It’s basically impossible to prevent a driver from entering train tracks at most street-level crossings, like the one in Oxnard where a Metrolink train on Tuesday slammed into a pickup truck and derailed, or the one in New York where six people died last month.
Public officials would build more bridges and underpasses to eliminate the risk, but dollars are scarce. So they turn to less costly safety devices: more crossing arms, better signals, concrete curbs.
The same funding and bureaucratic obstacles that prevent major rail safety projects, though, also impede some of the most simple ones. The inaction leaves dangerous crossings in the same state for years, as accidents and deaths mount.
While spending more than $510 million on a high-tech collision avoidance system and safer passenger cars, Metrolink officials have not led a system-wide effort to prioritize and improve dangerous crossings. They defer to local cities and transit authorities, which have varied and limited capital.
“These two accidents should be a rude awakening to do something bold with grade-crossing safety,” said USC engineering professor Najmedin Meshkati, who called efforts until now “piecemeal.”
Some Sacramento lawmakers called for increased annual state funding after a deadly Metrolink crash in 2005. But their efforts failed.
Metrolink public crossing accidents declined from 2006 through 2010, but nearly every year since has been worse. More people died in 2013 and 2014 collisions — 16 — than the previous five years combined, according to Federal Railroad Administration data.
Officials at Metrolink say all of their crossings meet federal standards. They identify some intersections for additional safety upgrades, spokesman Scott Johnson said, but if a local city or transit agency can’t fund them, the construction projects usually don’t happen.
Still, agencies in the Metrolink system have finished more than $228 million worth of crossing improvements — including bridges, overpasses and smaller safety upgrades — since 2010, according to Metrolink. Metrolink board chairman Shawn Nelson wants to change the rail agency’s structure so it can apply directly for state and federal crossing funds.
“It’s a major priority, and everybody gets it,” he said.
Better warning
Oxnard city officials wanted to better alert drivers and pedestrians at the Rice Avenue crossing — the same intersection as Tuesday’s collision — following accidents in 2008 and 2009. Their federal grant application said the crossing controllers were outdated and incompatible with modern warning devices. Not upgrading the equipment “will result in … more accidents,” the report said.
“Existing equipment only affords 20 seconds of advance warning,” it continued, “hardly sufficient time to clear vehicles off the track and stop vehicles in conflict with train movement.”
The city didn’t build the $1 million project because it wasn’t selected for the grant.
Better signals may not have prevented Tuesday’s crash, Meshkati said, because the driver made a wrong turn onto the tracks.
Since August 2009, the intersection has had four other accidents, including two deaths, according to FRA data.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating Tuesday’s collision, which critically injured four people. Train video footage showed the signals worked and the arms lowered, NTSB representative Robert Sumwalt said. Investigators will try to determine why the driver turned there, he said.
Oxnard city spokeswoman Christina Aerenlund provided a statement that said the upgrades would have been “beyond design requirement.” Metrolink, which leases the track from Union Pacific at that crossing, wouldn’t have been responsible for improvements, a Metrolink spokesman said.
Omaha, Nebraska-based Union Pacific maintains its crossings at basic federal standards, according to spokesman Francisco Castillo Jr. The company earned $1.4 billion in profits in the fourth quarter of 2014. Castillo declined to comment about Rice Avenue while an investigation is underway.
Building a bridge over the railroad there, public officials have determined, would be the safest solution. But they don’t know how to fund the $30 million proposal, which was first conceived in the early 1990s.
Limited funds
This problem is certainly not limited to Oxnard. The state program that funds bridges and underpasses — so-called “grade separations” — receives $15 million a year, the same level it has since 1974. The Federal Highway Administration’s program to eliminate crossing hazards receives $220 million annually.
Sacramento lawmakers, after a deadly 2005 Metrolink crash in Glendale, convened the Special Committee on Rail Safety. It called for better funding of construction projects, and for local authorities to install security gates, among other measures.
While some of their rail safety recommendations came to pass — including earmarking at least $500 million of the 2006 infrastructure bonds for crossings — some others did not. Former state Assemblyman Dario J. Frommer, D-Glendale, introduced a bill that would have doubled the $15 million annual funding, but the Assembly Appropriations Committee rejected the proposal.
“There are always good ideas,” said Michael Cano, transportation deputy for L.A. County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, “but the Legislature tends to have trouble implementing transportation funding.”
He said the L.A. region needs a coordinated effort among governments to secure funding and build crossing improvements, similar to the San Gabriel Valley’s $1.65 billion Alameda Corridor East project, which began in 1998.
Today’s shortcomings are felt in places like Palmdale, where cash-strapped city officials have spent eight years planning safety improvements at one of the state’s most dangerous crossings. In the meantime, four people have died in six accidents where the Union Pacific Railroad tracks meet Palmdale Boulevard, according to federal reports.
Palmdale alone couldn’t afford about $1 million for the planned crossing upgrades, according to Mike Mischel, director of public works. The plans include additional crossing arms, new flashing warning signals and an improved center median.
The fixes are designed to “make it even more difficult for folks to dodge the signals,” said City Manager Dave Childs, who attributed the accidents to human error and said current warnings are clear. One of the deaths was ruled a suicide, according to the federal accident reports.
Finally, in 2012, Palmdale secured L.A. County sales tax Measure R funding to widen the boulevard and make the crossing safety upgrades, a $10 million project expected to be complete in 2017, Mischel said.
“Now that we have the funding, we are working as fast as possible to complete it,” he said.
