TEXARKANA, Texas - If you have noticed trains blocking Richmond Road more frequently and for longer times in recent weeks, you are not alone.
Drivers have noted Kansas City Southern trains stopped on the tracks - obstructing Richmond Road traffic between Texas Boulevard and Summerhill Road - more often than not lately, turning what has long been an occasional inconvenience into a near-constant cause to detour onto New Boston Road or College Drive. KCS offers little explanation for the change, and because of a federal court ruling, the city and state are powerless to do anything about it.
Flashing lights where Richmond intersects Texas Boulevard and Summerhill warn drivers when a train is stopped on the tracks, signaling that they must take a different route. The KCS tracks are elevated over College and New Boston Road, the nearest major east-west thoroughfares, making them passable even when a train is stopped.
But the flashing yellow signals at these two intersections are constant reminders that a train is blocking the way for those who use this cut-through that angles most directly from Texarkana's oldest residental neighborhoods to its main shopping district.
KCS' operations team "is aware and working to improve the situation as much as possible," a spokesperson said in an email.
"Train volumes are steady moving through this area. Texarkana is a train crew change point. In recent weeks, winter weather presented ground transportation challenges for getting Shreveport-based crews to Texarkana to run trains north," she said.
Residents need not fear that the traffic obstruction will affect police or firefighter response times, according to local officials.
"I have noticed the increase as well," said Fire Chief Eric Schlotter. "I have not reached out to KCS as the issue does not routinely have an impact on our response. We do not commonly use that section of Richmond for response purposes due to the location of fire stations."
The obstruction is "more of an inconvenience for us than anything else," Police Department spokesman Shawn Vaughn said.
"I'm not aware of any time it's created a serious delay in emergency response or an issue for us," he said. "With the overpasses on New Boston Road and College Drive, our officers have at least two alternate routes in the immediate area available to them."
A federal court ruling 20 years ago nullified state laws prohibiting trains from blocking traffic, leaving local police and other officials with no available response to the problem.
"States lack authority to enforce time limits on how long a railroad company can block a crossing. In 2001, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal laws preempt state anti-blocking statutes. Section 471.007 was removed from the Texas Transportation Code per the Texas attorney general's opinion in June 2005," according to the Texas Department of Transportation.
That section of the Transportation Code had made it a misdemeanor for a train to block a street for more than 10 minutes at a time.