All across the county, vehicles have collided with or been hit by trains, causing injuries, property damage and in at least one case, death.
In March 2019, 20 year-old Shauna Brooklynn Synesael died when the car she was driving was hit by a train at the Tracy Road railroad crossing in New Whiteland.
Three vehicles were involved in accidents with trains in a 12-hour time span in 2018 in Greenwood. A train struck a gasoline tanker in April 2019 on Earlywood Drive in Franklin. No one was injured, but the crash blocked traffic for hours.
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Local city, town and county officials are on a mission to update nearly every railroad crossing in the county to include crossing arms and flashing lights that would conclude a years-long effort to keep motorists safe by clearly warning them when a train is on its way. City and town officials have long argued that the upgrades were needed after faster trains began to roll through the county more frequently in recent years.
A few crossings that are currently open in the county are slated to close and will not be part of the planned upgrades, said Mark Richards, Franklin’s city engineer.
Franklin and Whiteland have entered into an interlocal agreement with Johnson County to update crossings in each of those communities. Greenwood is also part of the agreement, but the city council still needs to OK it in February.
The agreement for the Johnson County Rail Corridor Safety Improvement project aligns the communities so they are eligible for a federal grant from the Highway Safety Improvement Program, which is slated to pay 90% of the cost.
Grant money will cover about $3.4 million, while communities are paying $348,453.51 collectively, or 10% of the total cost, according to the agreement.
Franklin is giving just under $135,000; Greenwood would kick in just under $91,000; Whiteland is paying about $62,000 and the county is pitching in about $60,000. What each entity pays is based on how many crossings in those communities are getting upgrades.
City and town officials have been working to make railroad crossings safer for years and have had discussions about pushing railroad companies to pay for further safety upgrades.
Construction could start later this year or in 2021, Johnson County Highway Director Luke Mastin has said.
In 2017, railroad companies made upgrades to the tracks in Johnson County, with tracks running on a north-south corridor and affecting nearly every community in the county. The upgrades that were made allowed the trains that run through the county to go faster.
A report issued in late 2014 by the federal Office of Environmental Analysis determined the Louisville and Indiana Railroad, which is the Louisville based company that owns the railroads in the county, wouldn’t be required to make any crossing improvements, install noise barriers or put up fencing along the 106-mile rail line between Indianapolis and Kentucky, which affects Johnson County communities. The federal office reviewed information about the proposed project to bring more and faster trains to the railroad line, and studied possible environmental impacts from the increase in train traffic, according to newspaper archives.
The rail upgrade allowed freight company CSX Corp. to run an additional 10 or more trains a day on the line, with more cars, more weight and at speeds up to 49 mph. The line runs east of U.S. 31 in Johnson County and through Greenwood, Whiteland, Franklin and Edinburgh.
City and town officials at the time of the ruling wrote a letter asking why railroad companies shouldn’t be responsible for the safety upgrades. They also sent the letter to U.S. senators and representatives, the governor, the lieutenant governor and the Indiana Department of Transportation, Indianapolis and Columbus metropolitan planning organizations and an administrator with the Surface Transportation Board, newspaper archives said.
Now the federal grant is allowing the cities and towns to make the upgrades on their own at a fraction of the cost by combining each of the communities into one grant application that was spearheaded by county officials, Richards said.
The effort outlined in the interlocal agreement will make sure that most of the railroad crossings in the county have crossing arms and flashing lights to warn motorists when a train is approaching.
“Essentially, this is every crossing within (the) Whiteland, Greenwood, Franklin and Johnson County jurisdictions,” he said.
Part of the push to upgrade the crossings comes from the number of accidents that have involved trains and motorists.
A Greenwood woman died in New Whiteland last year when the car she was driving was hit by a train. That crossing is on the list as part of Whiteland’s portion of the agreement. But, residents from multiple communities use the crossing, and Norm Gabehart, Whiteland’s town manager, wants to make sure everyone stays safe, he said.
No other accidents involving trains have occurred in Whiteland. The fatality was enough, Gabehart said.
“That was enough, I was there that night,” he said. “When you are out at something like that, it breaks your heart.”
Keeping the public safe is a large part of the town’s priority with the vast majority of the town’s budget going toward public safety initiatives, Gabehart said.
Every community that is participating in the interlocal agreement have had accidents involving trains, which has made the push to get the crossings upgraded more pressing.
The federal grant makes it possible.
The grant will save the City of Franklin alone about $1.4 million for the upgrades, Franklin Mayor Steve Barnett said.
“There is a need for this. We all know that we need to do this,” he said.
Currently, eight or nine trains run through Franklin every day, but that number is slowly increasing. The railroad’s goal is to increase the trains to 17 or 18 a day once the railroad crossings are updated, Richards said.
Once the crossings are improved, Franklin officials plan to seek designation as a train quiet zone, which would prohibit train conductors from operating the horns at certain times of the day.
The idea is that the horns would not be needed if every crossing had safety measures such as crossing arms and lights.
Getting the designation will take some time and can only be done after the safety upgrades are complete, Richards said.
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Here is a look at the railroad crossings that will be getting safety updates in local communities.
Franklin
- Lynhurst Avenue
- Cincinnati Street
- King Street
- E. Monroe Street
- Branigin Boulevard
Greenwood
- N. Meridian Street
- E. Broadway Street
- Main Street
- E. County Road 700N., Pushville Road
Johnson County
- E. County Road 250S.
- E. County Road 300S.
Whiteland
- Tracy Road
- Walnut Street
- Main Street
- Paul Hand Boulevard
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