No matter where you live in the Hudson Valley there is the possibility that you have something happening in your neighborhood that has all the residents asking "What can we do to fix this?" In one Ulster County neighborhood the question has been asked often and even passed along to the Town for a resolution but for now there doesn't seem to be a solutions.

Let me fill in some details. The tracks that travel up the Hudson River on the western side are freight tracks. Daily they carry various cargo north and south along the route that according to what I found on Wikipedia is refer to as the River Subdivision. It runs between Bogota, New Jersey to Ravena, New York. As you can imagine numerous trains use this line on a daily basis.

So what is the complaint from motorists and residents that use this intersection to get to and from work and home? They are forced to wait long periods of time before the train  clears the tracks. In order to avoid it they must reroute themselves farther up State Route 9W and depending on their destination it can takes them miles out of their way.

So Why is this intersection a problem? This happens to be an intersection that bookends a place on the line where northbound trains wait for south bounds to pass and vice versa in order for them to continue on the tracks. Apparently this can happen often throughout the day. As you might suspect there are a few factors that come into play in order for this to happen. Trains have been delayed, Trains are to long for the waiting area or the actual stopping of the train has been miscalculated.

Having waited at this crossing a train is in the process of stopping I have witnessed that  you literally wait for the train to come to a complete crawl before it actually stops. Then you hope that the last car is in sight and will making it thru the crossing. It the case of this train I photographed last night that didn't happen. I actually arrived at the crossing with the train already stopped. After 20 minutes the train pulled forward enough that the last car cleared the intersection and the gate lifted.

I am going to keep digging on this and hopefully get a few answers to why this can't be prevented. If you have information you want to share on this email paty.quyn@townsquaremedia.com.

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