We understand that maintenance on train tracks needs to happen. Like roads, they’re used almost every day between Mount Vernon and Lisbon, and we’ve gotten used to the whistles of the trains as they approach and cross intersections in the community.

Last week, however, Union Pacific’s plans to close railroad crossings in Mount Vernon and Lisbon rankled a few people.

In Mount Vernon, signs were posted at roughly the 10 a.m. Tuesday proposed closure time that the road would be closed crossing Hwy. 1. There are ways around or detours in town when that happens to get back to Hwy. 1 or Hwy. 15, and that closure lasted for the majority of one day.

What angered city officials, including law enforcement and first responders, was that there was no advanced communication of these closures happening. The City emailed at noon when they were aware of the crossing closure in Mount Vernon.

Shortly after, Lisbon communicated that there would be closures in their community in the coming days as well. Lisbon anticipated the closures would function much like Mount Venon’s did – close one of the crossings, complete the work and move on to the next. That wasn’t the case in Lisbon. All the crossings in Lisbon were closed at the same time. As city administrator Brandon Siggins noted, the plan was for those closures to last a week.

Closing a road for a week with no notification to emergency services personnel is a disaster waiting to happen. There have been trains that break down in Lisbon that close that closure with Washington Street for a number of days.

For residents who needed to get to businesses like Bud’s Auto on the other end of the railroad line, what was usually a five minute drive turned into a 15 to 20 minute round trip. Likewise, bus routes that run in those communities along some of those roads had time added to them.

If you know you have planned maintenance coming up for rail lines ahead of the winter season, the easy thing to do is to contact city administrators or staff in communities you plan to be in a few days in advance so they can come up with plans to address the issue.