Road Warrior

It's time for the holiday train again - but it still won't stop

Canadian Pacific Railway's holiday trains are running again, and once again one of the two trains will pass through a slice of southeast Michigan and northwest Ohio. But as in the past, it won't stop, and seeing it can require some patience.

If you have the time and the kids can stay up late, it could be worth it.

The two trains tour the CP system, making stops in towns along the way -- especially terminals where CP bases employees. One train takes a southerly route that includes a stop tonight in Windsor, Ont., before it crosses the border and goes to Illinois to start covering CP routes there and in neighboring states in the upper Midwest like Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota. During the stops, musicians on board play a half-hour show while donations are collected for local food banks.

While CP freight trains use Norfolk Southern tracks to travel between Detroit and Chicago, it has no tracks or terminals of its own in Michigan or Ohio where the holiday train could stop for a show, so it just rolls right through. But with lighted, animated Christmas decorations all over its engine and 14 cars, it's still a sight to see.

The route it uses passes through Milan, Britton, Adrian, and North Morenci, Mich., and Alvordton, Montpelier, and Blakeslee, Ohio. From the Toledo area, the easiest place to go to see it is Milan, right off U.S. 23. Just exit at Plank Road and head west toward town and the first tracks you cross is where it will go.

The challenge: because there are no scheduled stops in the area, the train is not on a hard schedule, and there's also an uncertainty factor introduced by its need to clear Customs in Detroit before continuing west after its show this evening in Windsor. But in past years, the train has shown up in Milan, which by rail is about 35 miles west of Detroit, around 9 p.m. And if you see train buffs around with cameras when you get there, you can be fairly confident you haven't missed it. In fact, they'll probably be able to give you a fresh estimate for when it will show up.

It's virtually certain to be going much faster than it was when it crossed the Grand River at Cambridge, Ont., just after sunset Monday:

 

Coal isn't going away -- and Norfolk Southern probably isn't, either

One of the common questions running through the crowd at Monday night’s meeting about the proposed Norfolk Southern staging yard near Swanton was, “Will we get to vote on this?”

The very simple answer: No.

Blame the U.S. Constitution, which among other things assigns regulation of interstate commerce to the federal government. That pretty much exempts railroads, whose commerce is most definitely interstate, from local zoning laws. Even local or state attempts to set speed limits for trains or punish the railroads for blocking street crossings for extended periods have been on shaky legal ground at best.

Federal regulations give railroads broad latitude to decide where they need to build switching yards, engine terminals, and other facilities to support their operations. And most of the time, when something of that nature is built, somebody nearby is going to be unhappy about it. Allowing a local government to say, “Not in our backyard” would often make such projects impossible, with the regulatory can being kicked down the tracks until and if a receptive community can be found.

Swanton Yard opponents’ strongest recourse would appear to be with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, which must approve Norfolk Southern’s request to close the Scott Road grade crossing in the middle of the yard. But if Swanton Township thwarts that closing, that won’t necessarily block the project. NS could decide simply to tolerate having a road across a right-of-way it expects to widen from three tracks to 10.

Yes, doing that would require NS to break the trains in half to clear Scott Road while they’re parked there, but during the time trains are arriving, being uncoupled, then put back together, testing their air brakes, and departing, plus any time cars are being switched out or in because of repair needs, that road will be blocked. Air-brake tests sometimes take 30 minutes to complete. Sure sounds like that road, if it stays, will be blocked more often than not -- perhaps often enough that first responders and school buses would avoid it anyway.

Another common theme at Monday’s meeting was questioning whether NS really would need to use the proposed yard for staging coal trains, its stated purpose, for the long haul. While it is true that many coal-fired power plants are closing, not all of them are, and the biggest one in the area -- and second biggest in the United States -- will be one of the survivors.

Detroit Edison recently finished a $2 billion project to upgrade its 42-year-old, 3,300 megawatt Monroe plant to meet current air-quality standards. While NS won’t publicly acknowledge it, one of the most poorly kept secrets about the Swanton Yard project is that the customer whose coal traffic the yard would support is Detroit Edison. NS says it expects to handle two to three trainloads of coal through the yard, in 130-car unit trains that originate in Wyoming. All of those details match Detroit Edison’s shipment profile -- and frankly, nobody else in the Toledo area is receiving steam coal by rail any more now that Consumers Energy’s Whiting plant in Erie, Mich., and the coal units at Toledo Edison’s Bayshore plant have shut down.

It’s conceivable that some of the coal may initially go to DTE plants in Trenton and River Rouge, Mich. that are expected to close by 2023, but the Monroe plant is likely to be around for a long, long time, and therefore NS is likely to use Swanton Yard for Detroit Edison’s business for a long time too.

Up until the end of 2014, Detroit Edison coal ran through Swanton -- and sometimes got parked on the existing mainline siding there -- on a daily basis. That year, CSX and Canadian National scooped the Detroit Edison traffic away from Norfolk Southern, and apparently one of their advantages was the ability to stage the coal trains in CN’s Lang Yard along I-75 in North Toledo, whereas NS had been stashing trains not yet wanted at the power plants wherever it could find 7,000 feet of unoccupied track. In the early 2000s it had built two train-length staging tracks in central Toledo where it often stored the coal trains, but those tracks came to be used for staging other kinds of trains, such as coke bound for Detroit-area steel mills and auto-carrier cars headed to Motor City assembly plants.

Norfolk Southern apparently has won the DTE contract back, and now says it needs to build its seven-track yard in Swanton -- four double-ended tracks for staging trains, plus three stub tracks for coal car storage and repair -- to provide more flexibility for its operations and serve its officially unnamed customer more effectively. And thanks to the U.S. Constitution’s Interstate Commerce clause, it has a high likelihood of following through.

Concrete here, blacktop there. Why the difference?

A reader recently asked me why I-75 is being rebuilt with concrete pavement from about State Rt. 582 north to just south of the I-475 split near Perrysburg, while the rest of the ongoing widening and reconstruction down to the north side of Findlay is using asphalt-mix pavement.

The Ohio Department of Transportation explained that for the northernmost I-75 contract, bidders were allowed to quote prices for both concrete and asphalt, but for the sections farther south, asphalt was specified because of soil acidity. Acid soils compromise reinforced concrete’s longevity, state engineers said.

In situations where either concrete or asphalt is suitable, ODOT considers the life-cycle cost of the two materials to be equivalent. While concrete is more durable than asphalt, it’s also more expensive to build. Asphalt, meanwhile, can be maintained by grinding off the top few inches and paving a new surface, a repair method that doesn’t work with concrete.

And while reporting on the progress of ODOT’s interchange reconstruction at Central Avenue and I-475 in Sylvania last week, I noticed that asphalt was used to build the new Central alignment but concrete was used for the new freeway ramps.

Project officials told me that’s because ODOT now specifies concrete for all interchange ramps. Ramps have more concentrated traffic and are curvier than mainline roadways, they said, so concrete’s durability is a bigger advantage for them.

A co-worker, meanwhile, asked why trucks are directed to use the left lane in some of the I-75 work zones. That answer I didn’t need to get from ODOT.

In work zones where traffic is crossed over to one half of the freeway and the shoulders are used as travel lanes, truckers are instructed to use the lane or lanes that don’t include part of the shoulder. Highway shoulders are not always built to the same design standards as travel lanes are, and heavy truck traffic breaks their pavement down.

Temporary ramps at Central Avenue nearly done

Paving crews were out this morning putting what appear to be the finishing touches on the temporary ramps at Central Avenue that will support the upcoming detour on northbound I-75 at I-280. Traffic will be sent south on I-280 to Central, up and over the Central bridge, and back north on I-280 to get back to I-75. ODOT currently plans to set up the detour starting Friday, and right now the weather forecast is very supportive of that schedule, with no rain in the picture except for a chance of showers Tuesday.

For those who haven't read previous coverage, the purpose of this detour will be to run northbound I-75 around two bridges at the I-280 junction that need to be replaced as part of ongoing I-75 reconstruction and widening. ODOT planned to do this 'under traffic' but swampy soil conditions, wetter than expected, forced it to change its plan, and officials decided tearing the bridges down all at once and replacing them in one shot was the only way to keep the overall project on schedule for completion next year.

This detour is not exceptionally long, but the 25-mph curves on the temporary ramps are going to cause congestion. I definitely recommend that motorists traveling through Toledo on northbound I-75 take State Rt. 795 east to northbound I-280, especially during peak hours when northbound I-75 is already jammed up between the Maumee River and I-475 because of other construction. Local motorists in Toledo should avoid northbound I-75 south of I-280, too; use local streets to reach northbound I-75 either via I-280 or at Alexis Road.

So, your airline has diverted you to another airport?

It’s well known that the airlines vehemently deny any obligation toward passengers’ expenses should flights be delayed or canceled because of bad weather. Get stuck for a day or two in East Nowhere because of a fogged-in or snowed-in airport and you can expect to pay for your own lodging, food, and local transportation costs.

What I’ve learned from a recent email exchange with Carlos Bada, a Williamsburg, Va., traveler who found himself unexpectedly in Toledo last month during an air trip from Richmond, Va., to Toronto, is that this can even apply if an airline’s flight is diverted to a city not on your itinerary.

Mr. Bada’s Dec. 6 trip involved flights from Richmond to Detroit and then Detroit to Toronto. Because of fog in Detroit, however, his first leg was diverted to Toledo Express Airport where, he wrote, the three dozen or so passengers were pointed toward the rental-car counters and told to find their own way to Detroit.

Mr. Bada praised the rental-car agencies at Toledo Express. “They were the biggest help of all. They were awesome,” he wrote. “They located large vans that carried 12 people and we all headed over. Some took cabs, some took these vans.”

He was much less impressed with Delta.

“The issue I have is that they landed a plane in Toledo and did not offer any help other than a 1-800 number which was incorrect,” Mr. Bada wrote. “They did not offer to get people back to Detroit via bus or some other option. Delta has other options but chose the worst one for the passengers. One man had a broken back and was epileptic. How does he drive to Detroit? Luckily other passengers offered a ride. He rode in the van I rode in.”

Once they got to Detroit, Mr. Bada and the others made their own hotel arrangements.

Mr. Bada said he called Delta during the ride north to reschedule his connecting flight and, after being initially told he would have to buy a new ticket for the Detroit-Toronto leg, was booked onto the first flight the next morning.

Mr. Bada said he contacted Delta again the next day and, “after about 30 minutes of explaining how awful their decision was,” the airline agreed to reimburse him for food and lodging. Other passengers arranged varying degrees of reimbursement, he said.

I contacted the U.S. Department of Transportation to find out what rules apply to weather-related flight diversions. They said Delta broke no laws, but they were interested in communicating with Mr. Bada.

I also contacted Delta several times, with no response as of Friday.

Meanwhile, Steve Arnold, airport manager at Toledo Express, said Delta diverts flights to Toledo several times per year because of weather issues, and sometimes the airline does send staff down from Detroit to handle the logistics.

These communications were fresh in my mind when I struck up a conversation with a fellow passenger on an American Eagle flight from Toledo to Chicago three weeks ago. This lady, a Toledo-area native, now lives in California and usually returns to visit relatives during the holidays, and she had her own story to tell from a few years back.

She was flying into Toledo from Chicago one Christmas Eve when the weather went sour at Express, and so that American Eagle flight was diverted to Fort Wayne, where it arrived shortly after midnight. Unlike Mr. Bada’s experience, its passengers weren’t directed to the rental-car counters, because at that hour those counters were unstaffed. As far as she could recall, there was nobody in the Fort Wayne airport at all except for security personnel.

Those passengers’ choices, she recounted, were to find their own ways to Toledo -- somehow -- or get back onto the airplane and fly back to Chicago, and be rebooked on a later flight. Whenever that might be.

Remember, this was Christmas Eve -- well, actually early Christmas morning at this point.

Fortunately, she said, somebody on the flight knew somebody in Toledo who could arrange for several limo buses to drive to Fort Wayne and pick them all up. It cost hundreds of dollars, but it got done.

My seat-mate said she did not try to get reimbursement from the airline. In situations like these, that’s often the best one can often hope for if you get dropped off in Toledo on your way to Detroit -- or in Fort Wayne on your way to Toledo.

Hope that it happens during hours when there’s alternative transportation available, or you may be stuck there on Christmas.

That, it seems, is the reality of air travel these days.

A No Parking Sign Stopped This Train in Perrysburg

CSX Transportation ran a special train Wednesday to haul four super-sized refinery components from the Port of Toledo to the Husky refinery in Lima, Ohio. The loads were so wide that nothing could pass the train on any neighboring track, and it also had to stop frequently to make sure it didn’t hit any unexpected obstacles, even though such trains’ routes are always planned by the railroad’s clearance bureau to make sure it will fit.

One unexpected stop was in downtown Perrysburg, where the train’s crew encountered a No Parking sign along West Third Street that was so close to the track that it was at risk of slapping the loads’ sides. The train blocked Louisiana Avenue, Perrysburg’s main commercial street as well as being part of U.S. 20, for close to 20 minutes while the train’s crew and a supervisor escorting in a pickup truck rigged a solution. They wrapped a strap around the signpost and secured the other end to the pickup’s towing hitch or bumper.

Because of its weight -- at least two of the loads exceeded 200 tons -- the train also had to proceed with extra caution over several culverts and small bridges. It was a long, slow trip to Lima but one that, despite the Perrysburg sign crisis, was completed before sunset as required.

E-ZPass now available at supermarkets in NE Ohio, but not yet here

The Ohio Turnpike has put on a big marketing blitz since announcing a partnership last week with Giant Eagle supermarkets to offer E-ZPass toll tags in their stores.

Unfortunately for northwest Ohio residents, Giant Eagle pulled out of the Toledo market a little more than 14 months ago, so the only place to obtain a toll tag in this part of the state remains at a Turnpike service plaza or by mail.

Ohio Turnpike spokesman Brian Newbacher assured me the Turnpike is "working on finding an appropriate retailer" for the Toledo area that can complement their deal with Giant Eagle, which no longer has any stores west of Lorain County.

Of course, if you order by mail, you have the option to obtain E-ZPass from another state's toll authority that charges lower fees than the Ohio Turnpike does. Its fees are among the highest charged by agencies spanning from Illinois to Virginia to Maine for the ability to pay tolls electronically on the E-ZPass system. I still carry an Illinois "I-Pass," which has no monthly fee at all.

But if you opt for the home team, E-ZPass is still a bargain if you use it for even just a few Turnpike trips, because toll rates are significantly lower in most areas for electronic payment than they are for paying with cash or, where available, credit card. Plus you usually get right through the toll plaza, instead of having to wait for the driver(s) in front of you dig for change.

The only exceptions are if you get stuck behind someone who, lacking E-ZPass, inexplicably enters the E-ZPass Only lane -- that's annoying as heck -- or the somewhat rarer instances when the toll tag doesn't scan or there is no dedicated E-ZPass Only lane. Just last week I came back from a trip to Indiana and pulled in and nothing happened. I gave my I-Pass tag a rap with my knuckle and the gate sprang up, as if I were Fonzie hitting the jukebox at Arnold's.

Why ODOT closed the ProMedica ramp

Closing the ProMedica Parkway entrance to eastbound I-475 presumably inconveniences thousands of people who live in nearby neighborhoods, not to mention the detour it forces for anyone headed back to I-75 after visiting nearby ProMedica Toledo Hospital.

But if you want to see why the Ohio Department of Transportation shut the ramp down until further notice, just look at this edited video clip from one of their nearby traffic-observation cameras, then compare it with an after version.

The footage was shot during rush hours, when traffic trying to get to the northbound I-75 entrance ramp backs up in the left lane of eastbound I-475 -- backups that became significantly worse when ODOT temporarily made the ramp traffic merge into I-75 instead of giving it a continuing lane north of the two freeways’ junction.

That merge is going to be there for a while, but once the I-75 reconstruction and widening project is finished, the ramp from eastbound I-475 to northbound I-75 will have two lanes instead of one, and the chronic backups approaching the junction should go away.

And as the first video shows, traffic behavior around the backup was a big problem. It actually had been troublesome for decades leading up to this project, with some motorists lining up in the left lane and others, either deliberately or naively, scooting east in the center line, then slowing down to try to cut into the left-lane line.

Providing two-lane ramps for all movements in the I-75/I-475 junction is the main reason ODOT is spending $200 million to upgrade that interchange and the stretches of freeway leading into it. Widening those ramps pretty much forced the state into also widening I-75 between I-475 and I-280 from four lanes to six, too; while four lanes was barely adequate under the old interchange layout, it promised to be a bottleneck once the ramps -- especially the northbound entrance -- were widened.

That’s why the second lane didn’t open right away on the ramp from eastbound I-475 to northbound I-75 when it was rebuilt a couple of years ago, even though room was provided for it.

ODOT says they’ll take a look at reopening the ProMedica entrance next year, when I-75 reconstruction south of the I-475 junction is finished. But based on the video, I expect the ramp to stay closed until the traffic backups associated with the work north of I-475 go away, and that’s probably not going to happen until mid-2018.

A detour gets detoured - really!

Among popular road-construction rants is the chestnut that [insert state name here] is “where the detours have detours.” It’s actually happening in East Toledo now because of emergency sewer work.

Overhead construction on the Anthony Wayne Bridge overhaul project closed Miami Street this morning, and the Ohio Department of Transportation’s detour used Fassett and Oak streets.

Little problem: Oak is now closed just north of Woodville because of a sewer collapse between there and Greenwood Avenue.

The east side’s next-closest major north-south street is East Broadway, which by urban standards isn’t exactly close by.

The detour for northbound Oak -- and, by extension, Miami -- is Woodville to Navarre Avenue to East Broadway, then Starr Avenue and Main Street back to the riverfront. The southbound detour is First Street to Main, Starr, and East Broadway, then back west on Stillman and Fassett streets.

Remember, left turns are not allowed from southbound Front Street to eastbound Main. My advice on this, though, would be to take Front out to East Broadway rather than using Main and Starr to get to that street.

Even better, if you’re using Miami to get to or from I-75: just avoid East Toledo altogether. Stay on the downtown Toledo side of the Maumee to get to southbound I-75, or take I-280 south to State Rt. 795 or the Ohio Turnpike if that fits your trip.

Northbound is trickier because of the afternoon backups on northbound I-75 approaching the Dorr-475 construction zone, which have made Miami part of a popular alternative route using the Martin Luther King, Jr. Bridge to get downtown. For that, you may want to turn right from Miami at Oakdale, then left on East Broadway to continue north either to Starr or all the way to Front.

The city currently estimates Oak’s reopening for Friday, but these sewer repairs have a nasty habit of taking longer than expected to finish, and this week’s rainy weather forecast doesn’t offer any encouragement.
Miami is scheduled to stay closed through June. It’s a fairly busy route for trucks traveling between I-75 and the Port of Toledo, so expect to see that traffic using the detour streets. Some of the alternatives I have suggested here are not suitable for large vehicles. Port truckers should definitely consider the I-280/State Rt. 795 alternative around this mess.

Wales Road's gain is Lemoyne Road's loss

The 2013 openings of two new Wales Road bridges in place of three busy, and sometimes blocked, railroad crossings have certainly reduced train-related delays for motorists using Northwood’s main east-west thoroughfare. But there always seems to be a trade-off, and in this case, the new bridge over the Norfolk Southern tracks has directly led to the nearby crossing at Lemoyne Road being blocked more often.

At about the same time as the Ohio Department of Transportation was putting up the beams for that new structure, Norfolk Southern was putting up new signals for the “Vickers Crossing” junction as part of a broader, on-going signal modernization program along its entire line between Cleveland and Chicago.

While the old signals for westbound trains entering Vickers were between the former grade crossings at Wales and Drouillard roads, however, the new signals are just east of the new Wales bridge, or roughly a quarter mile closer to Lemoyne. When they were placed in service last August, that meant that any westbound train getting a red light at Vickers needed to stop a quarter mile farther east than it used to.

While long trains sometimes blocked Lemoyne even with the old signals, having a quarter mile less space to work with means trains that much shorter now also block the crossing while waiting for a better signal.

It also means that many more trains that get parked in the siding track along the two main-line tracks through that area are too big to fit, so their crews must uncouple cars to make a break at Lemoyne.

Assuming compliance with the “cut-crossing” requirement -- which sometimes doesn’t happen if a crew parks its train just as the 12-hour federal limit on its working time expires -- an uncoupled train later has to be coupled back together. Doing that and re-testing its air brakes can take half an hour or more, time during which Lemoyne is blocked.

And why was the signal moved a quarter mile closer to Lemoyne Road? Because of the new bridge, which the railroad determined to impair the old signal location’s visibility to train crews.

At the very least, Norfolk Southern could have placed the west-end signal for the siding track at the former Wales crossing on a ground-mounted pole, because trains rarely just roll through that siding and go out the far end without stopping. That would have reduced the number of parked trains needing to cut Lemoyne -- a time-saver for the railroad as well as a reduced inconvenience for drivers.

But either nobody thought of that, or it was ruled out because it would have cost a bit more money to put the siding’s signal up at a different spot than the signals for the main line.

What to do? Well, Northwood police could probably go out and write tickets to trains that block the crossing longer than five minutes, but that rarely has much effect on railroad operations. And if a train really is only going to wait, say, 10 minutes at a Vickers red signal, it’s counterproductive to demand that it cut the Lemoyne crossing, because by the time it’s broken apart and put back together again, a lot more than 10 minutes of blockage will elapse.

So the best suggestion I have to offer is to avoid using Lemoyne Road as a through route between Woodville and Walbridge roads. If necessary, use I-280 instead, or just take Pemberville Road if that’s a convenient alternative.