Letters To The Editor: Train Blame

The following letter to the editor was submitted by Foxborough residents Donald DiMauro and Todd Hassett. Letters for publication can be emailed to Foxborough Patch Local Editor Dan Libon at Dan.Libon@patch.com

The CSX freight that runs through our County Street neighborhood from midnight to 5 a.m. as well as the MassDOT expansion of the Mansfield train yard to Spring Street intersection with the addition of a second track generates noise and disruption beyond measure and words alone cannot adequately describe the mayhem. But if one imagines the emotion depicted in the Edvard Munch painting, "The Scream," that picture conveys our trials more adequately than words.

And it’s not that we do not understand the need for trains. But there are larger implications regarding the state’s madness for rail and their plan to renovate and reactivate track throughout the state that creates a project too big to fail and so neglects to recognize what the future holds for transportation. Perhaps in a decade or two we’ll have hundreds of miles of abandoned track ready to use for bike paths.

But our gripes concern neither commuter rail nor Gillette Stadium, although our problems are linked to both, but what is occurring daily behind our homes with a freight line and a plan that makes us subservient to its operation and forces us to regret where we live.

Some of us have lived in the area for decades and have tolerated the railroad, but it has not been easy. We are not talking about the picturesque charm of the San Francisco cable cars here. Freight trains do not beautify an area, they degrade it.

But this past year we have witnessed an alarming increase in disruption that is both immoral and inhumane.

It is immoral because the state consorted with the railroad and dictated a course of action with little input from citizens and now those who bear the consequences of these decisions are denied any means of recourse except as one railroad executive advised, “Put up a for sale sign”.

And it is inhumane because we suffer daily deprived of sleep in a cruel atmosphere of chaos.

Our space has been violated by an entity that cares not for our welfare. This upheaval, commencing with MassDOT’s purchase of the Framingham track, has overrun our area and we feel angry because of this infringement on the sanctity of our homes, our lives, and the place where we live..

The state, utilizing the preemptive laws that promote the tyranny of the railroad has invaded our sanctuary and our basic right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Abuse of those values produce the outrage symbolized by the colonial makers of the Gadsden Flag that depicts the coiled rattlesnake with fangs bared ready to strike and the words printed beneath that warned, “Don’t tread on me”.

So to live here now is to live in a war zone under siege by an occupying force that is not the military but an institution operating under authoritarian law immune from rules and regulations and whose power is ordained by the state, politicians, local officials and the media.

No ordinary citizen is prepared to accept the dictatorial nature of this enterprise because it extends far beyond our precepts of right and wrong.

And to cope with tyrannical entities we must distort our senses and suspend our belief system. Like Orwell depicted in 1984, we are coaxed into believing that bad is good and that 2+2=5.

So for now our leaders wrap themselves in a cloak of environmental piety and goodness while assuring us that the pain and disruption are called progress and they consort with an institution that even they have not the power to control or subdue.

This deal is called a devil’s bargain.

And so in our section of town called Foxvale, we are the glitch, the underbelly of this rail renaissance, the dark side of fanatical plans that Have created a dystopian nightmare.

We are constrained by a form of martial law. Streets are blocked and travel is restricted. Battalions of trucks crowd our roads hauling equipment that dig up the woods and lay track like it’s the year 1850 and there’s the pounding and the incessant beeping that punishes the brain with an auditory version of Chinese water torture.

Drive down to the Mansfield train yard, the mother of our woes, and view the bleak panorama of a degraded landscape that insults the eyes. Stand with me at the Spring Street crossing at 5 in the morning while I film and count the dozens of tanker cars hauling materials that we should never allow to pass and watch the railcars overwhelm the homes with their hugeness and racket loaded with trash and rusted and covered with graffiti that communicates their ugliness and you ask yourself how do they manage this affront to decency in this place we live? And this is the 21st century?

How do we reconcile the degree of arrogance brazen enough to ruin our peace and demean our environment, all of it perversely legal, though not our choice, and then welcome and embrace this calamity as beneficial to our lives?

The new Spring Street grade crossing has improved the road and cost a lot but that repair offers little solace for our lives as we endure horns and intense, lengthy idling, horrendous coupling that sounds like a convention of drunks let loose in a scrap yard, long trains that take over eight minutes to pass, and infuriating hours.

Ways to fix things:

1. Install gates and stop the horns. The new signaling devices are better engineered and when the train is not moving traffic will not stop. For this “Quiet Zone” the town must ante up the dough and, God forbid, buy liability insurance.
2. Stop the endless, unbearable idling and you stop much of the pain and anger.
3. A shortened train line, (less than 40 cars), makes for faster crossings, less coupling, and no idling because there is no waiting for 100 cars to hook up. And if less cars require an extra run, then do it.
4. Vary the hours and eliminate that 4:00 am train. When that commuter pilot program begins 2 1/2 hour windows open for freight to use the track and CSX prefers daytime runs.
5. Own up to the distress you have caused and like any responsible institution plan intelligently. Last week while walking through Newton I crossed a bridge that spanned the Green Line tracks and I hardly noticed the train passing beneath my feet because it moved below street level and the high walls on each side buffered the sound as though it was planned, designed and built with human beings in mind. MassDOT has embarked on this serious project and we should expect planners and designers talented enough to pay attention to rail infrastructure and not just lay bare track in the sensitive areas where residents live. Install noise barriers and walls around those locations. It’s done on the highways. Design flaws indicate that the design does not work and, if we are diligent, we go back to the drawing board unless we do not care. If the state believes that freight has its advantages but residents cannot bear the operation, then how is that good?
6. Compensate the neighborhoods for their suffering and inconvenience. Tax abatements would help and the state, the perpetrator of our ills that relate to constructive taking, should be obliged to purchase our homes at fair market value for those who choose to leave these intolerable conditions. Relocation is not our choice, but thrust upon us by these grand plans that force us flee like refugees.

Donald DiMauro
Todd Hassett

Image via Shutterstock