The trains in our midst

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In typical divide-and-conquer fashion, Metro-North has at long last responded to complaints about the idling of diesel trains on tracks adjacent to the Marble Hill neighborhood… but by moving the problem three miles down the Hudson line tracks to the Highbridge Freight Yard in the South Bronx, an area historically overburdened by industry and by asthma- and cancer-causing diesel emissions. With solutions like this, who needs solutions?

As described in a Feb. 19 article in The Press (“Activists: We don’t need no stinkin’ gas”), since 2011, idling freight trains at Marble Hill have been spewing diesel exhaust into adjacent apartment buildings and the Marble Hill neighborhood for periods of 45 to 90 minutes, several times each night. 

According to the EPA, diesel fumes are carcinogenic, and a trigger for asthma, a disease that is epidemic in the Bronx due in significant part to the borough’s very poor air quality.

Until now, Metro-North refused to engage with residents to discuss possible solutions. Bronx Climate Justice North (BCJN), a local environmental organization, teamed with residents in Marble Hill to press the issue with elected officials, community boards, and local media. 

On March 4, in a scheduled conference call with BCJN, Metro-North officials announced that they had arrived at an agreement with private freight carrier CSX to move the idling phenomenon from the Marble Hill location to the Highbridge Yard on the Hudson line — the Yard is just north of the Macombs Dam Bridge, near Yankee Stadium, in a densely populated area. Metro-North told BCJN that trains need to idle while waiting for a signal to pass through the Bronx in order to keep their brake systems viable.

In pressing Metro-North to address the idling in Marble Hill, BCJN had made clear that it would not consider simply moving the phenomenon to a different section of the Bronx to be a solution. In business-as-usual fashion, however, that is precisely what Metro-North did, without consulting BCJN or community organizations in the South Bronx about the decision.

Bronx Climate Justice North, MTA, CSX, Jennifer Scarlott
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