(The following story by Tom Fontaine appeared on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website on April 14, 2010.)
PITTSBURGH — Trains struck more than five vehicles and pedestrians a day at U.S. railroad crossings on average last year, killing or injuring 936 people, federal statistics show.
The good news: For the first time since the Federal Railroad Administration began publishing data on such collisions in 1975, the number of people killed or injured dipped below 1,000. A record 5,855 people were killed or injured in both 1976 and 1977.
“There’s plenty of room for improvement,” said Jack Hubbard, state coordinator for Operation Lifesaver, a national group that promotes railroad safety. “Obviously, the number we want is zero.”
On Wednesday, Hubbard led a group of more than 100 government officials, emergency personnel and others on a 120-mile round trip between Downtown and West Brownsville in Washington County. The trip, along a Norfolk-Southern line used primarily for hauling coal, gave Hubbard a captive audience to talk to about reducing vehicle collisions and trespassing on railroad property.
Although deaths and injuries from vehicle-train collisions have declined over the years nationally and statewide, the number of people killed while trespassing on railroad property has risen each of the past five years in Pennsylvania. Federal statistics show there were 15 such fatalities in 2005; 18 in 2006; 27 in 2007; 28 in 2008; and 30 in 2009.
“Pennsylvania is right near the top of the list. It’s a state with a lot of rail activity and a lot of congested urban areas,” Norfolk-Southern spokesman Rudy Husband said. Pennsylvania has the nation’s most freight railroads, with 58, and the fifth-most miles of rail, with more than 5,000.
Husband said stepped-up enforcement by authorities can help decrease the numbers, but some people always look for shortcuts, trespassing onto railroad property and illegally crossing tracks. As the train barreled to West Brownsville, Husband pointed out a spot in Homestead where several people were killed trying to cross tracks illegally near The Waterfront retail and entertainment complex — despite the fact that a legal crossing is just a short walk away.
Pennsylvania has more than 4,200 railroad crossings where motorists can come into the path of trains — as opposed to crossings that take motorists under or above tracks. Allegheny County has the most of any county in the state, with 462.
About half the state’s crossings have gates, flashing lights or bells to control traffic. But the remainder are considered “passive” because they don’t have any traffic-control devices or have only a simple railroad crossing sign.
The Federal Railroad Administration keeps data — including train volume and speed, vehicular traffic and accident history — to predict the likelihood of a vehicle-train collision at a particular railroad crossing in the coming year. In Pennsylvania, for example, the agency says there is at least a 1 percent chance of a collision at 127 railroad crossings. More than a third of those intersections, or 43 of them, have no gates, flashing lights or bells to control traffic.
“Adding lights, gates or other devices at those crossings would be ideal, but we have limited funds and resources,” Hubbard said.
PennDOT spends roughly $7 million a year to install traffic-control devices at passive crossings considered the most dangerous. With average costs of such work about $200,000 per project, Hubbard said, the state has enough cash to perform work on 30 to 35 crossings a year — a small fraction of the 2,200 passive crossings statewide.
Several riders said the train tour was an eye-opening experience.
“It definitely gave us something to think about. Normally, you don’t think about it until something bad happens,” said Butler County District Attorney Rich Goldinger.