Spear, a spokesman for the Georgia Department of Transportation, which is the regulatory body for railroads, said municipalities have authority to force railroads to move a parked train, but that authority is seldom exerted.
“The municipality has to show that there is a reasonable necessity to make the train move, and there are other considerations, such as safety and not interfering with commerce,” Spear said.
“But it seldom comes to that — these things get settled collegially.”
The DOT can also order a railroad to put in crossing gates, he said, but that, too, is seldom done. The cost of these improvements is generally split between the railroad and the DOT, which ranks crossings by their degree of danger and those most in need of safety improvements.
“As far as I know, the Main Street crossing in Lithonia isn’t even on the priority list,” Spear said.
But, in some ways, a parked train presents as great a danger as a speeding train, said Patricia May, principal at Lithonia Middle School, which is a few blocks from the tracks.
Last year, after hearing reports from parents, May got on the school intercom and implored students who lived on the north side of the tracks to stop climbing over and under the stalled rail cars on their way to school and back.
“I told them that the conductor would never know if they are under that train,” she said. “Their shoestring, their jacket, their shirt could get caught and that train might take off, and we have lost a child.”