Throughout the summer, the safety gates at Abington's railroad crossings have been malfunctioning causing the gates to go down for a considerable amount of time when trains are not in the area. Abington's Town Manager and Board of Selectmen are taking the malfunctions very seriously. They continue to reach out to the MBTA. The MBTA Chief Railroad Officer shared their latest plan to address the problem.
"We share your concern with the number of issues we’ve had in the last few months with several crossings going into a degraded safety mode, which causes the gates to go down when a train may not be in the area. We have dedicated a number of resources in the last few weeks both in the field to troubleshoot." - Michael Rooks, Chief Railroad Officer, MBTA
MBTA Plan:
Address the water saturation at Centre Ave which is the suspected problem triggering the Safe Mode. (Week of August 13)
Replace Crossing Panel at Centre Ave (August 23)
The MBTA shared that they believe these mitigation actions will address the issues and re-instate normal operations.
We appreciate our residents patience with this frustrating issue. We ask residents respect and adhere to all traffic laws and NEVER cross a railroad crossing when the safety gates are down.
The Board of Selectmen have requested a MBTA representative attend their September 9 meeting.