Glendale Residents Concerned over Perfectly Safe Railroad Crossing

In the latest bit of NIMBY news, we see residents of Glendale in Queens giving the NIMBYs who line the right of way in Garden City and New Hyde Park a run for their money.  Local residents who live along the NY&AR Secondary (or more commonly known as the Lower Montauk Branch) are concerned that the 88th Street grade crossing is an "accident waiting to happen."  The resident's main concern is over the lack of advanced warning for trains that are approaching the crossing.

Since the NY&AR took over control of the Lower Montauk and retired the signals in place, the speed limit for freight movements on the line was dropped to restricted speed, which is a speed that would allow the train to stop within half of the engineer's range of vision, or no more than 15 mph.  So right of the bat the resident's needn't worry about trains pounding through at 80 mph as the gates are still coming down.

This and several other grade crossings on the Lower Montauk work use only something called an "island circuit" to active the crossing.  I will delve more into grade crossing anatomy at another time, but generally speaking, there are three different "circuits" that could activate a grade crossing (the circuit is completed by the train's metal wheels shunting it).  There is an island circuit, which is right on the crossing itself plus an additional hundred feet to either side of the crossing.  There are then two more circus on either side of the island circuit that vary in length (depending on the speed limit in the area).  When the train touches one of these outer circuits, the grade crossing is activated and it is deactivated when the train clears the island circuit.  

The "dangerous" grade crossing on the Lower Montauk that Glendale
residents are concerned about. (Photo credit; Google Street View)

These grade crossings here appear to only function with island circuits, meaning that the crossing only activates when the train is a very short distance away.  This would certainly be a cause for concern if trains continually moved through the area like this, but all NY&AR trains stop once they've encroached onto the island circuit and wait there for half a minute or so before continuing over the crossing.  This allows the gates to come down and the people to scurry away before the train moseys over the crossing at a speed slightly faster than a walking pace.

The Glendale Residents mentioned here seem to get scared seeing the train get so close and want the railraod to make the warning time longer.  The LIRR owns and maintains all crossing equipment along the branch.

WCBS wasted a whole one minute and fifty-eight seconds of air time earlier this week running a report about the allegedly dangerous crossing (the video is accessible at this link).  In the report, Glendale resident Kate Interrante said that she would like "more of a 3 minute warning" in advance of a train's arrival, which is pretty insane, considering it's about six times the length of the advance warning set by federal standard and afforded at hundreds of other crossings across the country.  I would personally get pretty frustrated staring at an empty crossing for three whole minutes before a train crawled across it at restricted speed, and such a long time might actually make things even more dangerous, considering people would quickly get impatient and try to run the crossing.

The residents of Glendale have long been unhappy about the freight traffic that has been moving through their neighborhood since long before they got there, and they're a pretty creative bunch, coming up with all sorts of grand stories and complaints.  At the end of the day, both the LIRR and the FRA inspected and observed the crossing and found everything to be in working order and all federal saftey standards were being observed.  You should always expect a train at a grade crossing at any time and in any direction--even if the gates aren't lowered.  A little  bit of common sense works wonders in situations like these...we don't need to alter the whole crossing and make people suffer through several minutes worth of flashing lights and bells for nothing.