(The following story by Mike Archbold appeared on The News Tribune website on October 26.)
TACOMA, Wash. — Trains moving faster and quieter than ever have killed dozens of pedestrians over the last decade on ribbons of track that twist through South King and Pierce counties.
A 15-year-old girl and a 33-year-old man died in a two-year span on the same railroad trestle over the White River in Pacific. Their photographs still hang on a fence nearby.
An 85-year-old woman using a walker was struck and killed by a train as she tried to cross to Sunnyside Beach in Steilacoom.
They’re among at least 54 pedestrians who have died on railroad tracks in Pierce and South King counties since January 1998, according to a News Tribune analysis. The findings are based on a state database of rail deaths through May 2008, plus a few additional deaths found in News Tribune archives and a few others that happened since May.
Four people were killed in car-train collisions during the same period, the newspaper’s analysis shows.
Nine pedestrians already have died in 2008, the last one Sept. 1 in Tacoma on tracks near the Emerald Queen Casino. No year in the past decade has had more than nine deaths.
Railroad operators, state regulators and communities have responded to some trackside tragedies by taking steps to prevent others.
Where 85-year-old Margorie Bryson lost her life in Steilacoom, the popular beach crossing was fitted with warning lights, signal bells and an automatic safety barrier.
And where Jaime Hammontree and Gregory Allen Gates were killed on the White River trestle, a dangerous but attractive shortcut was fenced off between the cities of Pacific and Auburn.
One of Gates’ relatives says these investments can be helpful, though too often it takes a death to reveal the problem.
“I was in total disbelief,” said Desiree Boshart, the younger sister of Gates, who was struck and killed on May 1, 2000. “I never even knew of anyone who’d been killed by a train until that point in time.”
But rail safety is a campaign nobody expects to win completely, even with millions already spent on it and millions more set aside in places including Tacoma, Lakewood and University Place over the next five years.
Someone in America is hit by a train about every 115 minutes, say federal rail safety officials. Pierce County, whose growth was tied to the arrival of the transcontinental railroad 120 years ago, has nearly as many pedestrian rail deaths since 1998 as much-larger King County, records show.
Officials hope to bring those numbers down.
Puyallup City Councilman Mike Deal, a retired railroad employee, said trains have chugged through his city since the 1880s and aren’t going to stop.
The frequency of trains has only increased. So has their speed.
In 2001, the city unsuccessfully fought BNSF Railway’s plan to hike speed limits through Puyallup from 40 mph to 60 mph for freight trains and from 40 mph to 79 mph for passenger trains.
An estimated 60-plus trains a day run on the BNSF main line from Seattle through Kent, Auburn, Sumner, Puyallup and to Tacoma. More are planned.
The Puyallup area has had 10 pedestrian deaths in the past decade, the highest number of any South Sound community.
“People have to use some common sense,” Deal said, adding that the city’s vehicle rail crossings offer protection for pedestrians who follow the rules. “The biggest problem is (people) going around the arms.”
But Deal doesn’t oppose special safety measures such as fences where appropriate.
“Anybody with any bit of compassion would be willing to do something,” he said.
SUICIDES A FACTOR
Both BNSF and Union Pacific, the two major railway companies in the South Sound, own the tracks and are responsible for safety on them.
Amtrak and Sound Transit run high-speed passenger trains on the BNSF tracks. Sound Transit operates LINK light rail in downtown Tacoma.
Tacoma Rail is a smaller player. It runs a couple of trains a week south through Tacoma and Pierce County to Elbe. It might add more in the future.
No rail operator nor any local government takes rail deaths lightly.
BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas said communities have come to the railroad for help, and the company has responded.
“We are willing to discuss such improvements as pedestrian separation and designated walkways like overpasses,” he said.
But officials sometimes shake their heads in frustration about what more they can do.
The public often balks at plans for unsightly barriers or loud horns. In Puyallup and Steilacoom, neighbors couldn’t agree on fences that would have blocked access to the tracks. And Steilacoom leaders, residents and BNSF feuded this summer before the Town Council voted to spend $280,000 to install wayside horns at two crossings.
Even the most costly safety measures are undermined by people’s reckless choices or by individuals determined to kill themselves.
Skeptics may question the effectiveness of suicide prevention by means of structural engineering; consider the Aurora Bridge in Seattle, where the city has studied installing a cage on the sidewalks to keep pedestrians from jumping.
But experts say any way of delaying people’s decision – whether it’s a fence or a security guard or a sign advertising a counseling hotline – might save lives.
The Federal Railroad Administration is in the second year of a five-year study of rail pedestrian suicides to come up with prevention strategies.
Dr. Ramya Sundararaman, research director on the study, said the high number of these deaths deserves scrutiny because suicide has been proved to be preventable.
“What we have found in a lot of communities is a multifaceted approach is best,” she said.
IN SEARCH OF SOLUTIONS
Trespassing on railroad property is a major problem in Washington that railroad officials can’t afford to ignore.
Amtrak was sued in 2002 by the mothers of two girls, ages 11 and 13, who were struck and killed on a trestle in Kent two years earlier. The suit was based on claims that the engineer didn’t take proper precautions. A settlement was reached in 2006 and sealed from public view.
Union Pacific is installing cameras on all its locomotives as protection against potential lawsuits, said Zoe Richmond, a West Coast spokeswoman for the railroad.
Melonas, the BNSF spokesman, said fencing doesn’t always deter trespassers.
“We have found that if people want to cross a track, they will go over, under and through a fence,” he said.
In the summer of 2000, BNSF spent $30,000 to fence more than 2,000 feet of track north from the trestle over the White River in Pacific where two people had died in separate accidents.
Hammontree and Gates are still remembered there; their photographs hang on the chain-link fence below the trestle.
The good news is that no one has died on the trestle since 2000. The bad news is that the fence has been cut open many times, requiring repairs.
“It’s dangerous,” said Karen Brown, whose house at the corner of Skinner Road and Third Street faces the trestle.
“I’ll bet you at least 20 kids go up and over that track every morning and afternoon,” she said.
Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis agreed the trestle remains a danger, but he said the city continues to work with BNSF and state rail safety officials to come up with a better solution.
Efforts to construct a pedestrian underpass have stalled. There’s also talk of constructing a walkway along the river under the tracks.
“If we are going to talk about having a 21st-century railroad system in the United States, we need some 21st-century solutions,” Lewis said.
AN OREGON SUCCESS STORY
Railroad safety is sometimes referred to as a three-legged stool: engineering, education and enforcement.
Engineering involves designing safe crossings and barriers to keep people from trespassing.
No one thinks it’s practical to block every mile of track from the public. But officials point to cases where something less than that has saved lives.
In Salem, Ore., 19 pedestrians were struck by trains – 18 of them fatally – between 1993 and 1999. The incidents all happened on the Union Pacific corridor that slices through downtown and the Willamette University campus.
Oregon’s Rail Division later spent $3.1 million on the 12th Street Pedestrian Safety Promenade. The first two phases were constructed by 2002.
Glenn Kirkpatrick of the Oregon Department of Transportation said the nearly mile-long project consists of a low wall with a walkway and lighting designed to funnel pedestrians to a secure crossing.
“In our case it has worked,” he said. “In the last four or five years we are accident-free out here. And more safety improvements are planned.”
Engineering improvements can range from barrier arms to overpasses and underpasses to simple signs that warn of the dangers and declare that trespassing is illegal.
Part of the state’s role is to “look for places we see danger and then look for solutions,” said David Pratt, assistant director for rail safety at the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission.
The UTC regulates railroads and rail safety in the state. Last year, the agency assigned two staff members to comb the Interstate 5 rail corridors looking for high-trespass areas. They then worked with local communities to close them off, primarily with fences and warning signs.
The state also has a grade-crossing safety fund that provides up to $20,000 in rail safety grants. The money has been used for design and construction on community projects, including one at Sunnyside Beach in Steilacoom.
Pratt said it’s up to every community to identify safety problems in its rail corridor and come talk to the UTC.
OPERATION LIFESAVER
The education component of railroad safety is handled primarily by Operation Lifesaver, a national program founded in 1972 that operates in every state. A dozen organizations, including the railroad companies, are members.
Some 50 volunteers in Washington give presentations to schools, service clubs and businesses. They attend safety fairs and community festivals.
The state even has a computer simulator that places a person at the engineer controls to experience what it’s like to try to stop a train.
So far this year in Pierce and South King counties, Operation Lifesaver has made 223 presentations to 4,410 people, said Bob Boston, who’s coordinated the program at the UTC since 1995.
Statewide, the program averages 900 to 1,200 presentations a year.
Dean Dahlin is a train engineer who also works with Operation Lifesaver. He coordinates safety presentations for other Union Pacific volunteers.
“This is going to be the biggest year,” he said. “I’m at 94 presentations for the year. We do from preschool to high school age. We do civic organizations. I talk to senior centers.”
In schools, Dahlin said that as many as 60 percent of the children say they’ve trespassed on railroad tracks. At least 70 percent to 80 percent say they’ve been in a car that has driven around the gates at a railroad crossing.
Earlier this month, Congress passed the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 that provides grants to help the national Operation Lifesaver program.
This year, Boston said, the programs in Washington and Idaho are jointly seeking funding for a two-week TV public service campaign.
He’s noticed that it’s getting harder to schedule presentations in schools with tight curricula and testing schedules.
“One of the big things we need to get going on is working with community coalitions to try and bring the number of trespassing deaths down,” Boston said. “So many people think it is OK to walk along railroad tracks. A lot of places are not posted for no trespassing.”
114 CITATIONS IN ONE DAY
The enforcement piece of train safety is also about stopping people from crossing tracks illegally. It’s dependent not only on how closely officers are paying attention, but also on the public.
“It takes the community to call the police,” said Puyallup police Lt. Dave McDonald.
He said his city’s patrol officers are complaint driven, and that complaints are few.
“I can’t recall anyone calling police to report people crossing the tracks,” he said.
That doesn’t mean officers don’t stop and detain pedestrians found trespassing in this way.
“Some are cited,” McDonald said. “I know our downtown bicycle patrol guys on random patrol, they have made arrests of people who have been warned before.”
He said police don’t keep records on rail trespassing citations.
McDonald said there’s a need to overcome a cultural mind-set that thinks it’s OK to walk alongside railroad tracks.
Both BNSF and Union Pacific have law enforcement divisions that patrol tracks and respond to trespass reports. Union Pacific has 12 special agents who cover Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
They work with local police agencies to target places where trespassing is common.
Once a quarter, Union Pacific brings a couple of locomotives into a community and joins local police in a rail crossing exercise combining education with enforcement. The locomotives roll back and forth through intersections to see how people react, then police cite those who break the law.
“We had one in June in Spokane where they gave out 114 citations in one day,” said Dahlin, the railroad’s volunteer education coordinator. “One was a loaded gasoline truck that went through the flashing lights.”
Another was a mother with two children in the back seat. She told police she went through the flashing lights because she was expecting gates to come down and they never did.
“If she hadn’t been talking on the phone, she would have seen there were no gates,” Dahlin said.
Richmond, the Union Pacific spokeswoman, said there’s no silver bullet when it comes to railroad safety.
“You need to look at each situation and community and find out what resources are available,” she said.
“People need to be vigilant. If they see someone trespassing, call 911.”