TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - Most everyone in Terre Haute could share a time when they were late because of a train.
Sometimes, you're one of the lucky ones, able to sneak by before the crossing arms come down. Other times, you’re like Terre Haute resident Donna Griese, who seems to always be fresh out of luck.
Griese only works four blocks from her home. And, almost without fail, she gets stopped in her tracks by trains.
Griese shares, "It doesn't matter if I leave home at 7:30 or any time in between. You're going to get nailed on the way to work. I usually get it on my way home to lunch at one ‘o’clock, and when I come back at two. And a lot of times it's at 5'o'clock when I get off work as well."
Griese works in customer service at Columbian Home Products. She and her coworkers have transformed their work day around the trains.
She explains, "There's three of us that work in customer service, and it's daily, it's one of us that is nailed, if not more than one of us. If we left at the same time to go to lunch, we could all three be stuck behind the train trying to come back."
Since a ruling by the Indiana Supreme Court in September, Griese says she's noticed train activity getting worse. The court decided trains couldn't be fined for blocking a track for any amount of time.
After speaking with Griese, she believes things have gotten worse since then.
Griese shares, "I mean normally before that, you'd spend maybe 10 minutes at a track when you're stopped. Now, 20 to 25 minutes is nothing to sit there. It's frustrating as a resident, it wastes my gas either sitting there or going around."
In less than a week, Griese says she was stopped roughly 15 times going to and from work. But the train issue isn't just in her little slice of heaven, it's citywide.
She says, "It's not just these tracks, but these are the ones I deal with on a daily basis. But all through Terre Haute, it's known for the railroads. It's not known for the good things that we have in our city."
CSX does have a way you can report troubled rail crossings online. To do so, click here.
