deja vu,
What are your thoughts on this story?
Quote:
Kalamazoo Gazette
Growing frustration over freight train delays spurs talk with railroad
By Brad Devereaux | MLive.com
December 13, 2017
KALAMAZOO, MI - As Tim Hopkins sat idling in his taxicab, blocked by a freight train and going nowhere fast, railroad and city officials sat inside a building a block away talking about train delays.
"We're trying to get (passengers) to their appointments, and there we sit," the driver for Bronco Express taxi service said. "It's frustrating."
The problem is especially bad downtown, said Hopkins, who on this day was stuck in neutral at a train crossing on Stockbridge Avenue on the near south side. After about 15 minutes, he put his cab in gear and made a U-turn, forced to take a different route to pick up his fare.
Waiting at railroad crossings is a fact of life for drivers in downtown Kalamazoo. Delays from slow-moving and sometimes stopped freight trains seem to be getting more frequent and lasting longer, but no one really knows to what extent.
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Where I live, our major east-west state highway through the downtown was grade seperated years and years ago, but we do have this problem at the at-grade crossings downtown. The good thing for us is that the line around our downtown is very lightly used, these days.
It looks like Kalamazoo was looking at grade seperation back in 1981:
But it seems now the talk is about trying to schedule trains duing less busy times of days for motorists and pedestrians. Apparently, it's the north-south Grand Elk line (and not the Amtrak Michigan Line) which is giving motorists headaches.