NEW WINDSOR – After waiting over a year for the CSX rail company to repair railroad crossings in the Town of New Windsor, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) announced Monday that he will no longer be an ally to them in Washington if they do not commit to long-term fixes for their crossings.
The two crossings in question, one at the intersection of Temple Hill Road and Route 300, and the other at Union Avenue and Erie Avenue, were visited by CSX to make minute repairs in 2013, with other small repairs since then to the crossings.
According to Schumer and the Town of New Windsor, CSX met with town officials again in April of this year, committing to making more substantial upgrades soon; however, those upgrades have yet to be made.
Schumer said he has been happy to help CSX in the past, as they are a major company operating in New York and the Hudson Valley, but he said he knows they have been doing well financially with increased oil transportation and a large break from the new tax law. With that, he said, safety of the residents in which they operate cannot, and should not, be compromised.
“They’re doing great. We don’t begrudge our big companies and we want them to do just fine, but we want them to live up to their responsibilities and this is their responsibility. CSX is the owner of the property,” said Schumer. “Simply put, CSX has had more than enough time to get this done. The accident count gets higher and higher and higher. We appreciate that CSX is willing to talk to us – good, but that’s not good enough.”
New Windsor Police Chief Robert Doss said the crossings have accounted for numerous minor accidents, 25 over the last five years, according to the police department, and they have exhausted all avenues of communication with CSX at this point.
“This has been an ongoing problem for many, many years. We’re looking for the problem to be solved,” said Doss. “We’ve done the meetings; we’ve done the communication –the phone calls, the emails, the legal letters to CSX. We’re looking for action at this point.”
A proposed solution is to have CSX implement concrete crossways, which
have shown to significantly reduce damage to vehicles and improve safety
in general.
There is no definitive plan for this as of yet, if CSX will agree, how long before it is completed and how much it will cost.
Schumer estimates that this solution would cost in the low-hundreds of thousands of dollars to build, but maintains that is merely the cost CSX will have to incur if they seek an ally in him anymore.
