Columbus residents have known for some time that longer, heavier and faster trains would be moving through the city, causing more traffic delays and disruptions.
Louisville & Indiana Railroad and CSX trains received federal approval from the Surface Transportation Board in April 2015 for CSX trains to use L&I’s rail line between Indianapolis and Louisville.
As residents have braced for increasing train traffic, many have wondered if there was any way for them to know ahead of time when the trains would be cutting through the city — and especially its busy west side.
The railroads don’t share that information, as schedules vary depending on the business need of each day. However, commuters now have a resource for local train activity in real time as a result of a Web-based tool developed by Isaiah Bowman, a Purdue Polytechnic student in Columbus.
The city has been working with Purdue Polytechnic and Bowman in particular for a year on such a project, knowing that such a tool would be helpful for local motorists until a planned overpass at the State Roads 46 and 11 intersection is completed — possibly in the fourth quarter of 2020.
The Web-based train status page, at columbusrailroadproject.org, allows people with Internet access to check and see if a northbound train is approaching the intersection.
A network of cameras installed by the city at three west-side rail intersections — State Roads 46 and 11, County Road 200S and County Road 950S — detect motion and send an email alert to the Web-notification system and change a green all-clear status on the page to a red train-detected message.
This notification system will be a huge help for motorists in their day’s planning and could allow them time to choose an alternate route to avoid a delay. It’s also a great use of a local resource in Purdue Polytechnic to create a solution to a local problem.
