Video: Family Pushes Railroad Crossing Improvements

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LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) — A family’s crusade to improve safety at a Lowndes County railroad crossing gets some major support.

New Hope resident John Lumsden and his daughters want warnings at the Bersheba Road crossing with Alabama Southern Railroad near the Alabama state line.

He says the rail company is improving the tracks to increase train speeds at a time when more drivers use the road as a connector to Highways 182 and 82.

Lumsden says outdated studies don’t recognize the road is paved and that five school buses cross the tracks twice a day.

“If they are driving at 10 miles an hour across the crossing, our kids have a chance to realize there is a train there and a danger. If that train is coming at 27 to 30 miles per hours, 25 is what they say they are going to go to, then we’ve got a problem,” Lumsden told Lowndes County supervisors today.

Lowndes supervisors agreed to help get a traffic count and to install warning strips to alert drivers of the crossing. State Representative Jeff Smith also will speak with the state transportation department and draft a letter as the county’s attorney seeking improvements by the railroad.

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