Lordstown rejects CSX site expansion plan over blocked crossing claims

The Lordstown Planning Commission rejected an expansion plan from railroad company CSX for its Lyntz Road site Monday evening, according to Village Council President Robert Bond. The plan, he said, would have nearly doubled the amount of parking spaces for car inventory.

“We’d be naive if we didn't realize, when you double the amount of cars, you're going to increase the truck traffic, which is another problem on posted roads, plus the blocking of railroad tracks blocking the road,” Bond told 21 News in an interview Tuesday. 

Bond said those concerns led the members of the commission present at the meeting to vote unanimously against the project. Blocked crossings from stopped trains — sometimes for up to an hour long — have been an issue in Lordstown for many years, as 21 News has previously reported, and Bond said the village is no closer to a solution than ever. 

“There's been attempts to find solutions to this in the past,” Bond said, but “so far, they have not come to fruition.” 

One such solution could have been flashing lights leading up to the crossings, letting people know when they are blocked, but Bond said the village and CSX weren’t able to find “financial agreement” on how that would be handled. 

Police in Lordstown used to be able to cite trains for blocking the road for more than 5 minutes, until the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that only the federal government can regulate railroad crossings. 

However, there are no current federal statutes or regulations regarding how long trains can block railroad crossings, according to Warren Flatau of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). That leaves it up to CSX to voluntarily work with Lordstown to reduce blocked crossing incidents.

Flatau, the administration's deputy director of public affairs, told 21 News in a statement the FRA “often assists communities and railroads in identifying practicable solutions” to these issues, though it has no regulatory power. The FRA collects publicly-sourced data on blocked crossing incidents, and Flatau urged community members to report any blocked crossings they’ve experienced in the past seven days. 

“If FRA receives enough reports through the Public Blocked Crossing Incident Reporter, we will dispatch an inspector to meet with local officials and the railroad in order to assess local conditions and try to find both short and long-term practicable solutions,” Flatau said. 

In a statement, a spokesperson for CSX told 21 News its Public Safety Coordination Center has fielded just one complaint about blocked traffic in the past year. 

“Our operations team is committed to reducing occurrences that affect drivers or normal traffic flow,” said Austin Staton, CSX's director of media relations. 

“At CSX, safety is our highest priority, and we strive to be a good partner with the city and have provided public officials with direct contacts for local CSX personnel,” he added. “We encourage them to call these contacts if any urgent issues arise.”

Staton also pointed out the blue emergency notification signs at each crossing, which display a phone number where people can report crossing issues. But Bond said those signs aren’t enough, and claimed CSX’s data majorly underestimates the issue. 

“Unless you get out of your car, go over and look at you're not going to really notice it or see it,” Bond said of CSX’s emergency blue signs. “There's been a lot of complaints. If you look on Facebook and different places, you will see people are upset by them, and it needs to be dealt with.”

Bond also raised concerns about emergency services, but Lordstown Police Chief Brent Milhoan told 21 News that hasn’t been as much of a concern in recent years. Milhoan said dispatchers now have access to cameras at the railroad crossings, so they can advise police, fire and medical services to avoid those intersections when there are backups. 

“It’s going to take a longer time for the responding unit to get there, but it’s not a great length of time,” Milhoan said. “It certainly is better than the units responding and getting all the way to the crossing and then discovering that they’re blocked and have to turn around.”