In the early hours of a Saturday morning in late August, a young man lying on railroad tracks on the West Side was struck and killed by a train. In September, a Haven for Hope client was injured by a passing train.
Last week, Union Pacific officials worked with Haven for Hope volunteers where two sets of train tracks parallel the nonprofit’s Westside campus to stencil bright-yellow warnings on the roadway near crossings and raise awareness about the dangers posed by passing trains.
“We’ve worked with Union Pacific since we opened in 2010, obviously because of the proximity of the track and our campus,” said Terri Behling, director of communications at Haven for Hope, which works with homeless clients to provide transitional housing and other services for as many as 1,500 to 1,600 people a day.
“While there is a railroad crossing and flashing lights … sometimes people just try to get across before the train comes, and we want to create that awareness during railroad safety week that you really do need to wait and be patient and cross safely.”
Last year, Texas had the second highest number of railway trespassing deaths and injuries in the United States, according to rail safety education nonprofit Operation Lifesaver.
The state also leads the nation in railway collisions, with 247 last year resulting in 17 deaths. Texas’ more than 10,000 miles of rail is the most in the U.S., according to the Association of American Railroads.
Most deaths at railroad crossings occur due to collisions and trespassing on the tracks — a preventable tragedy, according to information provided by Union Pacific, one of the two main railroad operators in Bexar County.
More than 95% of all rail-related deaths involve drivers going through a railroad crossing or a person on the tracks, according to the Federal Railroad Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
In 2021, there were 235 crossing fatalities and 669 crossing injuries in the United States. Nationwide, there’s a train accident every few seconds, said Buck Russel, public safety manager for Union Pacific.
Of the 14,009 railroad crossings in the state of Texas, 287 are in Bexar County. Of those, 231 are public and 56 are private crossings.
Omaha-based Union Pacific operates more than 6,000 miles of rail across the state of Texas and employs over 5,300 people, according to a company fact sheet. The rail company runs about 100 trains a day through Bexar County and transports mostly retail products, plastics, stone and gravel, industrial chemicals and auto parts.
The other key railroad operator in the state is Forth Worth-based Burlington Northern Santa Fe, which operates almost 5,000 miles of rail in Texas.
Trains running on the nation’s 140,000 route miles of rail lines transport 29% of all long-distance freight, making it critical to the global supply chain.
A planned worker strike that threatened to upend that system was averted on Sept. 15 when freight rail companies reached a tentative agreement with the workers’ unions.
If ratified, the agreement would give railroad workers a 24% wage increase between 2020 and 2024 and the right to take unpaid time off to attend medical appointments without penalty. The companies also promised to give workers an additional day off.
In Texas, the rail system is not regulated by the Railroad Commission of Texas, which was created in 1891 for that purpose. In 2005, authority over railroads in the state was transferred to the Texas Department of Transportation.
