KTRK-13 reports that Mayor White and other local officials are looking at ways to solve congestion caused by freight trains within the city:
Railroad crossings tie up traffic all over the city. Mayor Bill White and other city, county and state officials are trying to come up with a plan that would help clear the congestion.
They want to accommodate more freight cargo, but not inconvenience drivers. As you’d imagine, there’s no easy, cheap solution. The mayor hopes funds from the federal government will help.
There are more than 700 crossings in the Houston area that back up traffic as the trains make their way through town. Mayor White wants a plan in place by March to find money to pay for a new rail traffic system.
This is a problem that I’ve been blogging about for a while now. When I first moved to Houston in 1995, it was stunning to me that freight rail traffic literally blocked so many important thoroughfares all through the day. Since then, the problem has not been addressed.
Ultimately, it may be difficult to find the financial resources to build the sorts of overpasses and underpasses we need to free Houston drivers from these freight train bottlenecks, but we won’t know that until we recognize the problem and get to work on it. Kudos to Mayor White for getting us moving in that direction.
