Bus Drivers Know Dire Need For Argonne Project

Carolyn Havens was waiting for a train to pass when a boy on her school bus had a seizure and stopped breathing.

The West Valley bus driver immediately began mouth to mouth resuscitation and revived the boy. When the train finally chugged by, Havens rushed him across the tracks and to the hospital.

That happened about five years ago and is an extreme example of the troubles WV school bus drivers experience as they cross the train tracks at Argonne - 100 times per day.

“It’s just really hard when you’re caught like that. There’s been times when there were three trains before we were allowed to move,” Havens said.

News of work beginning on the Argonne underpass, which will bypass the tracks at Trent by going underneath, thrilled drivers and school district officials.

In fact, the district plans to re-route many buses that now cross the tracks at Park or Vista to cross at Argonne when the project is completed in October of 1996.

The re-routing will add a few minutes, said WV Transportation Director Joe Dawson, but at least arrival times will be predictable.

When a train delays buses, Dawson said, all the schools have to be called and told buses are running late. Sometimes parents have already left to meet children at bus stops and end up waiting 20 minutes to a half hour longer.

The underpass will solve many problems, but during the 18 months it’s under construction it’ll only create more headaches.

In the fall, instead of crossing Argonne, buses will detour - along with the other 35,000 cars that cross the tracks daily - to a crossing a few streets west, at Dale Road.

The only additional problem the detour created, Dawson said, is buses can’t go far enough west on Montgomery to drop children off at a daycare located on that street. But daycare staff agreed to walk the half block to meet the bus.

On the second to the last day of school, Havens said, nine buses were stuck behind a train for a half hour. It was a hot day, and fidgety students tried to exit the bus.

“You’ve got one person trying to control all those kids,” Havens said. “Sometimes there’s quite a fight to keep them on.”

Havens has been a driver for 19 years and has watched the traffic count on Argonne go through the roof.

“We call Argonne the north-south freeway,” she said. The underpass “will just help tremendously, but it’s so sad that it’ll take forever.”

, DataTimes