“More cars mean more wrecks and more train traffic means the potential for incidents is there,” Deshotel said.

“Think of it this way — an area with an airport is more likely to have incidents with aircrafts than an area that doesn’t see much air traffic at all.”

Elizabeth Christian & Associates Public Relations’ John Egan, who represents The Texas Rail Relocation and Improvement Association, said the purpose of the study was to shed light on rail safety as an issue.

“Our association is pursuing funding in the current legislation that is geared toward improving safety on the freight end and passendger rail lines throughout the states,” Egan said.

“Part of that would included addressing rail safety, for instance, at dangerous crossings or focusing on other areas that need improvement as far as safety is concerned.”

Egan also noted that the data for the study came from the Federal Railroad Administration.

The data collected from the study is vague, according to Fred Jackson, assistant to County Judge Ron Walker, because it does not underline what is causing the train/vehicular incidents — negligent driving, or poor maintenance of railroad equipment.

“Studies can always say ‘they say have ‘x’ number of wrecks,’ but there’s no way we look by each one and determine which were due to driver neglegence as opposed to malfunctioning crossing signs, bad maintenance or fault by the railroads themselves,” Jackson said.

“People take chances — there’s been plenty of news articles about people who ignore crossing warnings. The thing is, it’s easy to report the number of accidents that occur, but statistics do not give you a flavor as to why they’re occuring.”

The Port Arthur News last reported a train/vehicular wreck in January 2007, when a car driven by a 78-year-old man collided with a KCS express engine near the Twin City Highway and Boston Avenue track crossing in Nederland. This information echoes statements made by PAPD Cheif Blanton, who said if high numbers of train/vehicle incidents are occuring in Jefferson County, they are not occuring in the Southern end.

“It does seem that some of the counties on the list make sense; they are metropolitan areas, and port towns with a lot of rail traffic,” Blanton said.

“I bet there’s many years where we never had a train accident at all. It’s just not real common here.”

mtobias@panews.com