Residents Trapped By Rail Cars Hoping City Council Will Bring Relief

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FORT WORTH (CBS 11 NEWS) - A small neighborhood east of Fort Worth is hoping it will soon get some relief after years of busy railroad tracks causing long delays when trying to get in and out of the area.

"We're just stuck over here!" an exacerbated Mario Moralez said.

Moralez and his neighbors have to wait because the trains are waiting to get through one of the busiest rail intersections in America. There are two roads leaving the neighborhood and both cross the busy tracks.

"I mean every time, sometimes you gotta wait for 30 minutes, 20 minutes," Moralez said. "Sometimes you wait longer than that."

Sometimes people crawl over or under the parked rail cars, especially kids trying to get to and from school.

The wait is a particular problem for Moralez and getting his special needs 5-year-old son, Julio, home from school. "The school is right here in River Oaks, which is not too far away," he explained. "But when they bring him back like today at two o'clock, see a train is parked right there? The other one is here. They have to call me and I have to go pick him up myself because they cannot just drop him right there."

Tuesday, the school bus waited 20 minutes to get Julio over the tracks to his home.

The city has almost $3 million in grant money to eliminate one of the railroad crossings and extend another road to access the neighborhood. Tuesday night, the Fort Worth Council is considering buying land to begin the process and that prospect excited Moralez.

"That would be excellent!" he said laughing. "Fantastic! Definitely!"

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