(The following column by Ben Wear appeared on the Statesman website on March 1, 2010.)
AUSTIN, Texas — Not to go all father figure on you here, but: Hey, stay off the dang railroad tracks!
This admonition is about to take on added urgency this morning , as Capital Metro begins on-schedule, full-speed testing of its MetroRail line. The trains — running at almost 60 mph between Leander and Cedar Park and then at 40 mph or less through much of Central Austin — will pass by every 35 minutes (or more often, taking into account a few runs in the opposite direction) for four hours each morning and more than three hours in the afternoon.
This will go on for two weeks. As soon as March 15 but possibly a week or two later, actual train service on that schedule is due to begin. Nineteen times each weekday, the trains will zip by on runs between Leander and downtown Austin.
Which is a fundamentally different situation, and a potentially more dangerous one, from what Central Texans have experienced for decades. The Austin metro area really has only two rail lines, and up to now the odds that a motorist would encounter a train have been low.
Union Pacific’s north-south line parallels MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) in North Austin and then cuts through South Austin on its way to San Antonio. Because of overpasses, there are very few points in Austin where an automobile actually drives across the Union Pacific tracks.
The other line, owned by Capital Metro, runs from Llano southeast to Leander and Cedar Park and then cuts across North Austin into East Austin before splitting into two branches that run west into downtown and northeast to Manor and Giddings.
The 32 miles of Capital Metro track where the passenger line will run have 74 “at-grade” crossings of roads.
Mind you, 65 of those have crossing gates (the other nine are private drives or on ranchland), many with four-armed gates that make it all but impossible for a car to get on the track once the arms come down. And Capital Metro and the City of Austin have installed special “signal pre-emption” equipment at crossings adjacent to U.S. 183 and Airport Boulevard that are designed to allow a car illegally parked on the tracks (waiting at a red light) to get safely away.
But do you really want to be the crash-test dummy that proves out that technology?
And, although Capital Metro says it has exorcised gremlins that made its crossing gates malfunction for much of last year, the agency’s own news releases say motorists should always “expect a train.” Even when the gates are up, I plan to slow down as I near those tracks for the foreseeable future.
Trust, but verify, as they say.
These red, gray and white trains are quick, and they’re quiet. And they’re bigger than you are.
Stay off the tracks.