(The following report by Larry Fish and Leonard N. Fleming appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on May 3. Rich Dixon is General Chairman of the BLET’s SEPTA General Committee of Adjustment. Tom Dorricott is Legislative Representative of BLET Division 71 in Philadelphia.)
PHILADELPHIA — A fast-moving train running through a station where nearly all trains stop may have fooled two elderly women into stepping into its path Sunday, witness accounts indicate.
Mary Stevens, 78, and Helen Stewart, 76, died instantly.
Despite flashing lights, ringing bells, the train horn, and shouts from horrified onlookers, they walked in front of a train bearing down on Bethayres station at 70 m.p.h., a Lower Moreland police lieutenant said.
The two women parked on one side of the tracks at about 10:15 a.m., and started across to the platform for trains inbound to Center City, Lt. Steven Beck said.
Most of SEPTA’s 153 regional rail stations have a tunnel or a bridge for pedestrians. But Bethayres has only a paved crosswalk, like a handful of other stations.
A fence separates the line’s two tracks, with a central opening marked with large orange signs warning: CAUTION Look Both Ways Before Crossing. There are clear views of the tracks for hundreds of yards in both directions.
Beck said a family of four – including two small children taking their first train ride – were on the Philadelphia-side platform and saw both the speeding train and the women about to cross.
“They called out to them: ‘Stop! Don’t cross!’ ” Beck said.
He said the train was sounding its horn, and the lights and bell at the pedestrian crossing were working.
Beck said the women made no response to the warning but “appeared to be rushing a little bit.”
SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said the train which struck them carried no passengers, and was being moved downtown for Monday’s rush hour. He said the train was going at the 70 m.p.h. speed limit for the track.
SEPTA engineer Tom Dorricott has been running trains on the line – the R3 West Trenton – for several years.
He said that nearly every train on the line, even expresses, stop at Bethayres, and passengers appear to assume that oncoming trains will be slowing down.
“Every day, there are people who walk in front of me,” said Dorricott, also a union official. “They assume that I will slow down and stop. I just think these ladies made a horrible mistake.”
Beck said that two theater tickets for a 2 p.m. performance downtown were found with the bodies.
An inbound train was scheduled to stop at Bethayres at 10:22. Accident reports put the time of the tragedy at 10:18.
The name of the engineer was not released. Richard G. Dixon, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said the engineer was “very experienced” and a longtime employee.
Dixon and Dorricott said engineers whose trains kill people are also victims, frequently suffering psychological problems.
“You see a person alive, and then a split second later, they are not alive,” Dixon said.
Even with brakes in emergency setting, the train on Sunday traveled about three-quarters of a mile, with the engineer helpless to do anything, officials said.
Both Dixon and Dorricott said they had been at the controls during fatal encounters.
Dorricott said that two other stations on the West Trenton line – Trevose and Somerton – have pedestrian crosswalks. He could not remember particularly close encounters at any of them.
SEPTA riders at the station said yesterday that a tunnel or overpass might have helped, but that they had no qualms.
“I feel very safe,” said Karen Holt, of Lower Moreland. “Those trains, you can hear them when they’re still at the next station. It’s not dangerous.”
Getting off an outbound train, Evette Barber of Southampton said she felt secure, but wondered whether an automatic gate might help.
“I guess it’s not that safe if two old ladies got hit,” she said.
But she said she had no difficulty hearing and seeing the trains.
Maloney said he could not point to another instance in which a passenger was struck at a legal pedestrian crossing.
Maloney said he had no record of how many pedestrian crossings SEPTA had. There were no plans to slow trains running through stations with them, but “as the investigation continues, it is certainly something we could be concerned with,” he said.
Of 24 deaths on regional rail trains since the beginning of 2000, 12 were found by police to be suicides, Maloney said.
Of the remaining 12, all were of “trespassers,” the term for people improperly walking on or crossing tracks, climbing over fences or taking shortcuts.
Maloney said that safety at Bethayres would be reviewed. At stations that have tunnels or bridges, he said, many people avoid them however they can.
There is no easy answer to keeping people entirely away from the tracks, he said.
“There’s a dilemma between keeping train stations accessible and keeping them safe.”
Maloney said SEPTA was required to notify the Federal Railroad Administration and the Federal Transit Administration of every accident, and that they would decide whether to investigate further.
But Steve Kulm, a spokesman for the Railroad Administration, said no investigation was planned, because it appeared that all warning devices were operating.
“There would be nothing for us to investigate,” he said.