PORTLAND, Ore. — Portland is set to receive $500,000 in federal grant money to study possible solutions to blocked rail crossings in the city's central eastside and inner southeast areas, where rail crossing backups are a daily fact of life for commuters.
The money comes from a pot of $570 million in grant funding that that Federal Railroad Administration announced Monday, about $1.5 million of which will go to Oregon for the Southeast Portland study and a grade separation project in Bend.
There are fifteen rail crossings between Southeast Stark Street and Southeast 12th Avenue, some of which are particularly notorious for long delays. MAX trains pass some of these crossings frequently, but at least they do it quickly.
Freight trains are another story.
"Slowing? They're stopping!" Dylan Rivera with the Portland Bureau of Transportation said in February, back when Portland applied for the grant.
Car commuters aren't alone in being frustrated by the situation. PBOT, TriMet and the Oregon Department of Transportation are all well aware of the issues freight trains create.
At times, nearly all of the 15 crossings along the rail line through inner Southeast Portland are blocked. TriMet's new FX-2 Division bus line often has to detour. The I-5 exit ramp to Water Avenue backs up, and local drivers get trapped in a matrix of one-way streets without an easy escape route.
Long train stopping
The freight rail industry is vital to the US economy. America is a laggard when it comes to high-speed passenger rail, but some experts in the field say the United States is the envy of Europe for the efficiency with which goods move across the country on freight rail.
But that efficiency is achieved in part by running extremely long fright trains, and that's where the trouble starts in Southeast Portland. Fright rail operator Union Pacific loads and unloads goods for Oregonians at their Brooklyn Yard facility, less than a mile down the track from the Southeast 12th crossing.
The problem is that modern fright trains are now double or even triple the length of that facility, Rivera explained — easily long enough for one end of a train to wind up parked across one or more crossings while the other end is being unloaded at the yard.
"They’re using a public street crossing, essentially, as part of their warehouse and industrial operations, and there's very little we can do about it," Rivera said, noting that the city has no jurisdiction over the railroad.
Searching for improvements
Southeast Portland is far from the only place in the U.S. plagued by rail crossing delays, and the Biden Administration's 2021 infrastructure package set aside more than half a billion dollars to help cities address the bottlenecks.
Portland applied the grant hoping to spend about $600,000 to study the problem and implement some relatively small-dollar fixes. The city will contribute a 23% match on top of the $500,000 in federal funds, according to Tuesday's announcement, bringing the total funding to just over $600,000 for the study.
Unfortunately, Rivera said in February, the city believes building an overpass at one of the crossings might cost in the tens of millions of dollars, but it's an option that might get a closer look depending on how the study goes
Union Pacific said in an emailed statement in February that it's aware of the challenges long trains present, and the company looks forward to working with the city to find a solution.
I do the Driving Me Crazy feature as a generally -- but not always -- lighthearted take on things that drive people nuts on area roadways. Most of us can relate, and most of these topics are your ideas. What drives you crazy? Post your videos and pictures on my Facebook page. On Twitter. Or if you're just anti-social you can email me cmcginness@kgw.com