HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Amtrak's Southwest Chief uses the BNSF Railway for its service. In Reno and Harvey counties, that means the Chief and any other train moving through both counties passes more than 132 public grade crossings.
And according to KDOT, of those 132 crossings, 40 (or more than 30%) of them are passive crossings or a crossing without lights or gates. Most of those are in Reno County between Newton and the Reno/Stafford county line. The number of passive crossings continues out into western Kansas on little used farm and rural roads.
In Harvey County, most of the crossings are active with at least warning lights. This is because that portion of the BNSF is a main line trans-continental route that sees as many as 50 trains per day. The line from Newton west is a lesser used route with fewer than 10 trains per day.
Passive grade crossings have become an issue again after the Southwest Chief struck a dump truck at a passive crossing on Monday, killing four people.
Of course, there are two other railroads in the county. Union Pacific has 65 public crossings in Reno County, most are active. Union Pacific has worked over the years to eliminate a number of crossings along K-61, which runs at a diagonal across the county, leaving a number of rural intersections close to the tracks. UP has been able to combine those crossings significantly, eliminating the number of roads crossing its tracks. UP and BNSF have also worked to close some crossings where tracks parallel just southwest of Hutchinson. UP runs about 25-30 trains per day through the county. Some of the intermodal trains are allowed to run better than 65 mph.
The other railroad is the Kansas and Oklahoma, which runs from Wichita through Haven, Yoder, Hutchinson and Nickerson. The tracks see about 2-4 trains per day, depending on traffic. Nearly all of the rural crossings in Reno County are passive. The trains do move much slower than those on the UP or BNSF.
There are currently 205 public railroad grade crossings in Reno County.
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