Buses stall traffic at crossings

School bus drivers are complaining about impatient drivers at the railroad track crossings.

"I've had people pass the bus on the tracks, and honk and yell at me," said Misty Cadena, one of a half-dozen drivers who met with the newspaper last week to air their concerns. "They've got to realize, we're carrying their children, their future."

State law requires that buses stop at all railroad crossings (except those marked exempt, like the one between town and the base), regardless of whether or not they have students in them.

The buses must stop, display their hazard lights, open the doors to listen for any train whistles, close the doors and then proceed.

Driver Richard Miller estimates it can take one to two minutes to fulfill all the safety requirements required by state law for a railroad crossing stop.

The 12th Street, Jackson Street and 5th Street crossings are all controlled by crossing gates. Although railroad engineers on the trains can close those gates by electronic signal earlier, they are automatically set to go down when the train approaches 1,500 feet from the crossing. The crossing guard is triggered by sensors in the track, and sometimes, if the tracks separate, say in particularly cold weather, the crossing guard goes down anyway, creating "ghost trains."

Typically trains travel 40-60 mph through town, blowing three short blasts and one long blast on their horn as they approach any crossing. With the shoo-fly diversion route being built as part of the underpass construction project trains will be limited to 45 mph in town.

That means if your car stalls on the tracks, you have about 15 seconds to get out of your car and escape the train, which normally would require more than a mile to make an emergency stop.

But a school bus loaded with children would take much longer. Drills held by the local bus company each year show it takes two to four minutes to unload a fully loaded school bus. And that's if none of the students require special assistance. Many of the buses have at least one special needs student aboard.

As a rule of thumb, bus drivers are taught that if they can see the train, even if the crossing guard isn't down, they have to stop, and can only proceed once the train has passed or if they are cleared to cross by a police officer or railroad employee.

"We've got precious cargo aboard," said driver Doreen Carbaugh. "We're going to err on the side of caution."

The school bus drivers know that the extra precautions they take at railroad crossings can back up traffic considerably. In the morning routes, they usually hit the crossings between 7:30 and 8 a.m., a peak time for drivers commuting to work. The afternoon routes hit the crossings around 3:15-3:45 p.m., when traffic is a little lighter, but hardly non-existent. Aware of their effect on traffic, they have taken to splitting up bus routes over the three crossings, in order to avoid having three or four buses in a row stacked up at a single site, such as the heavily trafficked Jackson Street crossing.

"Everybody's frustrated about using the crossings," said police officer Sgt. Rick Viola. "Without an underpass anymore, people have to use the crossings, and they need to remember that trains always have the right of way."

"Every time (a driver behind a school bus) gets frustrated," Carbaugh said, "they need to picture their child in that bus."

But some drivers simply have no patience. Every driver interviewed said they have had cars pass them on the tracks, and Viola said trucks trying to go around the crossing guards at the 12th Street crossing have often hit and broken the crossing guard arms.

"Just because there isn't a crossing guard down doesn't mean a train isn't coming," Viola said. "You need to look every time. And remember that this is a two-line track. Just because one train has passed doesn't mean a second one isn't coming the other way.

"People have to relearn how to use railroad crossings, and that means being cautious and looking both ways before proceeding."

The bus drivers said the crossings aren't the only place they have problems with impatient drivers.

The buses normally travel 5-10 mph slower than the speed limit, because it takes them longer to stop than a passenger car. So some drivers will pass them in areas where passing really isn't allowed.

And a lot of people run the stop signs "or think we'll wait for them to pass when they're approaching us before we put out the stop arm," said driverKhriss Mashburn. "Or, they'll come right to the stop arm before they stop. But we've usually got kids crossing the street there, and they need room to do it."

"When we open those doors," Miller said, "no matter how much we warn them not to, those kids are ready to go. They bolt out the door and some of them run across the street real quick, without looking."

Drivers say they must keep the stop arm extended until all of their unloading children have safely reached a sidewalk, but they've had drivers run their stop arm as soon as they see kids have cleared in front of them.

"The problem," Miller said, "is sometimes they (the students) cross at the other end of the bus. They're not supposed to, but they do."

Usually, the drivers can get the license number of those cars and the drivers said both the city police and the sheriff's office do a good job of tracking those drivers down.

"The only thing we ask," said Masburn, "is just to be courteous and patient. We're just doing our job."