I think this idea would be actually hazardous to the public safety. As was pointed out above, it would put another organization with its own agenda between the caller and the railroad that can respond to the problem.
LAL, B&H, and WNYP have posted an 800 number on our crossings and contracted with a very competent service to take the calls and notify the appropriate railroad personnel. On smaller railroads such as ours, it is almost always true that the personnel who receive these messages will know where the crossing is, even if the alert message service did not obtain clear information from the caller.
And, by the way, the lack of clear information from the caller is the main problem. People are usually nervous and agitated when they call, and often it interferes with their ability to communicate where they are (they use an older name for the road than the one that is currently used, or fail to see the sticker on the crossing mast), exactly what happened, etc., etc. All too many people--even people who think of themselves as nice, reasonable people--can't resist an opportunity to act out their frustrations on a big, impersonal thing like a railroad. Or they have another sort of personal agenda seeking its very own Jerry Springer moment. We've heard it all--and it's always the fault of the railroad somehow.
Then there are the motorists who lie about what happened. We see that a lot. One motorist was convicted for it, and paid restitution to the railroad for breaking the crossing gate. When you're trying to remember what happened in a moment of panic, it takes a very ethical person to avoid reconstructing the events in a way that serves themself.
Our web site includes the text of state law as it applies to motorists at grade crossings. I guarantee you, it's not what most people, and the media, think it is.
Substituting a state-run service with statewide responsibilities will make it less likely that the people taking the calls are familiar with the territory. The assumptions behind this plan represent a classic example of the hubris that one sees from people who live in a world of paper, computers, databases, and information management, and who do not have to get out and live and work in the real world. Before the WNYP opened I personally checked every grade crossing to see that the road name that was provided to the alert service was the same as the one on the sign at the nearest intersection. If we had relied on the track charts we would have had many, many errors.
We already receive calls from 9-1-1 agencies because some motorists call them instead of the 800 number on the mast. Mostly, the 9-1-1 people are professional and experienced. We had one instance, however, which is representative of several others: The 9-1-1 dispatcher reported that OUR gates had failed to come down ahead of the train and impatiently insisted that we send a maintainer out to inspect it even though our trainmaster informed her that we did not operate a train that day. Also, we routinely get calls from 9-1-1 centers alleging that the gates fail to come down at crossings where there is no approach circuit and standing instructions require the train to stop to trigger the gates. It's always a railroad problem (rather than a motorist error) and they expect us to make it go away, even if it never existed in the first place.
We can inspect more of this kind of unreasoning, the railroad-is-always-wrong treatment if a single, state-run center is established. The only difference will be that the dispatchers will be even less familiar with the territory. Are they going to send them out for annual familiarization with their territory? Or will their knowledge be limited to what they see on the computer screen in front of them?
WDB
__________________
William D. Burt
President and Chief Operating Officer
Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad
B&H Rail Corp.
Western New York & Pennsylvania Railroad
Ontario Central Railroad