CHICAGO — The number of motorists who ignore the warning gates at a notorious Naperville railroad crossing has dropped more than 80 percent since police installed video cameras to catch offenders in the act, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Naperville police have been photographing and ticketing every violator at the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe crossing at River Road since June 2000, when cameras caught 315 cars racing under and around gates as they closed, said Naperville police Sgt. James Bedell. The automated system is generating about 50 citations a month, he said.
“People are very familiar with computers and surveillance cameras now. They know how the system works and they don’t want to get their picture taken,” Bedell said. “I tell everyone I issue a ticket to: `Tell your friends about this intersection.’ Apparently, they took me seriously.”
Bedell will report on the progress of Naperville’s “cop-in-a-box” program Wednesday at a DuPage Railroad Safety Council’s conference at McDonald’s Hamburger University in Oak Brook.
Presentations will cover strategies for improving safety at railroad crossings, with a focus on bringing high-speed commuter trains to Illinois. Safety advocates support a high-speed rail corridor because federal law would require railroads to build improved gates at intersections.
Dave Schulz, director of the Infrastructure Technology Institute at Northwestern University, will deliver the keynote address. Also scheduled to speak are Mike Stead, chief of the Illinois Commerce Commission’s rail safety division, DuPage County Board Chairman Robert Schillerstrom and other law enforcement and railroad officials.
Surveillance cameras, including those at the River Road crossing, also will be discussed. Over the last two years, records show a steady decline in violations and no vehicle collisions at the crossing, but two similar systems in DuPage County have been mired in legal challenges and technical problems, Bedell said.
The Automated Railroad Crossing Enforcement Systems pilot program was approved by the state legislature in 1996, but the DuPage County sheriff’s office has yet to activate the system it manages where Sunset Avenue crosses the Union Pacific line in unincorporated Winfield.
After delays in obtaining permits from the railroad and bidding the project, cameras were installed in October 2000, said DuPage County sheriff’s spokeswoman Carol Roegner. But legal challenges and software glitches have kept the project on hold since. The department still plans to begin enforcement, though Roegner could not say when.
In Wood Dale, a judge ruled in October that the still photographs police used as the basis for their citations were not reliable evidence. The department stopped writing tickets while legislators added a presumption of reliability into the state law that established the program, said Wood Dale Deputy Police Chief Wayne Pergande.
Wood Dale police were set to resume issuing tickets in November when a drunken driver damaged one of the cameras at the intersection.
With $10,000 in repairs nearly complete, the department will resume citing violators Monday, Pergande said.
Originally, violators faced a $500 fine or 50 hours of community service. The amendment, which took affect in May 2000, lowered those penalties to $250 or 25 hours of community service.
In Naperville, police have issued more than 1,000 citations with only one repeat offender. After one month of enforcement, citations dropped from 315 to 174 and continued to drop until there were 62 in April 2001. That has leveled off in the last year to about 50 per month, Bedell said.
About 110 trains and 10,000 cars pass through the intersection each day.
“Part of the reason I think this works so well is that most people were scared to death the first time they did it,” Bedell said. “They just weren’t paying attention. They’re either having an argument with someone in the car or talking on the cell phone. Once they see themselves caught on tape, it really makes them stop and think.”
Lanny Wilson, co-founder of the DuPage County Railway Safety Council, said the pilot program and similar efforts have greatly contributed to the drop in the number of deaths by train-vehicle collisions in recent years.
“It’s been working tremendously well,” said Wilson, whose daughter was killed in a 1994 collision with a commuter train after her brother drove around warning gates at a Hinsdale crossing.