Where the Rails Meet the Road, Stranded Motorists Get Cross : Transportation: Train switches during peak commuter hours cause heavy backups on streets, and county can expect even more of the same in the future.

BUENA PARK —  Announced by a clanging bell and a blaring horn, the Southern Pacific freight train squeals across Knott Avenue. As lunch hour traffic builds behind the crossing gates, the train brakes and the cars jam together. Thud-d-d. The frustrating wait begins.

“You can sit in your car there for what seems like 30 minutes,” said Shawn Smith, a salesman at the Chevrolet dealership a block away. “Some people around here get very upset about it.”

The train, nicknamed “The Hauler,” and another train that chugs along about 6 p.m. “basically cut the city in half, which can affect emergency responses,” said Sgt. Terry Branum, a Buena Park police spokesman.

This is only one of 405 railroad crossings in Orange County, where tempers are tested and drivers detained. And more are on the way.

By 1995, the number of passenger trains in the county is expected to double, from 20 trips a day to 40.

In addition, more freight trains are in Orange County’s future. In January, the Southern California Assn. of Governments will embark on a yearlong study of the movement of goods the Southland, including Orange County.

“We have to know the pattern of goods being moved in the region, and whether we have an efficient way of moving them--whether we have a balance between trucks and railroads, and whether we understand their impact on the economy,” said SCAG program manager Bijon Yarjani. “. . . If we don’t keep them competitive in pricing and provide an efficient way to move them, (freight) will move from the ports here to ports in Mexico, Oregon or Seattle.”

A goal of the study is to remove trucks from clogged freeways and put their cargo aboard trains in dedicated freight corridors.

Already, the Santa Fe Railway is planning to transfer eight to 10 freight trains a day from tracks in Los Angeles to the railroad’s main line through Fullerton, adding to the 20 trains now plying that route every day.

During the noon and evening rush hours in Buena Park, Southern Pacific trains--sometimes 80 to 100 cars long--switch back and forth several times. The tracks cut diagonally across Artesia Boulevard, a few yards west of Knott Avenue, meaning the trains block both streets and back up traffic on two freeway ramps. What’s more, spurs are used to deliver soybean oil, corn syrup and other commodities to a Kraft food plant and other major employers nearby.

“It’s a very sore spot with our membership,” said the local branch manager of the Pacific Telephone Employees Credit Union. Lenae, who asked that her full name not be used, said, “I have employees who are late to work, and members who come here on their lunch hour often have to detour two extra miles out of their way. . . . A year ago, we kept a log here. Sometimes we see police sitting out there.”

Since 1985, Buena Park police have cited Southern Pacific train conductors eight times for blocking street traffic longer than the statutory limit of 10 minutes at a time.

Other police departments have had run-ins with the railroads.

Earlier this year in Fullerton, for example, two freight trains tied up traffic on Raymond Avenue and State College Boulevard for 30 minutes or more during the rush-hour commute, because Amtrak passenger trains had not cleared the Fullerton station on time.

“Citizens were calling the police, the police and citizens were calling me,” recalled Mike Martin, Santa Fe’s spokesman. “We try very hard to make sure it doesn’t happen. . . . All of us have been stuck at a railroad crossing. After a minute, it seems like an hour.”

State College Boulevard is a sore spot, in part because Santa Fe has more than 40 local deliveries a day in the Fullerton-Anaheim area.

Another difficult crossing is on the Santa Fe line at Red Hill Avenue, just east of Edinger Avenue in Tustin, which has been the target of several complaints to the state Public Utilities Commission. The problem there, state officials said, is a lack of signal coordination between the intersection at Edinger and the railroad crossing. Fixes are planned.

Spurred by safety concerns as well as a desire to increase speeds for passenger trains, state and local transportation officials have ambitious lists of crossings that need underpasses or overpasses.

Irvine already has received partial state funding for an underpass at Culver Drive. For 15 years, local residents battled plans for an overpass. But now public opinion has shifted, and an engineering firm was recently hired. Construction, however, remains unscheduled.

Only two grade separation projects are likely to proceed soon: Dale Avenue in Buena Park and Highland Avenue in Fullerton.

That’s because the state has only $15 million a year budgeted for grade separation projects. Recent federal legislation allocated $20 million for the Los Angeles-San Diego passenger corridor, but that money is split three ways among Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties.

“There are 9,000 public railroad crossings in California,” said Santa Fe’s Martin. “You’re talking about very little money when a four-lane grade separation can cost $10 million or more. . . . Probably our grandchildren will be long gone before the separation programs are ever completed . . . if they ever are.”

The lack of grade separations won’t keep SCAG from trying to put more freight on trains, but economics might--at least in Orange County.

Compared to major urban centers such as Los Angeles and Chicago, Orange County businesses don’t move a lot of freight by rail. This is partly because of the advent of the interstate highway system, but it’s also because much of Orange County wasn’t developed until after the trucking industry was already dominating the movement of goods throughout the country.

What’s more, rail spurs once used to deliver freight directly to loading docks in Orange County are mostly abandoned or carry only one train per day. Due to economic pressures to pull the tracks out and develop the land for profit, experts say it will be difficult to keep the few spurs that remain. Now, these account for “only a few carloads a week,” said SCAG researcher Alan Haven. “But it makes sense to retain those.”