The railroad crossing on Rittiman Rd near Gibbs Sprawl Rd in San Antonio, TX (Google Maps) is a menace to commuters. There is no monitoring to tell us to avoid the crossing, and there are not suitable alternative paths. During typical commute times, this crossing has been known to be blocked by a train for over 30 minutes regularly, sometimes over an hour!

It is inconceivable to believe that the cost of this traffic is being overlooked. Via routes are interrupted. Emergency services cannot get through. It is stifling growth in this area. The violations and fine that Union Pacific should get, but do not receive, from continuously blocking this crossing for extended periods of time is blatantly disrespectful to all that have to cross these tracks.

Additionally, traffic is about to increase because of a new housing development being built in the immediate proximity. The lack of supportable mass transit and the rapidly increasing residency translates to significantly more and more vehicles driving on the roads in this area.

To clarify, supportable mass transit means mass transit that provides and predicable and continuous departure time for an area. There has to be more done to reduce traffic from this crossing. Sure, we could report it ourselves using http://www.fra.dot.gov/blockedcrossings but isn't that illegal while we are operating a vehicle? With mass transit not a viable option, other options should strongly be considered. For example, monitoring of the crossing to enforce fines to Union Pacific (unfortunately, this was repealed in 2015), or building more infrastructure that bypasses this crossing.