Trains, rush hours cause headaches in Evans City
EVANS CITY — Train traffic changes on the Buffalo & Pittsburgh railroad tracks along Breakneck Creek are causing even more traffic backups on the already congested Route 68.
The patience of commuters has long been tested by the traffic backups on Route 68 during morning and evening rush hours, but police Chief Joe McCombs said at the May 4 council meeting that the regional state Department of Transportation office has received numerous calls from angry drivers regarding the situation.
While PennDOT engineers have asked the borough to check its stoplight system to see if it is synchronized properly, McCombs said the problem is the train traffic on the tracks that bisect the borough.
“The major problem is that train traffic has greatly increased,” McCombs said. “Everything is going OK (with the signal lights.)”
Council vice-president Kim Armstrong agreed.
“The train traffic is increasing,” she said.
Buffalo & Pittsburgh Railroad spokesman Michael Williams said that the train traffic has not increased, and the schedule has not changed.
“What has changed is that the trains now stop daily to drop off and pick up railcars for a major new customer facility,” Williams said, “(which is) a process that requires trains to move back and forth through grade crossings as they switch railcars.”
The new customer is the Rex Energy gas processing plant at the Tri County Landfill in Jackson Township, according to borough council President Lee Dyer.
Williams said the train schedule is determined by the customer, and that the situation “should not be having major impacts on vehicular traffic.”
Williams said that trains are not stopping in the Evans City crossing, and that because trains are longer, they are taking “a few seconds” more to pass through the crossing.
About 20 trains a day use the Evans City crossing, Williams said.
Dyer said the problem is not the number of trains, but the trains that come through during rush hours or when the nearby Evans City Elementary/Middle School is dismissing students and buses are leaving.
Les Bauer, owner of the Evans City Beer Distributor, blames the traffic backup on the poor synchronization of the signal lights on Route 68 between Route 528 to the west of town and Jackson Street.
Bauer said the green signal does not allow enough cars to go through, and the timing of the red and green lights at the three intersections are not conducive to efficient traffic flow.
“If they would let traffic start flowing, there wouldn’t be such a backup,” Bauer said.
But he did say trains are sometimes the problem.
“If they send a train through at 4 p.m., it’s a nightmare there,” Bauer said.
Williams did not say Buffalo & Pittsburgh Railroad had any plans to help alleviate the situation.
