# :((



## Dan O (Apr 23, 2009)

http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories...23.4191a2c.html

About a block from school, Samuel waited for a westbound Metrolink train to pass Jackson Street. After it cleared the crossing about 7:35 a.m., he started to walk across the tracks. A second Metrolink train, this one headed east, struck and killed him, authorities said.


----------



## Long Train Runnin' (Apr 23, 2009)

Thats terrible its a shame he didn't look both ways..


----------



## sunchaser (Apr 23, 2009)

Long Train Runnin said:


> Thats terrible its a shame he didn't look both ways..


Another sad story about a young life gone too soon....whether he may or may not have heard or seen the other train, it's still sad. But it seems these kinds of train fatalities are unusally high in Cali. I wonder why?


----------



## George Harris (Apr 23, 2009)

sunchaser said:


> Long Train Runnin said:
> 
> 
> > Thats terrible its a shame he didn't look both ways..
> ...


Not sure whether they are high or just get a lot of publicity. There are a lot more road crossings in the commuter train territories here than in the ones around the northeastern cities, which may make things worse.


----------



## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 24, 2009)

Is this a double track at grade crossing?



George Harris said:


> Not sure whether they are high or just get a lot of publicity. There are a lot more road crossings in the commuter train territories here than in the ones around the northeastern cities, which may make things worse.


I'm a little skeptical. I think the only fully grade separated MBTA Commuter Rail lines may be the Providence Line and Fairmount Line. Certainly, I was standing on a bridge over the MBTA Fitchburg Line several hours ago and seeing cars crossing the tracks at grade at another crossing which is visible from that bridge.


----------



## AlanB (Apr 24, 2009)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Is this a double track at grade crossing?


Double track. That's the only way to have a second train come by at speed just as the first train clears the crossing.



Joel N. Weber II said:


> George Harris said:
> 
> 
> > Not sure whether they are high or just get a lot of publicity. There are a lot more road crossings in the commuter train territories here than in the ones around the northeastern cities, which may make things worse.
> ...


One grade crossing is hardly a large enough sampling to disprove that California has more or less grade crossings on average by comparison to the NE. He didn't say that there were no grade crossings in the NE, only that Cali has more.

And I'm inclined to agree with George, as there are certain commuter routes out here that are indeed totally grade seperated and other's that have a minimum. Out in Cali it seems that there are many more crossings.


----------



## Long Train Runnin' (Apr 24, 2009)

NJT has a ton of grade crossings on most of there routes! Although I never hear of to many problems...


----------



## George Harris (Apr 24, 2009)

Long Train Runnin said:


> NJT has a ton of grade crossings on most of there routes! Although I never hear of to many problems...


Mabye it is because the commuter service in the Los Angeles area is a fairly recent development. Before that, the train frequency was considerably lower on a lot of these lines. Since the northeast has had high train freqencies for a long time, as in for several generations of people, maybe the "Darwin effect" has reduced the percentage of potential railroad crossing stupids in the current generation of people living in that part of the country.


----------



## AlanB (Apr 24, 2009)

George Harris said:


> Long Train Runnin said:
> 
> 
> > NJT has a ton of grade crossings on most of there routes! Although I never hear of to many problems...
> ...


Sadly, I fear that there is some truth in your post George.


----------



## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 24, 2009)

AlanB said:


> And I'm inclined to agree with George, as there are certain commuter routes out here that are indeed totally grade seperated and other's that have a minimum. Out in Cali it seems that there are many more crossings.


But I think every east coast commuter railroad probably does have grade crossings somewhere in their system.

And off the NEC itself, which commuter rail lines are fully grade separated for their entire length other than the MBTA Fairmount Line?


----------



## Long Train Runnin' (Apr 24, 2009)

AlanB said:


> George Harris said:
> 
> 
> > Long Train Runnin said:
> ...


I guess I see what you mean, people around here know NJT runs at least hourly and has for years so it just becomes part of life to air on the side of caution.


----------



## ALC Rail Writer (Apr 25, 2009)

Long Train Runnin said:


> AlanB said:
> 
> 
> > George Harris said:
> ...


Exactly. The same way New Yorker's know that just because the sign on the street corner says "cross" you look both ways because you never know what's coming. Tourists will walk across and **** off a driver or two-- luckily they're mostly cabbies who know how to stop on a time and just give the camera bags a skipped beat of the heart.


----------



## Alice (Apr 25, 2009)

ALC_Rail_Writer said:


> Exactly. The same way New Yorker's know that just because the sign on the street corner says "cross" you look both ways because you never know what's coming. Tourists will walk across and **** off a driver or two-- luckily they're mostly cabbies who know how to stop on a time and just give the camera bags a skipped beat of the heart.


Gee, I thought those pretty colored lights for cars and pedestrians were just suggestions, kind of like stop signs. And bicycles are exempt, aren't they? At least that is how a lot of people around here treat them.


----------



## jackal (Apr 25, 2009)

Long Train Runnin said:


> AlanB said:
> 
> 
> > George Harris said:
> ...


Even my grandfather, whom I have forced to ride trains with me  and who is more in tune with L.A.'s public transportation than probably 80% of Angelenos, still commented to me when I mentioned to him that the country's rail infrastructure was overcrowded (he was asking why Amtrak trains are always so late) that it couldn't possibly be crowded when there are only a few trains going by every day. (This was also based on his experience living in Simi Valley, and the Coast Line is fairly underutilized these days.) Most people in the area are not used to heavy train traffic, and it's the extremely rare event when they actually see a train going by or have to stop at a crossing for one. It would be unfathomable to most that there would be two trains within a 50 mile radius.

As another note to how hard it is to get Californians out of their cars, this same grandfather used to work Downtown (across from the TCW building, just a block away from The [famed] Pantry and an easy walk from the 7th St./Metro Center station. Despite the ease of parking at the SIM Metrolink station, avoiding traffic into Downtown and changing to the Red Line, he still adamantly drove his car every day except on the few days per year when I accompanied him and basically forced him to take the train!


----------



## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 25, 2009)

Alice said:


> Gee, I thought those pretty colored lights for cars and pedestrians were just suggestions, kind of like stop signs. And bicycles are exempt, aren't they? At least that is how a lot of people around here treat them.


In Boston, pedestrians and probably a lot of bicyclists probably do view those pretty lights as just suggestions, or perhaps interpret them differently than what's suggested by the laws, but drivers generally tend to think that a red light actually does mean they have to wait if it has already been red for several seconds and this isn't a corner where turning on red is legal.

(Speaking of which, there is an intersection where a left turn on red is legal not far from the Davis Square station on the MBTA Red Line. IIRC, Massachusetts state law says that if you're making a left turn from a one way street to another one way street, that a red light is equivalent to a stop sign.)

And of course, it is important for pedestrians to remember that even though Providence is served by the MBTA Commuter Rail, it isn't a part of Boston for the purpose of the unspoken pedestrian crossing rules.


----------



## Spokker (Apr 25, 2009)

It's certainly a tragic accident, but I dislike the way local residents in the area blame Metrolink, BNSF and the city. There are several articles that paint it as a "dangerous" crossing and the rails in Riverside County dangerous as a whole. Despite rail safety classes conducted in schools, residents call on Metrolink, BNSF and the city to "think of the children!!!" and do something. Others are calling for Metrolink to reduce speed in the area and I wonder if they have ulterior motives, such as increasing their property values.

In any case, as far as I know, the crossing is appropriate for the volume of street and pedestrian traffic that flows through the area. All one has to do is wait for the crossing arms to raise and the bells to stop ringing, look both ways, and proceed across the tracks. It's that simple. I wonder if this boy did the exact same thing every single day and it finally caught up with him last Wednesday.

Grade separations are great to have, but they also come with their share of NIMBY opposition, and this crossing has a lot more deserving grade sep projects in front of it, to be sure.


----------



## Long Train Runnin' (Apr 25, 2009)

Spokker said:


> I NIMBY opposition


whats a NIMBY?


----------



## JayPea (Apr 25, 2009)

*N*ot *I*n *M*y *B*ack *Y*ard.


----------



## Spokker (Apr 25, 2009)

Long Train Runnin said:


> Spokker said:
> 
> 
> > I NIMBY opposition
> ...


Sometimes grade separations are fought by people who think they are ugly and will impact their property values. It's a whole other fight. So you really can't win sometimes.


----------



## Long Train Runnin' (Apr 25, 2009)

JayPea said:


> *N*ot *I*n *M*y *B*ack *Y*ard.


Thanks  beens seeing that a lot lately and I was thinking it was that but in my mind the letters didn't match...


----------



## Dan O (Apr 25, 2009)

Spokker said:


> In any case, as far as I know, the crossing is appropriate for the volume of street and pedestrian traffic that flows through the area. All one has to do is wait for the crossing arms to raise and the bells to stop ringing, look both ways, and proceed across the tracks. It's that simple. I wonder if this boy did the exact same thing every single day and it finally caught up with him last Wednesday.
> Grade separations are great to have, but they also come with their share of NIMBY opposition, and this crossing has a lot more deserving grade sep projects in front of it, to be sure.


I think that perhaps the young man just started walking without thinking. I would compare it to starting to go straight forward at a red light when the left turn signal turns green. I see green and may let off the brake without fully comprehending the green light is not for me. I could be wrong but it seems like it could be that he just started walking after the first train passed without thinking about any other trains. The crossing guards stay down for a few seconds after a train clears, no?

I am somewhat familiar with that crossing, having been over it maybe 50X in a car. Jackson is not all that busy of a street. I would think it would be way down on the grade separation projects. Van Buren, a much busier street a half mile to a mile west of Jackson, does have a grade separation.

Dan


----------



## Spokker (Apr 26, 2009)

Dan O said:


> I could be wrong but it seems like it could be that he just started walking after the first train passed without thinking about any other trains.


That's exactly what happened according to all the articles I read. It's still monumentally stupid because every rail safety literature or presentation tells you not to cross until the crossing arms go up and the bells stop ringing. Even after that, you look both ways.
Even if the kid had never heard of a railroad track in his life, it's just common sense.


----------



## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 26, 2009)

Spokker said:


> Sometimes grade separations are fought by people who think they are ugly and will impact their property values. It's a whole other fight. So you really can't win sometimes.


Sometimes grade separations _are_ ugly. Where the MBTA Lowell Line crosses Broadway in Somerville, MA is my favorite example. If they'd choosen to lower the tracks there, the grade separation would be great, but instead they kept the tracks at street level and built a bridge above the tracks for the street, which does poor things for the visibility.

(I'm sure automobiles can cope with steeper grades than the trains, and so minimizing the number of feet of length in the construction project probably made this design a win in the sense accountants love, but for making the neighborhood a nice place, that grade separation was not designed correctly. I'm hoping with the Green Line extension this can be corrected.)


----------



## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 26, 2009)

Spokker said:


> It's still monumentally stupid because every rail safety literature or presentation tells you not to cross until the crossing arms go up and the bells stop ringing.


But do the folks presenting that information explain _why_ this is important? I'm sure there's lots of literature somewhere that tells you to never cross a crosswalk that's showing a don't walk signal, but it's pretty hard to find an actual pedestrian in Boston who actually behaves that way (and if you do find such a pedestrian, you can be reasonably sure that they haven't spent long in Boston). Why should someone who's not spent much time around railroads think that the people telling you to wait for the gates go up at a railroad crossing know anything more than the people telling Bostonian pedestrians not to cross against a don't walk signal?


----------



## Spokker (Apr 29, 2009)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> But do the folks presenting that information explain _why_ this is important?


http://www.oli.org/education_resources/pedestrian_safety.htm



> Do not cross the tracks immediately after a train passes. A second train might be blocked by the first. Trains can come from either direction. Wait until you can see clearly around the first train in both directions.


I do not usually sit in on elementary school classes but I'm sure they mention this at least once during their presentations.



> I'm sure there's lots of literature somewhere that tells you to never cross a crosswalk that's showing a don't walk signal, but it's pretty hard to find an actual pedestrian in Boston who actually behaves that way (and if you do find such a pedestrian, you can be reasonably sure that they haven't spent long in Boston).


And that's fine. The majority want to cross when they aren't supposed to. So why should we care when they go splat?


----------

