Trains, bells and railroad blockages are frustrating south Fort Worth. What can be done?

Angela Blochowicz is hounded by a constant dinging from a railroad crossing roughly 50 yards from her house.

“I can hear it even when the train’s not there,” she said.

She lives in the Jennings-May-St. Louis neighborhood just west Interstate 35W and north of Berry Street. Her house sits between two railroad crossings at Page Street and Morningside Drive.

Both are regularly blocked by Union Pacific trains.

It’s not the cars moving along the tracks that bother Blochowicz. It’s the nonstop dinging from the crossing signal when the freight carrier’s cars block the road for hours and sometimes days at a time.

She’s given her kids ear plugs, but said sometimes it isn’t enough.

Residents living next to the train tracks say the bells are ruining their quality of life, and the blocked crossings are trapping them in their neighborhood.

But there’s not much they or the city can do to fix the problem.

Why are the bells ringing?

Union Pacific Ney Yard is less than a mile north of the Morningside Drive and Page Avenue crossings.

Union Pacific usually changes its crews at the crossings near Blochowicz’s house, said spokesperson Robynn Tysver in an email to the Star-Telegram.

Tysver responded to questions submitted through an online form on the company’s website.

“We do apologize for the inconvenience, and we understand the frustration,” she said.

The trains are often more than a mile long, so switching out rail cars will occasionally block crossings instead of being contained to the rail yard, said Tai Nguyen, the city of Fort Worth’s railroad projects manager.

The gates at rail crossings have sensors that tell them to close and keep the bells ringing as long as there’s a train blocking the intersection, he said.

Nguyen can call over to the rail yard to see if Union Pacific can move its trains a little faster, but there’s little he can do to force the issue.

“It’s a good neighbor policy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” he said.

Texas’ transportation code makes it a misdemeanor for a train to block a crossing for more than 10 minutes.

However, federal law trumps the state’s authority to police train crossings, according to a 2005 opinion from then-state attorney general Greg Abbott.

There are no federal laws that punish rail carriers for blocking crossings, but people can submit reports to the Federal Railroad Administration through an online portal.

Could quiet zones help?

Quiet zone crossings have technology to make it safe for a train to pass through without having to blast its horn.

Examples include the rail crossing at West Seventh Street, which has lights, gates, and a median to keep the crossing clear while trains pass.

Blochowicz’s father, Michael Castillo, has lived in the Hemphill corridor for 40 years. He said they tried to get quiet zones established in the mid-1990s, but nothing ever came of it.

“We have everything that’s required, but I can’t get nobody to direct me in the right direction,” Castillo said.

Establishing a quiet zone wouldn’t help with the bells, because they’re going to go off as long as the crossing is blocked, Nguyen said.

“I know it’s annoying. I grew up in that area and it’s really tough when the city can’t do a whole lot about it,” he said.

Get rid of the crossings

The only thing that will solve this problem is to convert the crossings into “grade-separated” crossings, Nguyen said.

This is where you build a bridge over or dig a tunnel under the railroad tracks to separate the rail from vehicle traffic.

Fort Worth is spending $22.2 million on a bridge over the Union Pacific line west of Everman Parkway and Interstate 35W, and Saginaw completed a similar project in March 2022 at West Bailey Boswell Road and U.S. 287.

Freight carriers like these kinds of crossings because it eliminates the need for them to maintain the road crossings, Nguyen said.

The only limiting factor is money.

These projects cost $30 million to $40 million to build and take long term planning, Nguyen said.

Fort Worth has more of these crossings as part of its long range plans, he said, but couldn’t give a timeline for when that would be.