Much to the dismay of University students, the City of Charlottesville is finally going through with its 2010 plan to construct a fence around the railroad tracks between 14th street and Rugby Road. While the construction of a fence is a reasonable solution to the unsafe practice many students engage in — that is, crossing the railroad tracks — students have good reason to be frustrated by this development.
The use of those tracks as a shortcut to get to Grounds is not a mark of students’ laziness or lack of regard for their own safety. Rather, it’s a result of the illogical layout of Charlottesville and a lack of convenient student housing. Many students choose to live on the Corner for the convenience of its location with respect to classes. The so-called on-Grounds options offered range from convenient to unreasonably far: Bice may be close to class, but Copeley and Faulkner are at least a 30 minute walk away from the Academical Village, let alone more frequented academic buildings. While public transportation is available, it’s understandable that students prefer to live in apartments and houses that bring them within walking-distance of Grounds.
If the prevalence of students residing on the Corner can be attributed to the lack of satisfactory on-Grounds housing, then the use of the train tracks can be attributed to the poor layout of this area. Charlottesville is by no means a grid: roads curve and end seemingly arbitrarily, and the placement of this railway blocks off what would otherwise be a logical pathway. While the layout of Charlottesville may have made sense upon its founding, and our area of the city is certainly walkable, it is not necessarily logical for non-car users. If a shortcut through the railroad tracks were not considerably faster, University students would not use it. But they do, and in large numbers, because walking the length of 14th street and curving around the Corner to get to central Grounds is inconvenient.
Of course, this does not mean that safety should not be the biggest concern of the city of Charlottesville, the University and students. But according to Kathleen Smith’s Sept 8 article, “there are few accidents on record as a result of crossing the train tracks,” and contributing concerns are actually a prevalence of litter and decreased vegetation. Additionally, trains that pass through the Corner can now only go 10 miles an hour out of concern for pedestrians, which is the main reason railroad companies are pushing for a fence.
These are all valid concerns, but they do not mean the sole solution is building an expensive (roughly $234,100) and logistically-complicated fence. (It should also be noted that, if railroad companies wish to build a fence, it seems somewhat unfounded for the city of Charlottesville to fund it, when that property is technically railroad company property.) A solution that would appease students, the railroads and the city alike would be to legitimize the shortcut through the train tracks. This could be done by implementing the same style of fence present on railroads that cut through driving lanes and roads. Typically, when trains pass through car traffic a fence drops down and blocks access to the track for the duration of the train’s passing.
If the city built a proper stairway leading up to the tracks — which would also be safer than the existing footpaths — and then put in place a railway crossing, drop-down fence, trains could move through Charlottesville at a faster speed and students could still make use of this much-needed shortcut. It’s unclear whether this would be more or less expensive than the current plans for a fence, but it certainly caters more to both the logistical and safety needs of students.
Dani Bernstein is a Senior Associate Opinion Editor for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at d.bernstein@cavalierdaily.com.
