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Indiana proposes legislation to fine railroads for blocked crossings
I think this a Federal thing that the states have no control over.
More intrusive government.
Another DOA piece of legislation. It’s really depressing to know that these politicians, and others just like them in other states, are so ignorant of who has the right of way and who grants who permission to trespass on the railroads property. It seems to be a universal problem, called stupidity. I wonder if these people understand how to pour sand out of a boot?
Fascinating.
Was the law written using the wording “blocking, obstructions and blockage?”
Imagine a track inspector sees a flawed frog and slaps a 10 mph restriction ‘til the welders restore the frog: happened a lot on the UP,I worked on. Along comes a 9500’ long train, not unrealistic these days. At 10 mph that train will be on a crossing, counting too, time for the gates to come down for 20 seconds ahead of the train, all of 10 minutes.
Kuh-ching…$500.
An 8000’ long train, “goes into emergency,” not a controlled emergency application. Not watching your FRED, you’ve few clues about the cause or location of the problem. 3 minutes into the crossing “blockage” you try to release the brakes. FRED ain’t breathing. Your only other crewmember, grabs a wrench and an air hose and starts a, potentially, nearly 3 mile long trek.
Military marches at 4mph; the conducter examines the cars for myriad problems caused by emergency apps.
Does he have to go back 7800’ to find “separated air hose?” and then walk back on the other side of the train examining, looking for one of those myriad problems?.
Over an hour of “blockage.”
Kuh- ching-ching! $4000 and probably more.
Neither of these situations were avoidable,
Not the railroad’s nor the train crew’s fault nor responsibility…
Ouch! Have they not read about premption by federal law in interstate commerce? There are a ton of federal cicuit judgements out there that will nullify this. The only people making any money will be the lawyers. I fully understand local frustrations that provoked this reaction, but it is misplaced. Local and state governments are going to have to belly up to the bar and pay for grade crossing separation, or crossing closures if they wish to solve this. It will be interesting to find out how many actual road crossings predated railroad construction within the state. The normal rules in cost apportionment for grade separation are quite simple. if the railroad was first, the local governments must pay the lion’s share of the construction bill, with the railroad contributing in its’ axis. Otherwise it is the other way around. Highways and railroads do not mix well. I smell a lot NIMBY in this related to increases in traffic in both the rail and road axes. If a guy living in Canada, where the problem is showing up in densely populated areas, can figure it out, surely the citzens of the fair state of Indiana can do the same.
Go for the ‘deep pockets’ and not the unionized, (sometimes) perpetrators! Hoosiers be so silly…
I don’t think this is regulating interstate commerce any more than state traffic safety laws. I think the intent is to prevent trains from stopping on crossings for long periods, which is reasonable. Exceptions should be made for trains which are moving or disabled.
Landon,
thank you for the line, “exceptions should be made.”
My first line question was about those words allowing
no exceptions.
Blockage, Blocking and Block to me indicate the difference between killing, as in murder, and killing in self-defense.
Overly emphatic, Yes.
Those words imply, “NO exceptions.”.
Am I inferring wrongly?
Or have i totally misused infer and imply? Inquiring minds don’t give a…
Politicians do not become experts on any given subject overnight simply because they win an election. They are adept, unfortunately, at fooling their constituents by preening and blustering in front of TV cameras whilst making Grand Pronouncements on topics they know absolutely nothing about. Here, they’ve identified a possible new source of revenue to pay for their wild spending sprees, and applied the usual one-size-fits-all “solution” that has no basis in reality. It will result in increased costs to the railroads, who pass those costs to the shippers they serve, and which ultimately get passed on to US, the consumers. More feel-good BS that will hurt an already struggling economy.
Mr. Hays, how do you figure that the union employees are the " perpetrators"? There are many reasons why a train may block a crossing and most of the time the train crew, union or not, have no control over them. Your anti union jabs are getting real old. Why don’t you stick to making educated comments and quit the union bashing.
The courts have ruled that laws such as this ARE regulating interstate commerce and are generally illegal. Cases of reasonable time (generally about 10-15 minutes at a minimum) are allowed, but courts have ruled that they must exclude any required operating requirement such as train inspection, signal or mechanical failures, derailments, etc. I helped write the grade crossing regulations for one state and we carefully followed these procedures after several meetings with judges and the FRA. I also successfully defended a railroad and crew in another state on this issue.
Many years ago when I was at UP, we had a police officer order a train crew to move a train that was stopped due to air brake problems. When told that they couldn’t due to a required inspection, he arrested the crew and took them to jail. The railroad was called and the trainmaster showed up and showed them the laws. By this time, much of the south side of Chicago was shut down. The trainmaster was ordered to take the crew back to the train and clear the crossings. He told the police that they took them off the train so they could put them back on and left, in a hyrail truck since the streets were all blocked. It never happened again.
There is already a law on the books limiting blockages to 10 minutes with the reasonable exceptions “suggested” in the comments. This law only increases the fines to provide an “incentive” to reduce blockages.
The bill should include provision to use fines, along with state and federal money, to eliminate (where appropriate) the crossings where blockages most often happen by building highway under or overpasses.
Thank you, Chris B. Thompson. Hays, it was nice around here for the few months you were gone. Now, shut up with the political sniping or get gone again.
Dr. Barton wrote that, “The courts have ruled that laws such as this ARE regulating interstate commerce and are generally illegal.”
Thank you. I have been wondering about this myself.
Regards,
Fred M. Cain
William Hayes, How can you be so ignorant as to make a blanket statement regarding railroad employees, unionized or not?! Surely anyone commenting on the Newswire should be knowledgeable enough about railroad operations in general to realize that between signal malfunctions, slow orders, equipment issues (locomotive shut down, broken knuckle, etc.), and a host of other matters which are beyond the control of those running the train which would make for a blocked crossing or two. At least the Indiana legislators had the good sense to listen to the concerns of the FRA and the union representatives, and modify the legislation accordingly …
Unionized perpetrators? Get real Mr. Hays!
They caved today. New version of the bill eliminates the new civil penalties and “urges the legislative council” to study the issue further. https://iga.in.gov/legislative/2015/bills/senate/27 - see Bill Version 2 at lower left.
Apparently the legislators are not willing to invest in the infrastructure to deal with this that they would for trucking companies: overpasses or underpasses. They’d rather the RRs pay for it all.