The great Southeast Texas train holdup (or don't take you car to town, son)

Something interesting caught my eye on the local The Examiner Web site and I don’t often say that.

How do I hate thee Examiner, “The Independent Voice of Southeast Texas?” Let me count the ways. I start with the premise of the paper and go from there. This article from the Houston Chronicle tells the sordid history both of the area’s only weekly “alternative” newspaper as well as the legal little record sheet called the Southeast Texas Record. The first, The Examiner, was started by a rich plaintiff’s attorney. The latter, started by the ant-trial lawyer U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It gets entertaining around this so-called “Judicial Hellhole” sometimes.

Needless to say an article about the “great train holdup” in Beaumont was enlightening and somewhat informative. When I say “train holdup” I don’t mean a train robbery or heist. I mean the seemingly endless number of railroad cars belonging to BNSF which hold up drivers on a number of Beaumont’s major thoroughfares several times a day.

The drivers — myself in that group — get pissed off. The city of Beaumont gets pissed off. The fire department, police department and probably if if be known FedEx and UPS get pissed off.

The Examiner piece notes that the city is encouraging drivers who get stuck waiting for trains to call local dispatch or 3-1-1 so officials can come down to the tracks and time the train stoppage. City Manager Kyle Hayes, who will undoubtedly have a downtown lake, or pond, named in his honor because of the time and effort he has spent having this big ugly hole dug, says he is going after the train folks.

But there is a slight problem. BNSF says the Port of Beaumont is holding them up thus a chain reaction of sorts happens. Plus, the consequences for stopping traffic for the railroad isn’t much. A ticket for trains not moving at all. And the city ordinance says the train must be in constant motion. No matter that rolling along at a millisecond per hour would still be considered moving.

If you look along the side streets headed off U.S. Hwy. 90 into more affluent western Beaumont you will find several overpasses for the train tracks. In the center city, not so much. There is Interstate 10, College St., Fourth Street. I’m probably leaving one out. However, more traffic flows from downtown over the streets that get blocked more often. The reason is a matter of geography. Just below I-10 and beside First Street is a huge BNSF rail yard. Reaching south of downtown is the Port of Beaumont, which gets more military cargo than any other U.S. port  or perhaps the Solar System. It’s basically a main railhead for Fort Hood in Central Texas and Fort Polk in not too far up in Western Louisiana. So there is a lot of cargo, a lot of train, a lot of immobile cars and a lot of pissed off people not to mention fire and police vehicles which often have to take the long way around.

I’m glad that Mr. Hayes is putting his energies into something other than digging that big hole that’s supposed to draw thousands of tourists. I just don’t think traffic tickets that are just a cheap cost of doing business for BNSF are going to make those rail cars travel on by any faster. Wait, I can hear them now!