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September 28, 2017
General Jennifer Granholm challenged the
CSX with a court action and defended a
1994 Michigan statue that prohibits trains
from continuously blocking crossings for
longer than five minutes. Each violation of
the state statue resulted in a $500 fine and
CSX was issued over 890 citations with
potential fines exceeding $446,000. CSX
then filed a countersuit against Plymouth
in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern
District of Michigan claiming the state stat-
ue is preempted by federal statues. The
court agreed that the regulation was pre-
empted by both the Federal Railroad
Safety Act and the Interstate Commerce
Commission Termination Act. Plymouth
didnot appeal.
In May of last year a CSX spokesperson
toldTheEagle the delays were the result of
“operational changes,” claiming the com-
pany had implemented infrastructure
improvements and apologized for the
“inconvenience,”
As city officials faced continued com-
plaints, they established a direct 24-hour
“Tell CSX” line to the railroad and posted
the telephone number on area crossing
gates. They urged disgruntled motorist to
call U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow, Gary
Peters and U.S. Rep. David Trott. Officials
said they were told that CSX policy
required that trains be broken into two
parts whenever a blockage is expected to
continue formore than 10minutes.
Reports say CSX has recently changed
routes and closed rail “hump” yards that
sort the long trains. Hump yards are mas-
sive facilities that disassemble the trains by
rolling them down an incline and directing
the cars through switches to tracks where
new trains are assembled.
In a written response to an inquiry by
The Eagle, CSX Assistant Vice President
for Media and Communications Rob
Doolittle, apologized to Plymouth and
Canton residents who have experienced
blocked crossings.
“CSX is transitioning to a new operating
model, called Precision Scheduled
Railroading, which is intended to optimize
the use of all assets, including locomotives,
rail cars and infrastructure, in providing a
cost-effective, reliable, predictable freight-
transportationproduct to customers.
“This transition requires dramatic
change in many aspects of the company's
operations and some customers and other
stakeholders have experienced unintend-
ed effects, including longer trains, as our
organization has evolved. We have
acknowledged these issues, and we are
committed to working through and resolv-
ing them as quickly as possible. Safety
remains our key priority and factors into
every decision the company makes regard-
ing its employees, customers and the com-
munitieswe serve,”Doolitte said.
Doolittle said CSXhas a contact website
for
concerned
residents,
Statistics show CSX employs 25,000
workers and has 21,000 miles of track that
stretches into easternCanada. The railroad
giant based in Florida is now a monopoly
connecting major cities like Miami,
Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Montreal and
Boston.
According to a recent report in TheWall
Street Journal, problems for CSX began
this May and became worse by mid-sum-
mer. Details of railroad congestion, service
delays and colossal trains blocking the
tracks are said to be wreaking havoc not
only with motorists, but business and
industry. CSX is now one of only two rail-
road operators that handle nearly all rail
shipments east of the Mississippi River.
According the to the accounts, railroad logs
show the transit time from Chicago to
Colesburg, Tenn. is usually just a few days
and earlier this month the actual ride time
was posted as 18 days, 13 hours and 57min-
utes.
This July a railroad regulator, the
Surface Transportation Board, warned
CSX to “Fix the service problem,” after
receiving customer complaints about serv-
ice deterioration, including delays and con-
gestion, long and unpredictable transit
times time, railcars sitting in yards for days
at time andnumerous shipper complaints.
Plymouth City Manager Paul Sincock
reported that his office had not received
any recent complaints of long trains or
inordinate delays. According to Sincock,
the blocking of grade crossings is not regu-
latedby law.
Trains
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