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It’s late on a Tuesday morning, and Houston ISD Trustee Savant Moore is yelling detour instructions to a stranger across a train that’s been stopped in the middle of a Greater Fifth Ward street for nearly 20 minutes.
Moore, clad in a three-piece suit, tells the confused man on the other side of the tracks, 52-year-old homecare nurse Zahid Malik, that he’ll need to turn around and take the highway instead. Malik, dressed in his work scrubs, looks shocked, gesturing through the tracks and pointing at a cluster of nearby homes near McReynolds Middle School, a nearly 350-student campus that borders a train track.
“But I need to go right there,” Malik said. “My patient is right there. It’s literally a one-minute drive from here.”
For the past 18 months, multiple local and national media organizations — the Abdelraoufsinno, Houston Chronicle, ProPublica and even HBO star John Oliver — have documented the perils of train stoppages in neighborhoods. They lead to residents being late for work, children crawling under trains and first responders getting delayed when responding to emergencies.
Despite the mounting attention, residents and community leaders on Houston’s east side, the epicenter of Houston’s stopped train problem, say they’ve seen minimal or inconsistent progress in addressing the issue. They argue Union Pacific, whose stopped trains block traffic thousands of times each year, often for hours at a time, hasn’t lived up to its promises of change that would bring relief to Houstonians.
“We’d seen a temporary slowdown in terms of how often they were blocking the streets,” said Clay Dippel, a member of the East End Rail Safety Task Force who also serves on the Eastwood Civic Association’s train committee. “There are average months where it would magically be nice and normal again. But I would say now that it feels rare to see a train go all the way through and not come to a complete stop.”
For years, community members have called for change on the city’s east side, home to a Union Pacific railyard with trains that routinely back up into neighborhood streets.
A 2023 Abdelraoufsinno analysis found that during a 12-month stretch ending in early 2023, more stopped train complaints were filed to the Federal Railroad Administration about Houston’s East End than any neighborhood in the nation. More complaints were filed in the city of Houston alone than the total number filed in any other state during that time. (The federal government doesn’t track stopped trains, relying instead on residents to file complaints.)
Local and state leaders have proposed various fixes, such as building underpasses and enacting laws that limit how long trains can remain parked. As those efforts have stalled, residents have called on Union Pacific to adjust its operations.
In a statement, Union Pacific leaders said they understand the community’s concerns about occupied crossings and are actively working with key stakeholders to find viable solutions. As an example, they said they are working with McReynolds Middle School to limit train traffic at a crossing when students are arriving at or leaving school.
However, the company said ensuring that train operations continue smoothly to support the region's economy is important.
“There are no easy fixes, but we are finding new and innovative solutions by prioritizing this issue and working closely with stakeholders,” Union Pacific said.
A worried community
Every day the problem goes unresolved, more people take more risks.
Fatima Meija, a resident at the apartment complex just across the street from McReynolds Middle and the train tracks, is terrified when she has to move her 12-year-old son, Jose, across the train when it stops.
“I’m so worried for (him),” she said.
An immigrant from Honduras, the 29-year-old pregnant mother used to be consistently late for her job at Burger King, which was on the other side of the tracks.
In some cases, she’d have to climb over the train and walk six blocks, then climb over the train again after her shift was over. She knows it’s not safe, but there’s not much she can do.
Moore, who represents HISD’s northeast side, said his children are regularly forced to climb over stopped trains on their way to classes at McReynolds Middle.
“They have to pick up their bikes and drag over the train,” Moore said. “This has been going on since the 1970s, but now it’s 2024 and is there not a system or process that can be put in place for this to end?”
The normalization of residents crossing stopped trains worries Houston Fire Department Chief Samuel Peña. A mile-plus long train suddenly shifting into motion can easily injure — even kill — a pedestrian trying to weave under or over the train.
“We’ve seen those risks. When trains are stopped and people are crossing under or through between those trains, that’s dangerous,” Peña said. “They can start moving without warning.”
Peña’s first responders also continue to face delays caused by stopped trains when responding to emergencies.
In early 2023, Peña told the Landing that his crews tallied an average of nearly 100 instances per month when responders were delayed or forced to reroute because of blocked crossings. A year later, that number “hasn’t changed much,” Peña said.
“It adds minutes — actual minutes to the response,” in situations where every second matters, he said. “And the next quickest access could be blocked as well, because the trains seem to be getting longer and there seem to be more of them.”
Peña credited Union Pacific for responding quickly to his department, though he lamented that “in the end, we still see the issues of access being blocked.”
Increased attention, advocacy
Dippel sees the increased attention to the issue surrounding stopped trains, including a recent editorial by the Houston Chronicle, as a good thing.
“The attention on trains has been really beneficial, and we do see that there is some momentum to address the issue of stopped trains sitting on city streets,” he said.
But that momentum can be short-lived.
Last year, FRA Administrator Amit Bose made several visits to Houston, including a town hall-style meeting at McReynolds Middle, and a press conference months later to announce $37 million in federal funding for building four underpasses. Still, construction on the underpasses won’t start until after 2028, Houston Public Works spokeswoman Erin Jones said.
The federal funding will not affect some of the city’s key hotspots, like a crossing at Lockwood Drive that plagues a nearby fire station. Jones noted that the city has not applied for any additional federal grants to alleviate other pain points in the year since the $37 million came through.
Underpasses aren’t the only solution available. Union Pacific informed members of the East End Rail Safety Task Force that the company would “change their strategy to avoid the area (around McReynolds) during pickup and dropoff,” and also ensure trains were not blocking “critical crossings” like Lockwood Drive, according to Dippel.
That worked for a while, Dippel noted. In January, FRA data shows 203 filed reports of stopped trains blocking crossings in the city of Houston. But by May, the city of Houston logged 463 complaints of stopped trains.
Keith Downey, president of the Kashmere Gardens Super Neighborhood, has advocated for change in his neighborhood and others for years. Residents have told him stories of being more than an hour late to work, missing doctor appointments and dropping off children to school late because of parked trains.
Just recently, Downey wanted to go to the post office directly across from McReynolds Middle. He could see his destination, but had to navigate to Interstate 10, drive east, take an exit and backtrack on the local roads — adding significant time to the errand.
“That doesn’t make any sense to me,” Downey said. “These train systems can be better. I mean, I hear the argument all the time that the trains were here first. Well, it’s not 1902 anymore. They need to do better.”
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