Freight trains regularly stop and block the roads of York, Ala. Sometimes they cut off two neighborhoods for hours. Emergency services and health workers can’t get in, and those trapped can’t get out.
“People’s livelihoods are at risk because they can’t get to work on time,” said Amanda Brassfield, who has lived in one of the neighborhoods, Grant City, for 32 years and raised two daughters there. “It’s not fair.”
For years, residents have raised these complaints with Norfolk Southern, which owns the tracks, and with regulators and members of Congress. But the problem has only gotten worse.
Freight trains often block rural roads, a phenomenon that local officials say has gotten worse over the past decade as railroads run longer trains and leave them parked on rails at intersections. The blockades can turn school dropouts into nightmares, starve local customer businesses and prevent emergency services from reaching those in need.
The problem has persisted despite numerous federal, state, and local proposals and laws because the freight rail industry has enormous political and legal power.
Courts have rejected several state laws to penalize railroad companies for blocking traffic, ruling that only the federal government can regulate railroad crossings. There are no federal laws or regulations penalizing railroads for blocking crossings, and congressional proposals to address the issue have failed to overcome opposition from the railroad industry.
A bipartisan bill introduced in Congress in March after a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, called for regulators to enact rules for trains carrying hazardous materials that would “reduce or eliminate blocked crossings.”
But that provision was dropped before the Senate Commerce Committee brought forward the bill in May. The legislation, which awaits a vote by the full Senate, now only requires a National Academy of Sciences study on blocked crosswalks.
Rail lobbyists had argued the provision had nothing to do with the issues raised by the Ohio accident and urged sympathetic senators to remove it, according to four people familiar with the bill’s negotiations.
Speaking on the day of the committee vote, South Dakota Senator John Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate and a former railroad lobbyist, criticized the blocked crossing facility. “This bill should have been about security reforms relevant to the derailment in eastern Palestine, but now it has expanded into a hunter for heavy regulatory mandates and union gifts,” he said.
Senators who supported the provision agreed to pull it out to gain more Republican support and improve the bill’s chances, the four people said.
The freight rail industry is dominated by four American companies – Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific, CSX and BNSF – and two Canadian companies, Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Canadian National. The U.S. Railroads and the Association of American Railroads, a trade group, have spent about $454 million on federal lobbying over the past two decades, according to a DailyExpertNews analysis of federal lobbying revelations. That’s about $30 million more than the four largest airlines and their trading group.
Mr Thune has received about $341,000 in campaign contributions since 2010 from railroad workers and political action committees, according to an analysis by OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics. He served as railroad director for South Dakota from 1991 to 1993 and spent two years as a lobbyist for several companies, including the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad after a failed Senate bid in 2002, according to disclosure forms.
The senator declined to comment.
The Senate’s reluctance to crack down on the railroad industry was not surprising to Daniel Lipinski, a former House Democrat from Illinois.
In 2020, he introduced a bill that would have placed limits on how long rail companies could block crossings, and imposed fines on trains that exceeded those limits. The idea made it into a home infrastructure bill. But the Senate struck down the provision after the Association of American Railroads said it would “lead to unintended consequences, including network congestion and reduced service.”
“There’s nothing the state or local governments can do,” said Mr. Lipinski, now a consultant and a fellow at the University of Dallas and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “The federal government is not doing anything about the crossings, and the railroads would like to keep it that way.”
The infrastructure law, which was passed in 2021, did provide grants for rail crossing elimination projects, mainly to build roads under or over tracks. Local officials said those grants would repair only a small number of crossings that often blocked freight trains.
There is no thorough accounting of how often trains block the country’s more than 200,000 level crossings. People can make reports on a website maintained by the Federal Railroad Administration. Last year there were 30,803 reports, compared to 21,648 in 2021.
Texas, Ohio and Illinois had the most incidents. Some blocks may be reported more than once, but local officials claim the database significantly underestimates the blocks. York residents say they don’t typically report blocked crossings.
In response to questions, the Association of American Railroads attributed blocked crossings to local governments, which it said had routed roads over railroad tracks rather than over or under them, an approach other industrialized nations had taken.
John Gray, a senior vice president at the association, said in a statement that the railroads had taken steps to mitigate the impact of blocked crossings. “The real solution is not a matter of technology or operational practices of the railways or government agencies,” said Mr Gray. “It’s an investment in public infrastructure similar to what has been happening in the rest of the developed world for more than a century and a half.”
Local officials and some railway employees said the explanation was selfish. They link the increase in blocked crossings to the pursuit of bigger profits — Union Pacific, BNSF, CSX and Norfolk Southern have made $96 billion in profits over the past five years, up 13 percent from the previous five years. Major railroads’ profit margins are significantly higher than those of companies in most other industries.
In search of greater efficiency, railways have run longer trains. As a result, when those trains are moved, assembled and switched at yards, they often spill over into nearby neighborhoods, where they block roads, local officials and workers said.
Crews have a better sense of the space shorter trains take up, said Randy Fannon Jr., a national vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union, who also oversees the safety task force. Longer trains are more difficult to maneuver on single track railways. Such railways have track sections, or sidings, where trains can pull aside to allow other trains to pass, but those sections are not large enough for very long trains, Mr. Fannon.
“If you have two 5,000-foot trains or one 3,000-foot train, you cut the use of locomotives in half and you cut the train crew in half,” he said. “That’s all that matters – profit.”
In York, trains stop and block roads when they use a siding that runs through the city. Residents say the company could move the siding to the surrounding countryside. The railway association has listed new sidings as a way to deal with blocked crossings in its own stock.
“They have no reason” to make that change, said Willie Lake, the mayor of York and a former federal bank supervisor.
Connor Spielmaker, a spokesperson for Norfolk Southern, said in a statement that the company had worked with York to mitigate the disruptions. When asked if Norfolk Southern could move the siding, he declined to comment, except that the company already uses sidings out of town and had created a position to work on issues such as blocked intersections.
“The only way to eliminate stopping at a level crossing is to eliminate the level crossing itself,” said Mr. Gamemaker. He noted that Norfolk Southern wrote to the Department of Transport in February in support of a federal grant application from York to build a flyover and said it would work with York on future grant applications.
In June, York learned that his applications for two federal grants had been rejected. “It’s a punch to the stomach,” Mr. Lake said.
Officials from the Department of Transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration, one of the department’s agencies, declined to say whether they could issue rules penalizing railroads for blocking intersections. A spokesperson for the railroad administration, Dan Griffin, said the railroads must resolve the issue without being required to.
“The duration and prevalence of blocked level crossings are the result of a railway company’s operating methods,” he said in a statement.
The blockades are unrelenting in York – and sometimes extreme.
On a scorching election day in June 2022, a train blockade lasted more than 10 hours, forcing many people, some old and sick, to shelter in an arts center.
Carolyn Turner, 51, said stopped trains trapped her in her neighborhood several times, making her late for dialysis appointments 30 miles away and causing great stress. “I love going there and going back to help with my grandchildren,” she said.
The city’s population is predominantly black, and some residents said this could explain why railroad crossings were often blocked.
“If you really want to see them squirm, tell them, ‘How many white communities are you doing this in?'” Jessie V. Brown, an Army veteran, said of executives in Norfolk Southern. The company declined to comment on Ms Brown’s statement.
Some officials pin their hopes on the Supreme Court.
At least 37 states have laws regulating blocked crossings, some dating back more than a century, and courts have overturned several. Ohio, Indiana, Alabama and other states have asked the Supreme Court to confirm that they can set limits on blocked crosswalks. The court could decide this fall whether to hear the case.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.