Residents raise concerns over MoDOT’s proposed rail crossing closures in Chariton County
MENDON, Mo. (KMIZ)
On Thursday, the Missouri Department of Transportation held a public meeting to discuss a safety study of the BNSF Marceline Subdivision after a deadly train derailment killed four and injured 150 people back in June 2022.
The meeting was held in the Northwestern School District's Commons area in Mendon. During the meeting, MoDOT rolled out its new plans to update some of the railroad crossings in Chariton County and took feedback from the public.
MoDOT began its railroad safety study in early 2023, intending to improve safety on all passenger rail corridors. According to MoDOT, there are 1,400 hundred railroad crossings in Missouri that are on public roads that have no gates.
In the wake of the fatal 2022 derailment in Mendon, MoDoOT wanted to look at the three corridors and 47 crossings that deal with passenger freights. After the study, the department found 21 passenger corridors in Chariton County they are looking to address which will cost roughly $6.5 million.
However, as one MoDOT spokesperson said during the meeting, “This is a generational opportunity to improve railroad safety,” due to all the funding they were given in the wake of the Mendon accident.
“It's really challenging because they are on different railroads. There are multiple railroads that operate in Missouri and they are in different counties so you have different authorities and some of them are in cities and towns that have authority over the roads so it takes a little time to coordinate with all those entities,” MoDOT Assistant Chief Engineer Eric Schroter told ABC 17 News.
ABC 17 News asked Schroeter if the study would have taken place if not for the derailment.
“We have always had money to do saftey improvements but it is so little that when you have fourteen hundred we are only doing five to six a year,” Schroeter said. “This year it kind of highlighted the issue to everybody and it gave us an opportunity to explain that there is fourteen hundred across the state. Mendon was the latest tragedy. How do we avoid another one?”
Chariton County sees more than 60 trains a day traveling at an average of 90 miles per hour, over eight crossings. Two of those are passenger freights. The proposed changes would close the crossing at Snyder Road, Atchison Avenue, Porche Prairie and Whitman avenues, which was the site of the fatal crash in 2022.
However, some residents were concerned that the proposed closures would block key access points.
To the north of the tracks is Swan Lake National Wildlife Refuge, meaning a train could block people in with nowhere to cross. Mike Spencer, a lifelong Mendon resident, said this is a safety concern given the number of hunters that travel to the area.
“If there was a hunting accident, a farm accident, we’ve got farmers working down in there, maybe construction workers, maybe railroad workers even. If there was anyone who had a medical emergency and there was a train blocking one of those crossings that could be an issue,” Spencer said.
The proposed changes could also affect farmers who use the tracks to organize equipment and turn around. Spencer added that while he was glad that MoDOT was being proactive in keeping people safe believes there are larger issues that need to be addressed.
“We have got a lot of highway infrastructure that needs to be looked at. A lot of people traveling up and down these highways will never travel across these corridors that we are talking about tonight, don’t even know that they are there,” he said.
MoDOT was listening to a residents' concerns and taking notes throughout the night. One spokesperson told ABC 17 News, “Nobody knows how these changes are going to affect people better than the folks that live here.”
MoDOT is currently working on a safety study of the entire railroad tracks from Kansas to Iowa. It expects the project will begin in two or three years.
The meeting comes after an Amtrack Train traveling from Los Angeles to Chicago collided with a dump truck in Chariton County causing eight train cars and two locomotives to derail in 2022.
After National Accident Investigators investigated, they wrote in their report that the design of the railroad crossing contributed to the crash.
The crossing did not have working lights or bells to warn drivers of oncoming trains. However, MoDot warned that just adding lights does not automatically fix these crossings because over half of train deaths occur at crossings with lights on them.
Several lawsuits have been filed by Amtrak employees and passengers. The widow of a dump truck driver also has filed a wrongful death lawsuit over the lack of safety. The two-week trial is set to start Oct. 28, 2024.
