Backed-Up Traffic at a Passive Crossing
You are driving a 40-foot bus with 36 high school students on a two-lane road posted at 50 mph, approaching a passive railroad crossing with a crossbuck only - no gates, no lights. The tracks cross at roughly a 45-degree angle, and a warehouse fence on the left limits your view down the track to about 250 feet. Traffic beyond the crossing is stopped bumper-to-bumper at a red light, with the rear bumper of the last car about 60 feet past the far rail. The crossing sits on a slight incline with a rough asphalt surface. It is dusk, the temperature is 28°F, patchy ice is on the shoulder, and you are already six minutes behind schedule.
1. Do you start across? Walk through the decision and state exactly where and why you stop.
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No. You do not start across, and the schedule is irrelevant to that answer.
The rule is not "is the track clear right now." It is "can I get completely across, with margin, and stay across." A 40-foot bus needs its own length plus a safety margin beyond the far rail - figure at least 10 to 15 feet of clearance past the last axle - before it is done occupying the crossing. Traffic is stopped 60 feet past the far rail, and the vehicles ahead are idling at a red light, which means they will not move until it changes, and the queue may back onto the track as more cars arrive. If you pull forward and the car ahead stops short, you are sitting on the rails with a bus full of students and no way to move.
Where you stop: before the stop line, and in any case not closer than about 15 feet from the nearest rail - far enough back that the front of the bus is clear of any overhang and so you have room to look down both directions of the track through the 45-degree angle. Stopping on the shoulder's ice patch is not ideal; stop on the firm part of the lane, wheels straight, hazard flashers on.
What you do instead: wait until the queue ahead has moved enough that a full bus length plus margin will fit beyond the far rail and the traffic is clearly flowing. If the light cycle means the gap keeps closing, select a different route or wait the cycle out. Being six minutes late is a conversation with dispatch; being stopped on a crossing is a different kind of phone call entirely.
2. Assume the queue finally clears and you decide to cross. Walk through the crossing procedure given the 45-degree angle, the limited left view, and the ice.
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Before moving:
- Stop completely, transmission in a gear that will not require shifting mid-crossing.
- Turn off the radio, the heater fan, and anything else that makes noise. Open the driver's window and the service door so you can hear a train horn or the tick of the rails.
- Look left, right, and left again, and use the mirrors. Look for a second train behind the first; a train passing in one direction masks one coming the other way.
The 45-degree angle is the hard part. Your seated view down the left track is blocked by the bus body itself at that angle. If you cannot see far enough down the track from the stop position, creep forward until the front of the bus clears the sight obstruction enough to see - but stop again before the rails. Two separate stops, both complete, are normal at an angled crossing. Do not "roll through" the look.
Crossing:
- Move at a steady, deliberate speed - fast enough to clear, slow enough to control on ice and rough asphalt.
- Do not shift gears while crossing. Do not stop, do not brake hard, and do not let a slow vehicle ahead bait you into stopping on the rails.
- On the incline with patchy ice, if the drive wheels spin at the approach, stop and back off rather than creeping onto the rails with no traction. A bus that stalls on a rail head is the start of the worst scenario in this exam.
- Keep the hazard flashers on until the rear of the bus is well past the crossing.
Afterward: resume the route and note the crossing in the trip report - a repeated queue at that crossing is a routing problem worth reporting to the district, not a daily gamble.
3. The bus stalls on the rails and a train's headlight appears in the distance. Give your actions in order, including what you do with the students and where you put them.
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Order of operations - seconds matter and nothing else does.
- Do not try to restart the bus. Kill the ignition, set the brake, hazard flashers on, and turn to the students.
- Give one loud instruction: "Everyone off the bus now. Leave everything. Go that way." Open the front service door; if it will not open, use the rear emergency door, but watch the drop.
- Evacuate away from the tracks and toward the approaching train, at an angle - roughly 45 degrees from the track - not straight down the track and not straight away from it. Debris from a collision travels down the line and outward ahead of the train; moving diagonally toward the train and away from the tracks puts students outside that path. Get them at least 100 feet from the rails, farther if the train is close.
- Move the group off the roadway and behind something solid if one is available, and keep them together and away from the road so a second vehicle does not hit them in the dark.
- Call 911 and the emergency number posted on the crossing sign - the railroad's number reaches the dispatcher who can stop trains on that line. Give the crossing identifier from the sign: the DOT number, the road name, and the milepost. That is faster for them than describing the location.
- Do not go back for belongings, a phone, or a student's bag. If a student is missing, tell the 911 dispatcher the name and last known seat rather than re-entering the bus.
- Account for all 36 by name at the assembly point, and report the count to the first responders.
Related case, same crossing: if you are across and the gates come down on the bus, drive through the gate - a gate arm is designed to break and can be replaced. Never stop on the tracks to negotiate with a gate.