On Dividend Road, an industrial road off of busy W.W. White Road on San Antonio’s East Side, vehicles painstakingly pass over a railroad with at least four potholes.
It’s been this way for “at least two years,” said John Lackness, who drives by the area once a week for maintenance work at a radio transmitting site for KONO Radio nearby. In the past 18 months, he says the track has cost him two $260 front left tires on his Toyota Tundra.
As vehicles crossed over potholes on Dividend Road Wednesday, drivers bounced up and down in their off-kilter vehicles as they held onto their steering wheels. Drivers of four tractor-trailers that passed by appeared to know how to dodge the potholes.
Three more potholes affect drivers on Corporation Drive at the railroad crossing between Dividend Road and Director Drive.
Near the tracks are several warehouses for companies like Mission Foods San Antonio and Direct Source Meats. Cars are parked outside of each warehouse, including employees’ cars and large tractor-trailers bearing the company’s names.
“I rarely run into stuff to this extreme. The railroads are usually pretty good about taking care of their crossings, but this one might have been one that slipped through the cracks,” said Lackness, who drove by the potholes often for work and recently saw the issue hadn’t been addressed.
To avoid the pothole-filled railroad tracks, Lackness takes Gembler Road even though “it’s kind of a hassle,” he said.
The City of San Antonio’s public works department meets with Union Pacific monthly to address crossing issues, said Nadia Canales, spokeswoman for the city’s public works department. Public Works also partners with Union Pacific on asphalt repair when an issue is brought up, she added, but the city wasn’t aware of the damage on Dividend Road because she said it’s not the city’s jurisdiction.
Railroad maintenance “from tie to tie” is Union Pacific’s responsibility, said Mike Jaixen, spokesperson for the company which connects 23 states in the western two-thirds of the country by rail. It’s also Union Pacific’s responsibility to maintain roads up to 50 feet from either side of the railroad track, according to the city’s public works department.
“This crossing has not come up during our meetings but we have asked the public works department to add this to our list,” Jaixen said.
When Lackness reported the damage to District 2 Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez via email in February, McKee-Rodriguez said he had heard the same issue raised too many times, along with other issues like illegal dumping and overgrown brush near tracks, even in other districts.
But District 2 has more rail miles than any other district, McKee-Rodriguez said, and numerous calls asking the city to address maintenance on railroads called for the need for a partnership.
Even though the company meets with the city monthly, the pothole issues weren’t addressed for years, McKee-Rodriguez said, pointing out that Union Pacific’s priority is to ensure the conductor has full visibility of the railroad track, and not necessarily issues that affect the community.
A council consideration request McKee-Rodriguez filed in February would explore the idea of a city partnership with Union Pacific to address maintenance across San Antonio on properties the company owns, “to better address illegal dumping, code enforcement, and other miscellaneous issues.”
The partnership could review what the railroad company is doing to address these issues in a timely manner and determine if further resources are needed to do so, McKee-Rodriguez said.
It could include a cross-governmental collaboration with the county because of Union Pacific’s Kirby Yard, which is based in Kirby but partly overlaps with District 2, he said. It could also mean a cost-sharing system between Union Pacific and the city or county, with the company paying the city to address maintenance.
Jaixen said Union Pacific crews will address the crossings at Dividend Road and Corporation Street this month, and the company plans to invest $1.9 billion in upgrading and replacing infrastructure such as rail, ties, crossings and ballasts in 2024 across the U.S. as part of an overall $3.4 billion capital investment program systemwide.
Lackness said he was surprised that nothing had been done in at least two years to address the pothole issue on Dividend Road, but now that the issue has been raised and Union Pacific has promised to repair the crossing, it’s going to make everybody in that area “a hell of a lot happier.”
The council consideration request, which would put a focus on addressing railroad maintenance concerns, will be scheduled for an upcoming governance committee meeting, which has no date yet.
