HOLLAND, MI (WHTC-AM/FM) – Can the squeaky wheel get the grease at a rough railroad crossing in downtown Holland?
A caller to “WHTC Talk of the Town” brought up the obvious to Holland Mayor Nancy DeBoer last week: “We live on the North Side, and when we come in across the (Macatawa) River, you cross these railroad tracks and they’re a mess, especially the one where you have to turn right onto 7th Street. They’re awful; our cars are going to get wrecked with that.”
The caller was referencing to a single track crossing of Pine Avenue at 7th Street, a seldom used spur that ends at the Heinz pickle plant off of Kollen Park.
First Ward Councilman Mike Trethewey, who is well aware of that problem, as he is a staffer with Padnos, concurred. “The rubber in the turn lane going west onto 7th is horrendous,” he said in a Wednesday appearance on “WHTC Morning News,” “but the hole that is in the center lane, it’ll make your eye teeth loose.”
City Streets Division Department Director Brian White had state Transportation Department officials, who were visiting Holland earlier this month, see the matter first hand, hoping that they could help push CSX, who manages the crossing, into doing some repairs. “I asked Brian if there is anything at all that we can do,” Trethewey admitted. “He is barred from doing anything, even putting a little patch in that hole, because if something happened at that intersection, the city is then liable.”
City staff has asked the public to put pressure on CSX directly by calling the customer service line at 800-232-0144 and reference crossing #235946F CSX CDT 0.90, as per state law, CSX has authority over maintaining railroad crossings.
CSX has made a number of crossing improvements along the Lakeshore in recent years, and is currently overhauling the crossing of 72nd Avenue at Chicago Drive (M-121) east of Zeeland, a project expected to run through next Friday, August 30th.
