Norfolk Southern officials are looking for solutions after residents of an Atlanta neighborhood complained about trains idling on nearby tracks for too long.
Virginia Frost Osborne, who lives in Ridgedale Park near Buckhead’s Phipps Plaza, said she could hear trains idling from her backyard for 19 days straight.
Trains moved in and out of that location as space opened, said Susan Terpay, a spokeswoman for Norfolk Southern Corp. She said the congestion is caused by volumes of rail traffic through the company’s entire rail network being at “all-time high levels.”
“It’s comparable to rush–hour traffic through Atlanta,” Terpay said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “At some locations, we have had to hold a train in place until there is sufficient track capacity to move it onto the mainline (similar to an exit ramp on an interstate highway.)”
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Terpay said the company tries to keep trains away from residential areas, but doing so has become challenging. And trains can’t be turned off while waiting to move onto the mainline because, she said, they need to maintain critical safety functions such as maintaining air pressure for the brake system.
The issue isn't an isolated incident. In March, Adair Park residents complained about idling trains blocking a crossing sometimes for days. Terpay told Channel 2 Action News at the time that Norfolk "can't predict the schedules when customers need to ship goods, there are times when some crossings are blocked."
While waiting for the trains to move on from Ridgedale Park — which they did late last week — Osborne said she was concerned about issues such as noise and air pollution and property value impacts.
“We are working on some short-term solutions to resolve this issue,” Terpay said. “And (we’re) making changes in our operations to relieve the congestion and improve the flow of traffic locally and across our entire 22- state rail network.”
The tracks near Ridgedale Park are not being used as a regular staging area, she said.
Norfolk Southern owns and operates a network of 19,500 miles of rail lines east of the Mississippi River. The railroad is federally regulated.
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