Every day across the United States, trains park in the middle of neighborhoods and major intersections for various reasons, such as waiting for one crew to switch with another. They block crossings, sometimes for hours or days, disrupting life and endangering lives.
Chickasha is no exception.
It has joined an ever-growing list of Oklahoma communities whose residents complain about trains blocking at-grade railroad crossings for lengthy periods of time.
Union Pacific trains are parked for as much as five to six hours, “blocking crossings,” Dr. R.P. Ashanti-Alexander, a Ward 3 councilman, complained during a recent Chickasha City Council meeting. “It happens often,” he added.
Callers to City Hall who complain about the inconvenience are given a telephone number for UP Railroad, and City Manager Keith Johnson is drafting a letter to Congressman Tom Cole and Sen. James Lankford to register the community’s concerns.
State officials have addressed the issue, too.
Charles McCall, Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, previously attempted to prevent freight trains from blocking railroad crossings in this state for prolonged periods of time, but federal courts declared his proposal unenforceable. But that didn’t deter the Atoka Republican from trying again this year.
“Every railroad shall be operated in such a manner as to minimize obstruction of emergency vehicles at public highway grade crossings,” McCall’s HB 1939 decrees.
The bill also mandates that, as a general rule, a train or railcar must be “brought to rest” in a position that does not obstruct vehicular traffic at a railroad intersection with a public highway or street.
Among the exceptions would be if the train were moving forward or backward or stopped for an “emergency condition”; the train was unable to complete a switching maneuver; or the train was stopped for a red signal or to allow another train to pass.
A violation of the proposed law could be punished with a fine of up to $5,000.
HB 1939 was assigned in February to the House Rules Committee, where it was promptly shelved but nevertheless remains a ‘live round’ in the Legislature.
SCOTUS declined to even consider 2019 Okla. statute
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission in 2019 sought changes to its rules, including one about trains blocking at-grade railroad crossings.
Later that year the state Legislature passed House Bill 2472, the Blocked Crossing Act by Speaker McCall. That measure would have prohibited railcars from blocking vehicle traffic at a crossing on a public highway or street for longer than 10 minutes, except in emergency situations or if the train is “continuously moving.” The law authorized a fine of up to $1,000 per violation.
McCall’s legislative district includes the town of Davis, where trains routinely stop and block main thoroughfares. He said he has heard of children crawling through stopped trains to reach school, and he said 911 coordinators have told him first responders have had to drive up to 20 miles out of their way to reach scenes of emergencies.
“Several years ago an employee at Davis High School had a medical condition where he almost died, and the ambulance was stuck on the other side of a stopped train,” McCall said in 2019. “The EMT had to crawl through the train and catch a ride in a truck to get to the employee to provide him emergency medical care.”
After enactment of HB 2472, the cities of Edmond and Davis each filed a complaint against Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway with the Corporation Commission, and a commission official issued a citation and notice of hearing.
BNSF filed suit in Oklahoma City’s Western District federal court against Edmond, Davis and the Corporation Commission to prevent enforcement of the statute, and U.S. District Judge Charles B. Goodwin sided with the railroad.
The state appealed Goodwin’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and lost, and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to review the case.
States are applying pressure on Congress
Courts consistently cite two sections of federal law: the so-called Termination Act that created the federal Surface Transportation Board, which oversees rail carriers, and the Federal Railroad Safety Act, which governs safety aspects of rail operations.
Consequently, officials at all levels of government have introduced innovative regulations to limit crossing blockages and are pressuring Congress to come up with a solution.
Kansas, Iowa and Washington state are attempting to impose limits on the length of cargo trains that repeatedly block grade crossings.
In Kansas, Senate Bill 271 would limit trains to a maximum length of 8,500 feet, or approximately 1.6 miles, on any main line or branch line. Freight trains have grown to extraordinary lengths, sometimes extending two miles to as much as five miles.
The bill as amended would impose the length restriction through July 2027; the Kansas Legislature would be required to renew the policy if it were to continue.
Violation of the proposed statute would be punishable by a fine ranging from $500 to $25,000. However, the bill would permit a fine of $100,000 if the railroad were “found to have committed a grossly negligent violation or a pattern of repeated violations.”
SB 271 passed the Kansas Senate on March 28, and the next day it was referred to the Transportation Committee in the House of Representatives.
The bill didn’t pass the House before the Kansas Legislature adjourned in early May, but is still eligible for consideration next year.
Kansas Sen. Carolyn McGinn (R-Sedgwick) told Southwest Ledger that blocked railroad crossings are more than an inconvenience because motionless trains also create safety hazards. Not everyone waits patiently for a train crossing to clear, she noted.
“In one situation,” she said, “it was 20 degrees out and some kids were trying to get home from school. They started crawling underneath boxcars to get home. Very dangerous situation.”
Citizens “have to have a voice” on the issue of train lengths, McGinn said. “Our time is important, too.” Kansas previously complained about three-mile-long trains “and now they’re as long as five miles,” she said.
Opponents of the Kansas bill include BNSF Railway Co. and the Kansas Railroad Association, which argued that authority to regulate the industry is exclusively the jurisdiction of the federal Surface Transportation Board.
“The feds are supposed to address it, but they haven’t,” McGinn said. “So the states are. If enough states start making statements like ours, then Congress will have to listen to us.”
Iowa, Washington also proposing limits on train lengths
Iowa legislators, too, are considering a bill to limit freight trains to 8,500 feet in length.
Two unions that represent freight train workers – the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation (SMART) Workers, and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen – support the Iowa bill.
“Bigger trains have bigger problems,” said Chris Smith, the state director for SMART-TD. “Our main concern with that is public safety: blocked crossings, delays for fire, EMS, police departments, etc.” He also said Iowa’s railroad infrastructure cannot support longer trains.
More than 1,465 blocked crossings were reported in Iowa last year, Smith said. Of those, 502 were reported blocked for at least an hour, 13 were blocked for at least 12 hours, and 16 were obstructed for more than a day.
In Washington state, a bill introduced in the Legislature would limit the length of trains in ‘The Evergreen State’ to a maximum 7,500 feet, a little over 1.4 miles.
House Bill 1839 also provides that rail carriers in Washington can seek permission from the state’s Utilities and Transportation Commission to run trains up to 10,000 feet in length, nearly 1.9 miles, on specified routes.
However, carriers would have to add at least one additional crew member to all trains between 7,500 and 10,000 feet. Washington’s UTC can require additional crewmembers if it determines doing so is in the interest of reducing risk, such as on key trains.
Train companies have long acted with impunity. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report from 2019 found that freight trains are getting longer. The report looked at data from two Class I rail carriers which showed that their average train length increased by about 25% since 2008. The average length of their trains in 2017 was between 1.2 and 1.4 miles.
Test case on appeal in U.S. Supreme Court
An Ohio law similar to McCall’s HB 2472 is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, with support from Oklahoma and several other states.
In the Ohio case, state prosecutors charged CSX railroad in 2018 with five violations of a state law that prohibits trains from blocking roads for more than five minutes at a time, a misdemeanor. The rail company frequently stopped trains for as long as an hour to load and unload supplies at an auto factory northwest of Columbus.
CSX Transportation argued that Ohio’s law overstepped the state’s authority, because federal laws govern many aspects of the railroad industry.
Lower courts have determined that federal laws preempt the state rules, even though no federal laws or regulations specifically address “how long a stopped train may block a grade crossing,” Ohio notes in its lawsuit petition.
States supporting Ohio’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court include Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, plus the District of Columbia.
The Supreme Court invited the nation’s Solicitor General to file a legal brief in the case, “expressing the views” of the federal government about the matter.