Public officials focus on railway’s safety implications

Note: Hear that train a-comin’ is a five-part series about an expected merger between Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern, and the impacts it would have on the communities of Washington County. This article is the second installment.

For city and county officials, much of the concern around a train merger’s traffic jump stems from implications for public safety, covering a wide array of perspectives.

“We’re going to have a lot more train traffic, and that’s going to create some safety issues … there’s a lot of different elements to our concerns with this,” Washington City Administrator Deanna McCusker said. “People getting to work, children getting to school, and with what’s on the rail cars, is there a potential to have some kind of safety (issue) with what’s being transported?”

Canadian Pacific Media Relations Manager Andy Cummings said the company led its field in safety.

“Canadian Pacific has maintained the lowest accident rate among Class 1 railroads … for the past 16 consecutive years,” he said. “We have a very strong story to tell there in regards to our safety record, and in fact the railroad industry is the safest way to move goods over land. We have been able to show through our actions that we do operate safely, and that’s through crew training, through inspecting our infrastructure and holding ourselves to high standards.”

Cummings said the Washington area would likely see increased safety efforts post-merger, thanks to centralized traffic control (CTC) measures the company has planned.

“(CTC) is a system that’s in effect on many busier routes in the country, as you add traffic to a rail line, you can justify the investment,” he said. “They work like stoplights, the lights will convey instructions to train crews on how to operate … CTC operates on a very low voltage that goes through the rail. If the rail ever breaks, the electricity can no longer go through the rail, and that will cause the signals protecting that section of track to drop to red.”

One of the most common concerns, however, has nothing to do with CP’s own accident avoidance. Emergency service officials say higher train counts risk disrupting their own response times as track crossings are more frequently blocked.

“In certain instances, minutes can sometimes make the difference between life and death, not to be dramatic,” Washington Police Chief Jim Lester said. “When you’re having to go from up on 12th, either down to Second or out to Highway 1 and around, you’re going a few miles out of the way … the railroad track kind of divides that part of town. Our ambulance service is on that side, our hospital is on the other.”

In general, a well-placed underpass on Second Street limits delays to no more than a few minutes. In a worst-case scenario, however, things could get much worse: the road below that bridge is commonly known to flood, becoming unusable during rain. While that’s only an occasional concern, Lester said it would get more pressing if other crossings were blocked more often.

“I tell people a lot, my role is to think of the bad things and how we can prevent those things from happening,” Lester said. “We plan for the worst and hope for the best, but hope is never a plan for us … if we didn’t have a concern of flooding there, (Second Street) is a perfect location at the center of town to get from north to south pretty quickly.”

The issue is amplified in Ainsworth, where none of the town’s three railroad crossings — which are the three highest traffic entrances to the residential area or downtown — are underpasses. The overwhelming majority of the town’s buildings and 511 residents lie north of the tracks, but a few buildings, including the fire station, are on the south side.

From the fire station, a drive across town without crossing the tracks is about 5-8 minutes longer, depending on highway traffic.

"We have to cross the tracks to get to the fire station for some of the firefighters that live in town, so with more trains … there’s more of a possibility that a train will be going through when we get paged out, so it’ll slow down our response,“ Ainsworth Fire Chief Waylon Schultz said. ”I’ve heard they’re going to put a double track between Ainsworth and Washington, and with that my biggest fear is trains slowing down as they’re going through town or maybe even stopping in town, waiting for the tracks to switch over.“

Those railway crossings block not just the fire station, but access to Highway 92: the fastest way in or out of town and the route of most residents’ daily commute. Schultz said he worried about dangerous effects on traffic flow for the heavily used road.

“There’s not a whole lot of room for cars to sit on the south side of the railroad tracks to wait for the train to get by,” he said. “A lot of times you’ll see two or three cars pulled off onto the street to get into Ainsworth, and the others will kind of stack up on the shoulder. The more that those vehicles are sitting out alongside the road, that’s another possibility for an accident.”

Schultz said the railroad did have a good working relationship with the fire department.

“The railroad’s worked great with us in the past when we’ve had larger fires in town,” he said. “We’ll call the railroad when we’ll have a lot of emergency vehicles going in and out, and they’ll shut train service down for an hour or two hours while we take care of the emergency.”

Cummings said traffic disruptions would typically only last a few minutes.

“If you think of a 10,000 foot train moving at 40 miles an hour, and you do the math, it’s going to block the crossings for about … three-and-a-half minutes,” he said. “The trains that are being added are almost entirely business that’s passing through Washington, so they’re not stopping to pick up cars and that type of thing. So we’re going to keep those in motion as much as possible.”

Others have focused on pedestrian risks. The track in Washington runs within a mile of Steward elementary school, and separates much of the town from the high school and middle school.

“We’re worried about, especially during afternoon pickup, morning drop off, getting kids home safely,” Washington school district Superintendent Willie Stone said. “More trains means more opportunities for bad things to happen. I’m really worried we only have one route in town that doesn’t have to stop, under the tracks.”

Stone said the change would require new considerations by the district.

“Some of it’s going to be us making sure we do due diligence with our kids, teaching them, making sure they know what to do when they see a train coming or they’re walking the sidewalk,” he said. “Otherwise, the city or the train station, it’d be great if we could get another overpass somehow.”

Stone is not alone in his wish for infrastructure improvements. County Engineer Jacob Thorius said he agreed with the merger overall, but had complaints about some sections of CP’s tracks.

“There are issues with crossings being rough, whether they’re in the town of Washington or in the county or in Ainsworth,” he said. “But that’s their infrastructure, they pick and choose, and they have limited funding just like we do with the roads, and they can only work on certain parts of it. I get that.”

One sticking point is the underpass north of McKaine river access on Dogwood Avenue. Thorius said the county and CP had contradicting views on the bridge’s condition.

“They say that structure is solid and going to last another hundred years, and we look at it and see concrete’s falling off and rebar exposed,” he said. “I would liken it to, you get two lawyers and they’re going to interpret stuff differently … it’s just differing opinions. There’s nothing unsafe about their stuff, if I believed there was, I’d be doing something about it.”

Infrastructure assessments are further complicated by a lack of information.

“There’s so much uncertainty,” Thorius said. “Are all those trains coming throughout the day, are they spread out? … It’s hard to gauge exactly what the impact will be.”

Cummings said collaborative improvements were on the table.

"We’re happy to discuss those sort of things with community leaders if that’s something they’re seeking,“ he said. ”With the new infrastructure bill, there are opportunities out there for funding. We’d be happy to have those discussions. We understand that this merger will have an impact on communities … so we’re talking directly with community leaders, and we’re going to be good neighbors, and that includes working with communities to avoid local adverse impacts.“

Still, Thorius said the county had struggled to work with the railroad on previous projects. Around 12 years ago, the county sought to raise the Crooked Creek bridge out of a flood plain and raise its vertical clearance, a project that would’ve required raising the railroad’s bridge overhead.

“In their opinion, their structure was just fine and it was working, and it’s going to work for quite a while,” Thorius said. “They weren’t going to do anything so we had to build our structure underneath to accommodate traffic the way it does today, even though it’s not exactly what we wanted. We don’t have any say.”

Some have wondered about the hazardous freight content changes Washington could expect to see as train counts rise.

"Some of them have hydrocarbons that are extremely flammable, it depends on the situation,“ Washington County Supervisor Bob Yoder said. ”There’s a variety of freight.“

Cummings said the railway was committed to preventing hazardous chemical incidents, with the railway planning to cover costs for local hazmat training.

“We’re in talks right now both with Washington’s fire department and the county emergency manager about doing training,” he said. “We would bring our hazmat officer and potentially some contractors to town so that we could work with local firefighters and educate them.”

Cummings said the railway had thorough plans in place for such incidents.

“The response would begin with a phone conversation and with digital communication, so we would be sending a train list to local emergency responders so that they could identify what products they’re working with. Additionally, on the phone, we’d be providing actionable advice about how to respond to the particular products that might be involved. Simultaneously, we would be mobilizing our response.”

The company has its own emergency response contractors and equipment stationed along the line. The closest of those personnel to Washington, however, are in Ottumwa and Davenport.

“It would depend on road conditions and other things, so I’m not able to give an exact timeline of what it would take, but we would be able to mobilize those assets … immediately and get those rolling,” he said. “That’s where the first assets would be coming from … and then those assets that are less about emergency response and more about recovery, those would be coming out of Chicago, Minneapolis, locations like that.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com