(The following story by Susan Abram was published in the January 27 online edition of the Los Angeles Daily News.)
GLENDALE, Calif. — A 52-year-old Burbank man was killed Monday when a Metrolink commuter train rammed his sport utility vehicle — the third fatality and third collision this month at crossings less than five miles apart.
Metrolink train No. 106, heading from Moorpark to Union Station, hit the Ford Explorer driven by Philip Anderson at the Grandview Avenue crossing in Glendale at 8:11 a.m., said police spokesman Sgt. Kirk Palmer.
A train passenger in her 40s was treated at Glendale Memorial Hospital for a shoulder injury.
The gates and flashing signs were operational as the train approached the crossing at 79 mph, police said. Authorities were uncertain whether Anderson was trying to beat the train or had intentionally stopped on the tracks.
“There was one gate behind the driver and no gate in front,” Metrolink spokeswoman Sharon Gavin said.
At the Grandview Avenue intersection, the arms of the railroad-crossing gate block only two of the four lanes of traffic. Gavin said the SUV driver, who was eastbound on Grandview, could have driven forward unimpeded by a crossing arm.
The mangled Ford Explorer was dragged about a mile by the train’s front cab — nearly to Doran Street, the site of a noninjury train crash last week.
Passenger Paula Ferrini said the jolt of the crash could be felt on the train.
“We were just sitting there, and suddenly we all heard a really loud noise. There was a lot of movement. We were all a little shaken.”
Ferrini was among more than 300 Metrolink passengers on the four-car train who were transferred to another train about an hour later.
The train collision was the third this month in the Glendale-Burbank area.
On Jan. 23, Amparo Rodriguez Esquibel, 53, of Shadow Hills escaped just seconds before a commuter Amtrak train hit her Jeep Cherokee, stalled on the Union Pacific tracks at Doran.
Neither Esquibel nor any train passenger was injured, but the Jeep Cherokee was demolished.
On Jan. 6, a Metrolink commuter train derailed after a collision with a pickup truck, whose driver was killed. More than 30 train passengers were injured, including one who later died.
Burbank police and the National Transportation Safety Board are continuing to investigate the derailment, which they said was caused when Jacek Wysocki of Van Nuys drove his Ford F350 pickup truck through or around the crossing gates and flashing signs near Buena Vista Street and San Fernando Road in Burbank.
Wysocki was killed instantly, and train passenger Grace Kirkness, 76, of Santa Clarita died last week from injuries suffered in that crash. Most seriously injured of the survivors was 48-year-old Jennifer Kilpatrick, a Santa Clarita attorney who remains paralyzed from the chest down.
Like the train involved in the Jan. 6 incident, the Metrolink train Monday was operating in a “push configuration” in which the locomotive pushes the passenger cars from behind. Transportation safety experts assert that the push configuration is safe and played no part in either incident.
Since Metrolink service began 10 years ago, nearly half of the fatalities in its five-county system have happened on the commuter rail’s Ventura County and Antelope Valley lines, which both run through the San Fernando Valley.
Along Metrolink’s Ventura County line, a dozen people have died — nine of them in the Valley, Burbank, Glendale and eastern Ventura County communities.
But the Antelope Valley line has had the most fatalities in Metrolink’s system, 22 over the decade, with the deadliest stretch in the Northeast Valley, where 15 people — most of them pedestrians — have been killed.
The two lines converge in the Burbank area, where there have been nine train fatalities during the decade.
The Grandview Avenue crossing has been the scene of two Metrolink incidents, one of them fatal, according to Metrolink and Federal Railroad Administration officials.
Nearly three years ago to the day — Jan. 28, 2000 — a train hit a truck stalled on the tracks, but there were no fatalities or injuries.
In December 1998, a Metrolink train hit and killed a pedestrian crossing the tracks.
To reduce the number of train incidents, Metrolink officials regularly sponsor public-education campaigns and work with law enforcement agencies to persuade motorists and pedestrians to heed and obey railroad signals.
“We’re constantly trying to educate people,” Gavin said. “We do that all the time. We work a lot with the local police departments. We tell them to tell drivers, when the arms are down, it’s not OK.
“Throughout that area, we have hundreds of billboards,” Gavin continued. “We keep doing the education, and we’ll keep doing the education. We see the education bring down the numbers.”
Last week, members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department handed out 19 citations to motorists caught trying to beat Metrolink trains along the seven-mile stretch between the Newhall and Via Princessa stations along the Antelope Valley line.
“We were there specifically looking for violators,” Gavin said. “A lot of the time, these people don’t try to pay attention.”