Each morning, Barton Elementary students walk south to school along the bustling Orange Avenue overpass under the wingspread of three giant blue butterflies.
The mural is a contrast from the commute around them. “Vagrancy, homelessness, graffiti, trash, human feces, alcohol, needles, all of it,” said Donna Bergeron-Birge, a retired teacher who lives nearby and watches children make this walk each morning.
The path at the border of Bixby Knolls and North Long Beach is a segment of the miles of track, signals and switches operated by Union Pacific, a freight company that funnels goods from the city’s port to terminals nationwide.
Bergeron-Birge said she watches the students go by, some as young as 4-years-old. Without an alternative route — the train cuts the north and south ends of the street — they walk past chunks of abandoned concrete, standing among weeds up to five feet high.
“All it’s going to take is a cigarette butt,” Bergeron-Birge said of the brush fire risk.
Negotiations are underway between the city and the freight company for a memorandum of understanding to better police and abate stretches of railways that many say are left in derelict state, abutted by trash and homeless encampments.
If approved, the agreement would allow the city and Union Pacific to hold monthly or quarterly meetings and commit to joint cleanups. Council members also expressed interest in a reimbursement system, whereby the cost of city services are covered by Union Pacific. In a July 16 report, the city explained it has “neither the resources nor the legal entitlement to perform abatement services” on its own.
The City Council approved pursuing the MOU in July, and discussions are ongoing. Once created, the MOU will need final approval by the council before it can go into effect.
The latest update was a memo released Monday that details the process and cost of creating a partial “quiet zone” along the city’s street-level rail crossings.
Officials said it “can cost millions of dollars” to create such a zone — assessments alone cost $25,000 per intersection — and would require approval from the Federal Railroad Administration and Union Pacific.
But public clamor has centered around the condition of Union Pacific property, as the city and residents alike want far more patrols, cleaning and abatement along the San Pedro Subdivision, the track in question.
“Someone needs to take the matter by the horns and fix the situation,” Bergeron-Birge said.
It was considered at the repeated request of parents in the working-class neighborhoods of the city’s north and western districts, some of whom live next to the tracks.
According to residents, miles of track run without fencing or patrols that can deter transients who — less and less tolerated in parks or on city sidewalks — seek refuge in the no-man’s land that’s dangerously close to speeding locomotives.
Melissa Sanchez, a landlord with properties next to the tracks, said at the July meeting there’s been seven nearby fires this year alone — three of which have spread to her building, causing structural damage. Her tenants are starting to leave.
“We have paid thousands of dollars to put fencing up, and the homeless take it down,” Sanchez said. “We’re losing a lot of money, my tenants are very impatient, they’re very upset with this whole encampment… it literally looks like a madhouse back there.”
Sanchez and others said they have been unable to reach anyone with Union Pacific. Bergeron-Birge said she recently filed a complaint with the Federal Railroad Administration but has yet to hear back.
Phones are ringing at the offices of councilmembers Al Austin and Roberto Uranga, who pitched the memorandum together. Austin said Thursday this is only the latest idea in a years-long effort to broker a solution with UP, and his constituents are rightfully frustrated.
“There are a lot of folks who are living along the railroad tracks, there are a lot of nuisances along the railroad tracks,” Austin said. “My office receives calls regularly from constituents, so this is an effort to deal with those issues which are really quality of life issues.”
Brush fires are increasingly common along the tracks, Austin said.
From 2016 to 2023, the amount of calls responding to outdoor fires — brush, trash, illegal burns, to name a few — nearly doubled citywide, said Jack Crabtree, a spokesman for the city fire department.
Union Pacific spokesperson Lupe Valdez did not respond to requests for comment, but said at the July 16 meeting that the homeless remain the company’s “most vexing problem” along their tracks. Copper and signs are stolen for scrap, fires are burned intentionally and the homeless they interact with refuse services.
“I also want to explain,” she continued. “We are the operators and maintainers, we are not the owners of the property and many people don’t always know that.”
When the freight company sent a nonprofit outreach team to offer services to those along the tracks in January, only three people accepted them, Valdez said.
Under federal law, Union Pacific and other railroad companies can employ their own police force to protect tracks. But despite its worth last quarter expected above $6 billion, Valdez said the company has been marred by budget issues that have resulted in staffing shortages.
Austin said the memorandum under consideration now mirrors one made in 2020 between Union Pacific and the city of San Jose, in which the freight hauler agreed to eight annual cleanups along the city’s 30 miles of track.
That agreement came after a year of negotiations and threats of lawsuits by the city over allegations the railroad was a nuisance to the surrounding community.
The city is now waiting on Union Pacific to sign the MOU, but the timeline isn’t clear.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify that the City Council would still need to give final approval if an MOU is negotiated. More detail about what is under discussion was also added.