ThinkProgress

At Thursday night’s public meeting about CSX Corp.’s possible reconstruction of a D.C.-based freight train tunnel, Rhonda White was distressed.

“I am a parent of a child with special needs,” she said. “Because of this project and the effect it will have on my neighborhood, her bus won’t be able to get to her. If she has a seizure, the medical emergency assistants can’t get to her. The nurse that comes nightly cannot park on the street.”

White is one of many who lives next to a stretch of Virginia Avenue that, under a proposal by CSX, would be bowled over and dug out to make way for a large, uncovered trench. In that trench, freight trains would run in the open for at least five years while the company reconstructs and expands the century-old Virginia Avenue Tunnel. The rebuilt tunnel would require a gift of city land to the company, and construction would expand it so double-stacked cars can run through.

Since the project was officially proposed in 2011, residents of the newly-revitalized Capitol Riverfront and Navy Yard neighborhoods — which until as recently as ten years ago were largely considered industrial wastelands — have been fighting the project. Like White, they have concerns about accessibility to their front doors, air pollution, and increased vibration.

But the one thing that stands out is their fear that one of those trains carrying crude oil and hazardous materials in an open trench next to their homes might derail. And everything could be lost.