City officials are working with the Genesee and Wyoming Railroad to smooth out some rough railroad crossings at 10th Avenue and 14th Avenue North.
While the crossings had not been maintained in some time, at least some of the problem is apparently due to miscommunication between the city and the railroad over the past year or so.
The rail line that runs along Railroad Street is owned by the Columbus and Greenville Railroad, which is in turn owned by the Genesee and Wyoming Railroad.
Ward 5 Councilman Stephen Jones said that he has been getting complaints from residents around Railroad Street about the crossing at 10th Avenue.
“The crossing at 10th Avenue has been bad for years,” he said. “As a Realtor, I ride the roads a lot, and that’s probably the worst one in Columbus. People are calling me to say it messes up their tires.”
Jones said the crossing is rough, and there are big holes between the rails that drivers have to swerve around.
“They put gravel in the holes to try to patch it up, but when it rains hard a lot of that washes away,” he said. “It looks like they’ve put some down in the last few days, but with this rain it’s not going to last long.”
Jones said the crossing at Seventh Avenue was fixed a year or so ago, and he wants the 10th Avenue and 14th Avenue crossings brought up to the same standard.
“I want them to make it a safe crossing, like they did at Seventh Avenue,” he said. “The city has put in the effort to get our roads up, and I just want them to do the same thing.”
The crossings on Railroad Street look especially bad now that 14th Avenue has been paved, Jones said, and it’s up to the railroad to fix it because the city legally may not work on its right-of-way.
City Engineer Kevin Stafford said that contacted the general manager at G&W on Tuesday and learned that the city had been addressing its complaints to someone who is no longer with the company.
“We had talked to (then-General Manager Blake Loper) about the Seventh Avenue crossing in April or so of last year, and within a few weeks it had been fixed,” Stafford said. “Later we contacted him about 10th Avenue and 14th Avenue, and it was crickets. People in the neighborhood were starting to complain that they were being ignored, and a couple of weeks ago I tried to contact (Loper) again.”
Stafford said he visited the C&G office in person Monday and learned that Loper was no longer with the company. The locals put him in contact with the current G&W general manager, CJ Studsill.
“They told us there had been lots of turnover in the past year with GMs,” Stafford said. “You would think they would have forwarded (emails and phone calls) so there would be no gap in communication.”
Studsill, who has been general manager for about six months, said he had talked to city officials Tuesday morning and was working on the problem.
“We will have someone in town to look at those crossings this week,” Studsill said. “We will get a short term fix as quick as we can and we will have a plan to fix it by the end of this week.”
Studsill said the short-term fix will likely involve patching the holes with cold mix, which “won’t last a long time, but will last long enough for us to get asphalt on it.”
Part of the problem is that the railroad workers often don’t get a street-level view of the crossings, Studsill said.
“We don’t have a way to see potholes easily, because we are riding the rails and don’t cross the tracks,” he said. “(Train engineers) probably wouldn’t notice if there were potholes.”
Studsill said the railroad will get the crossings at 10th Avenue and 14th Avenue “safe to pass over and we’ll also look at improving signage, and then we’ll come up with a long term plan to fix them. We want to be good neighbors. We know we work where you live.”
The railroad has a customer service line for complaints, he said. Members of the public can call 1-800-757-7387 to let them know about trouble at crossings or along the lines.
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