(The following article by Michael Manekin was posted on the San Mateo County Times website on September 8.)
SAN CARLOS, Calif. — At the Caltrain board meeting Thursday morning, San Mateo County Transit District CEO Michael Scanlon briefly addressed the county’s latest fatality on the tracks: an ice cream vendor struck by an oncoming train at a crossing in Redwood City.
“One fatality is too many,” Scanlon told the board.
For a moment, the mood grew somber — and then, on to business as usual: ridership counts, reports from various committees, contract bids.
And yet, there have been 13 deaths on Caltrain’s tracks this year.
Thursday afternoon, in the same board room, the San Mateo County Transit Authority voted to contribute $7.4 million toward ending the body count.
The money comes from Measure A, the county’s halfcent transportation tax, and it is the first installment of a three-year programthat will ultimately invest $24 million towards safety along the Caltrain corridor.
The goal is to fund a series of stopgap “interim safety” measures along the 24.6 miles of track in San Mateo County.
That means increased signage at Caltrain crossings, additional fencing and barriers, and more pedestrian crossing arms, which lower along sidewalks when trains come.
“I think that with these baby bullet trains running at 79 miles-per-hour, flying past the crossings, the issue of safety improvements becomes very important and should be a high priority,” said Jim Bigelow of the Redwood City/San Mateo County Chamber of Commerce.
Ultimately, Caltrain intends to construct grade separations, elevating the tracks along all the 34 at-grade crossings in the county. But those grade separations will cost upward of $100 million, and Caltrain is responding to public pressure to increase safety sooner along the rails.
“There’s been a lot of clamor about safety, particularly since we’ve has some accidents earlier in the year,” said Caltrain spokesman Jonah Weinberg. “This is what we can do in the meantime to deal with the safety issue of people engaging in risky behavior.”
“It’s trying to make sure that we’re leaving no stone unturned trying to get this railroad as safe as we can,” said Scanlon. “We’re trying to make it so tough to cross. We’re going to make it harder — much harder.”
The money allocated to Caltrain by the Transit Authority will also be used to discourage drivers from skirting around crossing arms.
“You have to be somewhat stupid to drive around lowered arms,” said Weinberg, “but this is an attempt to prevent people from acting stupidly. It’s sort of like making a hair dryer too big to take in the tub.”
The Transit Authority also approved some $2.6 million worth of Measure A funds to help float the replacement of four bridges in the city of San Mateo. The battered bridges, rated as the poorest along Caltrain’s ancient lines, will be seismically upgraded, and three of the four will be raised to 15 feet, 1 inch to accommodate large trucks.
Improving the bridges is part of the infrastructural changes which will eventually lay the tracks for eventual grade separation.
Think of Caltrain as a person preparing for some serious elective surgery a few years down the line, Weinberg said.
“We have to make the patient better and get him up to the best possible state of health in order to do the surgery,” he said. “Likewise, we have to get the railroad to the best state of good repair and then we can take it apart strategically while maintaining the current level of service.”