Williams Valley Railroad v. Lykens & Williams Valley Street Railway Co.

Citations

• 192 Pa. 552
• 44 A. 46
• 1899 Pa. LEXIS 959

Syllabus

<p>Bailroads—Electric railways—Grade crossing—Act of June 19, 1871.</p> <p>The ownership of land in fee by a railroad company, wiiereon rests its superstructure, gives it no right to exclude subsequent grantees of the commonwealth from the use of the highway or public road which crosses it.</p> <p>The purpose of the Act of June 19, 1871, P. L. 1361, was to discourage grade crossings, and absolutely to prohibit them where it was reasonably practicable to avoid them. What is reasonably practicable under such .circumstances is determined largely by what is physically practicable, and not by what is practicable to the treasury of the road seeking to cross. The cost of avoiding a grade crossing is a matter to be considered in projecting the new road, and then sufficient capital should be provided to avoid that which the law in effect condemned.</p> <p>Neither the street railway Act of May 14, 1889, P. L. 211, nor any subsequent legislation repealed the crossing provision in the act of June 19, 1871.</p> <p>The courts will enjoin a crossing of an electric railway over a steam railroad at grade, where it appears that the public road on which the street railway was built was, for between 300 and 400 feet on each side of the road, almost level; that an overhead bridge presented no engineei'ing difficulties in the construction or use, and that the cost of such bridge would be from $7,000 to $10,000.</p>