There are growing concerns in the town of Prosper about the freight trains that routinely stop along the track that bisects the growing community and block traffic during peak times.
According to the Prosper Independent School District, a stopped train has been to blame for late school buses on average one or two times every week so far in the 2018-2019 school year, making students as much as 30 minutes late for the start of the day.
"I would say that it is a major inconvenience for the students and families of Prosper ISD," Dr. Greg Bradley, Assistant Superintendent for Business and Operations, noted in a statement to NBC DFW.
Laura Camilleri, a mother who has children at both the middle school and high school levels in the Prosper ISD, estimated she has been caught by the train ten times over the two years she has lived in town.
“It’s extremely frustrating because you time your day, we actually have started timing our day an extra 15 minutes to get over to the high school in the event that there is a train,” Camilleri said.
As many as eight BNSF freight trains — four inbound and four outbound — pass through Prosper on an average day, according to a company spokesperson. They travel between Oklahoma to the north and Frisco to the south, delivering mostly building materials that are helping to fuel the construction and population boom in North Texas.
In railroad terminology, the line that travels through Prosper is called a siding, which means it is designed for low-speed travel. When the trains stop in town it is because they are waiting for other trains ahead of them to be loaded or unloaded in Frisco, or to pass by along the higher-volume, single line tracks that the siding parallels.
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There was a meeting last month between representatives of BNSF, the Town of Prosper and the Prosper ISD with the goal of establishing better cooperation and understanding of each party’s priorities.
Coming out of that meeting, a Prosper ISD spokesperson noted that BNSF “assured” the district that if a crossing were to be blocked for longer than 20 minutes a train would be split and allow for the crossing to open.
“At this point it does not appear that those assurances or requests have been met,” the spokesperson wrote.
There is at least one remedy in the works – a planned overpass at Frontier Parkway. But that is a long-term solution. The design is estimated to be 60 percent complete, according to a Town of Prosper spokesperson, and the finished overpass is not anticipated until late 2021.
