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CSX plans to fix some rough railroad crossingsBy JEAN HELLER © St. Petersburg Times, published January 21, 2001 Jessie and I get tons of mail from you, and we have concluded that no subject is closer to your hearts than ratting out railroad crossings that rattle your teeth. In that regard, we have some news. CSX, the railroad folks, are in town and ready to go to work this week. Some of you are going to be pleased. Some of you are going to be ticked off. They aren't here to repair every crossing in the city that needs it. They aren't even going to repair some of the worst. It is, we are told, a matter of money. They are set to start work on seven crossings. And the winners are: First Avenue N at 14th Street. Ninth Avenue N at 19th Street. Burlington Avenue east of 16th Street. Second Avenue N east of 16th Street. 13th Avenue N at 19th Street. 13th Street S north of First Avenue S. Seventh Avenue N west of 17th Street N. Still under review is the crossing at Central Avenue and 14th Street. Two others that CSX says might be done within the next year are: Fifth Avenue S and 22nd Street. Seventh Avenue S and 28th Street. Those that the city of St. Petersburg really wanted done but for which there is no commitment as yet are: Seventh Avenue S and 31st Street. Third Avenue N and 16th Street. 30th Avenue N and 28th Street. "We really wanted to get that one at Seventh Avenue and 31st Street done," said Angelo Rao, major-domo of St. Petersburg's traffic and parking empire. "I think it is a matter of money. They can do the small ones, but they don't have the resources to do the big ones." Nor are the crossings on the fix list going to get those nice, smooth pads. They are tres expensive. Using them might cut the number of crossings CSX can afford to repair. Instead, at each work site the city's engineering staff will saw-cut the damaged asphalt on either side of the tracks and get rid of it. This will mean complete closures of the streets where the work is going on, but not for more than a few days at any one site, Angelo said. Detour signs will direct you around the disturbances. Then a CSX crew will come in and take up the tracks. Then a temporary asphalt layer goes down, and the roads reopen. Three to five weeks later, another CSX crew will come in and lay new track with a substance called "rail seal" to keep things smooth. Then the crossings get their final layer of asphalt. "It will be fun," Rao said, "to see whether the current tracks or the temporary asphalt is rougher." Don't expect to see work starting at all the crossings at once. The CSX crews will start with the southern-most reconstruction, 13th Street S north of First Avenue S, and work their way north. You can probably hear Jessie, sitting in the back seat, applauding -- but without a lot of enthusiasm. She had hoped everything would be fixed. Side note: We have absolutely no information on the status of any other crossings. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Nothing. This gives us a direct segue into the Eyeball Jiggler of the Week, dears. The badge of dubious merit is hereby awarded to all the railroad crossings CSX isn't going to fix this go around. Drive carefully out there. Given all the hype over the football game coming to Tampa next weekend, it is only fitting that we somehow shoehorn a Super Bowl reference into this column, and here it is: The state roadies have told us there will be no lane closures on the region's interstates next week to ease the way for Super Bowl traffic and related events. The lane closure suspensions will be in effect Monday, Jan. 22, through Monday, Jan. 29. We want everybody to have a good time, but our best advice is, if you don't have somewhere you have to be next week, curl up at home with a good book. Jessie's good friend, Times Homes Editor Judy Stark, passed this along to us, and for some reason, we found it surprising. A joint report by the Surface Transportation Policy Project in Washington, D.C., and the Center for Neighborhood Technology Chicago has rated regions all across the country in terms of what percentage of household income goes to buying, maintaining and operating cars. The St. Petersburg/Clearwater/Tampa region ranks No. 10. In the year that was studied, 1997-1998, we spent an average of $5,864 per household on the wheels that take us to work and recreation. That is an average of 17.8 percent of our income. The highest was the Houston/Galveston, Texas, region at $8,840 per household, or 22.1 percent of total income. The other regions, in order, were Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Miami/Fort Lauderdale, Detroit, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Phoenix, Philadelphia and Kansas City. Why is this, you might very well ask? According to those who did the study, the culprit is urban sprawl, forcing more and more of us to drive greater and greater distances to get where we want to go. There's not much question that this region sprawls, and it's going to get worse. And finally, Dr. Delay's terrible transportation factoid of the week: Speeding is a factor in about one-third of all fatal vehicle crashes, a percentage that has remained consistent from 1993 to 1999. Yikes. I'm going to have to tell Jessie to ease up on the gas. - Dr. Delay can be reached by e-mail at docdelay@sptimes.com, by fax at (727) 893-8675 or by snail mail at 490 First Ave. S, St. Petersburg, FL 33701.
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