Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1871-09-15
RoiIrond CrossIngs an Crnde.

Such calamties as that at Revere fill whole
| communities with horror The public demands
that the cause shall be ascertaned, the guilty
person punished, and safeguards devised and
applied, which will make the recurrence of such
slaughters impossible. But these instances of
railroad homicide by wholesale are fortunately
infrequent. The whole number Of their victims
in any year does not equal that of those who
lose their lives while crossing railroad tracks on
common roads q. grade. We all know how
common fatal accidents of that kind are in this
city. Such crossings are always dangerous and
some of them, owing to the confguration of the
ground and the position Of adjacent buildings
making it impossible 10 see approaching trains,
are no better than man traps. 1t is not easy to
do away with them altogether, but they are GER
tainly more common than they need be or would
be if human life were valued as highly as we
profess to regard it, The number OF such cross
ings required by each plan ought to be an i'm
portant element in deciding between the two To-
cations proposed for the union station in this
city On the general subject of grade crossings
the Springfield Republican says very justly:
1t is high time that, in a community like New
England, at least in and near its cities and pop
ulOuS lONUs All idlliOdu NIOsollleS az WIKI
abolished. The people should demand it, and
the railroad companies ought to cooperate will
lingly with the proper authorities in putting their
tracks over or under every important highway.
All new railroads, certainly, ought TO be char
tered with the understanding that they are not to
cross other roads at grade and old companies
should be compelled to do something yearly to-
ward changing grade crossings, beginning with
the most dangerous. In some cases, to be deter
mined by competent authority, counties and
ha colln6 on m Dar Of bp
expense of making the necessary change, but or
dinarily, when the railroad had crossed an eX-
sung street or highway, it ought, by good rights,
to bear the cost Of making the crossing safe.
Some ten or fifteen years ago, we believe, the
| Massachusetts legislature did pass law pro-
| hibitng crossings at grade, but each newly
! chartered railroad pleaded so hard to be an ex-
| ceptOn that the law very soon became dead
| letter, and was repealed Then a board of state
| commissioners was instituted, with power to
allow or forbid grade crossings, as they saw fit.
But the railroads also proved too strong for this
board of commissioners, and it was abolished,
leaving railroads TO cross existing highways at
their discretion. These crossings have become
so numerous now, however, that people realize,
much more forcibly than ten years ago, what
nuisance they are, and if a new law could be
| passed, it could undoubtedly, with the help of
the railroad commissioners, be sustained.
In the case of the laying out of new roads,
| crossing an existing railroad, the county COM
missioners now have the power to say whether
the crossing shall be at grade or not, the statute
allowing them, however, to permit such cross
ing only when they can say, upon their oaths,
that the public convenience requires it. If all
| county commissioners could be relied on TO
| have correct ideas about the public convenience
and its demands, there would be very few cross
| ings at grade on new roads-none, indeed,
| where much travel is expected, or a bridge over,
| or tunnel under, the railroad is possible. The
| Hampden county commissioners have shown by
| their laying out OF fifteen hundred feet of new
road in Westfeld, TO do away with a dangerous
crossing on the Northampton and New Haven
railroad, that they take just view of their duty
| in the premises, and we hope to see sharp re-
| fusa to all requests for crossing at grade in this
| county hereafter. If other counties have less
| judicious commissioners, it is their misfortune.
A call has been issued for a state convention