Emergency Workers Hopeful For New Underpass

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It has been four years and Moorhead is still working to fund a proposed railroad underpass at 20th and 21st street south. The $43–million project would improve traffic and safety in the area.

Trains come through Moorhead on average once every 15–minutes and block the tracks up to 6–hours per day becoming a nuisance to all but more so to emergency workers.

FM Ambulence Don Martin says, “You can be waiting anywhere from five to ten minutes for a train to clear the intersection before you can get through.”

Moorhead Fire Chief Rich Duysen says, “We can’t get from this headquarter station to the south side so we have a 1 in 4 chance to get somewhere without taking a detour.”

An underpass at the 20th and 21st street crossing is essentially ready to be built but it’s just a matter of the city getting funded.

City Engineer Bob Zimmerman says, “Over the course of the past 4–years, the city has made applications for federal funding competitive grant program. It’s a nationwide program but unfortunately our project hasn’t risen to the level to secure funding.”

Railway safety is a hot topic nationwide so city leaders are hopeful that now is the best time to try and get the $43–million to fund the project.

When emergency workers get a call, time is crucial and waiting for a train cannot happen.

Martin says, “Cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest or critical patients that need an airway or any type of intervention seconds count. And in times of a heart attack, they always say time is muscle.”

Duysen says, “Get to fires when they’re smaller. It’s going to take less people to put them out because they haven’t been burning for extra minutes.”

City leaders say that if they get the funding, the underpass could be complete by mid–2018.