Homeowners Block My Local Passenger Rail
Homeowners Block My Local Passenger Rail
I’m not sure if an opinion piece is appropriate here, so please let me know if this doesn’t fit the theme of the community, and I’ll avoid sharing such thoughts in the future.
I’m extremely frustrated with the car centric culture in my area. I live about 25 miles west of a quarry. Every day I watch trains go up and down the railroad mostly carrying gravel. This railroad stretches for several hours by car in each direction, connecting several large cities and even passing a few tourist attractions, and despite our traffic congestion problems there is little interest in trying to use this rail for actual people.
One company moved in and started running a new passenger rail service. Within a few weeks, we had protesters at the railroads complaining that drivers don’t understand railroad crossings. I saw posters about how trains were killing residents when drivers park on the tracks and get hit. I don’t understand! Where do you think the train is going to go? They don’t exactly come out of nowhere. They follow the tracks! And we’ve always had trains passing through our town before. At a later local election a candidate ran on the premise that they’re going to protect home values and our children by reducing or eliminating the number of trains passing through our town. This candidate did win our local election and sadly they succeeded in cutting down on rail investment.
Fast-forward a couple years later. Passenger rail stations were built at the endpoints of this rail to ferry tourists. I drive parallel to this rail on the way to work several times per week for almost 45 minutes each way, 20 minutes of which is heavy traffic. I get to enjoy watching people ride the train while there’s no stop anywhere near my house because our local government has sided with homeowners that a passenger rail station is “simply too dangerous.” I would have to drive over an hour to the nearest passenger rail station to ride the train, and I can literally see the tracks from my apartment.
Every time I see that train I feel bitter. I could save so much money if these boneheads would have let them build a train station in our town. Absolutely ridiculous! The train is there. The rail is there. I don’t understand why a train is such a personal, existential threat to your way of life.
Frankly if you don’t get that a train is going to come down the rails and hit you if you park there then you deserve to get eliminated from the gene pool.
100%! The arguments I heard against building the station were asinine. The logic just doesn’t follow. For example, the train is dangerous to children? Well how about the actual highway that runs next to the track? Clearly that’s not a threat or dangerous to residents in any way. As we all know, cars are perfectly safe. One little girl gets hit by the train and we ignore all the deaths of the children from auto accidents. The rail is overwhelmingly safer.
I’ve lived in this town for quite a long time and it’s a common occurrence to see cars stopped on the train tracks. While we have plenty of idiots, I can hardly blame the train if a car gets hit. It should always be the fault of the vehicle.
It infuriates me to my bones how Americans specifically think about driving vs. other modes of transportation.
$34B to repair a quarter-mile long stretch of highway? What the hey, it's not our money (Narrator: it was, at least partially).
$10M to add bike lanes to a busy road with one of the highest crash fatality statistics in my city that's basically a highway? REEEE NOT IN MY BACKYARD!Because those aren’t the actual arguments they respond to, just the face of the arguments. The real argument is that the car is an extension of the self. They should be able to drive anywhere, park anywhere, drive anything, without fear (Traffic deaths are unavoidable and unremarkable), judgment (I drive a Tesla, I’m saving the earth!), or undue cost (gas and maintenance. Sometimes tolls.) except for that which they’ve already internalized.
Public transport is by definition collective. The train is not an extension of you. It is a thing we all collectively benefit from. It isn’t tailored to your specific tastes. It doesn’t go 0-60 faster than Joe Nextdoor’s train. Everyone pays the same, you can’t show off how fancy your ticket is.
Some kid killed on the tracks is the fault of the train, because the driver could have been any of us. We are relatable people. The train is an unrelatable, unaccountable “us” that Americans will never, ever choose over their ideal “me.”
My brother at 13 was killed by a train
What my mother did was start a campaign to get people to practice common sense and safety around trains. Our family doesn't blame the train at all - We instead got better crossing safety put in place and helped get more awareness that train tracks are stabilized in cities to minimize noise and that horns are directed outwards, so a train is quieter head on than you think, ie look both ways before you cross
Like, if my own family can get that, then why can't these anti train fucks?
It isn't about logic, it is about preventing the station which prevents the denser developments that come with it and prevents people from living in those developments. These protesters mostly want to preserve (read increase) their property values while preserving the "character of the neighbourhood" (read if you don't already live here, you don't belong).
Exactly, it’s like a pedestrian in a crosswalk. There’s a bigger mass coming, gtfo or deal with the consequences of your choices.
blaming pedestrians in crosswalks for getting hit by cars seems pretty bloodthirsty (and fuckcars is a weird community to say it)
If a pedestrian is on a cross walk, the bigger mass should be required to stop to let the pedestrian cross safely.
It is the responsibility of the driver to ensure an intersection is clear before crossing it. A crosswalk is an intersection and a pedestrian is foot traffic.
Does the mayor own a car dealership? For us, it is the county judge and so we have no public transit. Why would people buy from his Lexus dealership if the bus could get them where they needed to go? It’s insanity.
A quick search says while the mayor is wealthy, I couldn’t find any information on business assets. I think this comes more from a culture clash or crisis of identity that makes the train look dangerous.
property value obsessed homeowners are some of the most obnoxious people on earth
It’s especially weird because I’m not even confident that building a train station would lower your property values.
It wouldn't. Nor would it be unsafe. These property value fuckers are not just obnoxious but also really stupid.
There's a neighborhood in my city right next to a light rail station. Literally, some of the houses are less than 20m from the platform. But when the station was being built the neighborhood association specifically campaigned against having any access to the station from the neighborhood. There's a huge concrete wall blocking it off now. So if the people living in the houses literally directly next to the station wanted to get to the station they'd have to walk (or realistically, drive) over 2km across a highway, along a major road and through busy parking lots. And then, after getting to the station, they'd have to cross back under the highway to get to the actual train platform, because it's built on their side of the highway despite being impossible to get to from that side.
@henfredemars @buckykat Nope. Both homebuyers and apartment developers are willing to pay a premium for high quality transit access, especially rail. Unless the rail service is really inconvenient and unreliable, it would substantially raise their precious property values, should they want to sell and move further out in the exurbs because they’re afraid of people who aren’t encased in SUVs.
I don’t understand! Where do you think the train is going to go? They don’t exactly come out of nowhere.
A car brain is a very small brain. It makes lots of noise vrooom vrroooom vroooom but it doesn't go anywhere.
Are they also protesting the frieght trains that are often heavier and noisier? Or just the trains that let "poor people" get around?
Every rail in an urban area near me has signs saying not to block the track. Every crossing on a busy road has lights and crossing bars. Every low traffic crossing has warning signs and a STOP before crossing.
These signs are for drivers, drivers are trained to recognize them and they resemble all the other road signs drivers are expected to follow.
If your area is using similar signage then this is 100% on negligent drivers. If they replace that rail with a road are drivers just going to run the red or gridlock the intersection like they currently treat the rail crossing?
I wasn't aware of any complaints about the trains for years prior to the passenger rail company joining in; it was only when trains carrying people entered the picture that the protesting began claiming that these trains are unsafe and unwanted, but the arguments I've seen on signs etc. aren't related to passenger rail specifically. Perhaps the passenger rail stoked fears that the rail traffic would expand further.
Every railroad crossing is clearly marked, with multiple redundant flashing signals and moving barriers that get directly in the driver LOS. I've seen drivers push through the barriers to squeeze just ahead of or behind a moving train a handful of times in the past five years, but that's about the same number of blatant red light runners I've seen in the same.
The more I see shit like this, the more I believe gas-guzzler NIMBYs deserve to be beaten in the mouth with a brick honestly. I'm literally medically unable to drive. If I seize up behind the wheel, which is a likelihood because my seizures have been getting worse lately, I might cause a whole-assed pileup knowing my luck; so the only way I get to travel other than spending exorbitant amounts of money on Ubers and Lyfts (which keeps me quite frequently homebound) is planes and trains. And the nearest train stations are like. 75 and 100 miles away.
Specifically because of NIMBYs kvetching about "oh wah, the noise, oh wah, it might hit my car, oh wah, not in MY backyard!" Nah fuck that I got a brick for your window if you're getting in the way of public transit.