(The following story by David Patch appeared on the Toledo Blade website on April 11.)
TOLEDO, Ohio — Ottawa County officials expect to meet today with Norfolk Southern railroad representatives concerning trains blocking railroad crossings, including routes regularly used by emergency vehicles.
Sheriff Bob Bratton said yesterday that while he understands the railroad’s occasional need to stop its trains and that many trains are too long to fit between road crossings, Norfolk Southern lately has been violating a handshake agreement struck last fall to avoid blocking certain “high priority” roads.
Sheriff Bratton said he’s even contemplating arresting train crews if the problem persists.
While such arrests could extend crossing blockages by as much as three hours, the sheriff said, the inconvenience to rail operations might get Norfolk Southern’s attention.
“If we arrest the crew, then the train is sitting there until they can get another crew out to it,” Sheriff Bratton said. “The railroad does not want a train sitting there, either.”
Another option, he said, would be to file formal criminal charges against the railroad for disrupting public service, disorderly conduct for a continuing pattern, or, if an actual emergency response is disrupted, misconduct at an emergency.
But before taking that step, Sheriff Bratton said he hopes a meeting scheduled for 2 p.m. today in Ottawa County Prosecutor Mark Mulligan’s office will resolve the conflict more peacefully.
Sheriff Bratton said that 51 crossing blockages have been reported to county officials since March 1, and four-fifths of them have been for 45 minutes or longer.
The sheriff said the railroad has told him that the trains are stopping because tracks were not available in Toledo railyards to accept them.
Norfolk Southern also has been doing track maintenance in the Toledo area of late that has caused trains to back up both east and west of the city at times.
February and March also were challenging months for Norfolk Southern because the winter storms disrupted the normal fluidity of the network, spokesman Rudy Husband said, adding there were times when they ran out of legally rested crews to move the trains.
“We make every effort to keep our trains moving,” he said. “It certainly wasn’t any deliberate effort.”
Rail freight is increasing and grade separations might be necessary to address the problem in the long term, Mr. Husband said.
“What I hope would be addressed would be that possibly the sheriff or Ottawa County [would work] with the state and federal governments as well as Norfolk Southern to eliminate some of these crossings by constructing overpasses or underpasses,” Mr. Husband said.
So far, there have been no incidents involving emergency vehicles blocked by trains since the chronic crossing problems started last month, the sheriff said.
“What we have been very concerned about is the potential” for a fire truck or rescue crew to be delayed searching for an open road, he said, because “so many of our north-south roads have been blocked.”
The blocked roads have included Benton-Carroll, Lickert-Harder, Rocky Ridge, and Genoa-Clay Center roads, which Sheriff Bratton said were identified during a meeting last fall with Norfolk Southern as primary routes for emergency vehicles.
The sheriff said he realizes that train traffic is increasing because high fuel prices are pushing more freight from the highways to the rails. But perhaps Norfolk Southern could revise its schedules to reduce congestion in Toledo, or at least be more cooperative about uncoupling trains to separate the cars at road crossings, he said.