(The San Bernardino County Sun published the following article by Angelica Martinez on April 20.)
SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, Calif. — The train is coming.
Lights are flashing and the gates start coming down.
In the distance, a horn sounds.
A driver approaches the crossing.
He tries to sneak around the gates.
The train keeps coming …
Trains don’t have cowcatchers anymore. What they really need are idiot catchers.
When a locomotive and a car or a truck come together, the loser is foreordained usually with deadly results.
Dozens of people have died throughout Southern California in collisions of vehicles and freight and commuter trains over the past five years.
Planners are seeking solutions, but they are costly and rail and highway traffic is increasing exponentially in the Southland.
Despite that, accidents in San Bernardino County at railroad crossings have gone down by more than 26 percent with 11 accidents reported in 2002 compared with 15 in 2001, according to the Railroad Administration.
But officials said the decrease does not mean the danger is gone.
The population of San Bernardino County continues to grow and so does the amount of freight and passenger train traffic. That combination presents deadly possibilities where roadways cross the rails.
The dangers
Railroad companies and commuter-train operators have turned to educating the public on basic safety rules as the most effective ways of reducing injuries and deaths from train-car collisions.
Trying to outrun a train and trespassing on the tracks are still the leading causes of accidents, officials said.
“You just have to wait,’ said Mike Furtney, spokesman for Union Pacific Railroad. “You want to get home and that’s the goal.’
Impatient drivers who try to make it across the tracks when a train is approaching often end up injured or more likely killed by trains that can’t stop in time.
The average freight train has about 100 cars and weighs as much as 20 million pounds, Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. officials said.
It takes some trains more than a mile to stop after the emergency brake is applied, said Lena L. Kent, Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway spokeswoman.
Although many railroad crossings are equipped with warning lights and gates, there are crossings that only have the yellow circular signs and pavement markings warning of a train crossing.
Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway officials said most of the train and vehicle collisions occur at the crossings with the automatic warning devices. The reason, officials said, is because people think they have enough time to drive around the gates.
A busy industry
In San Bernardino, the Cajon Pass and in Barstow, an average of 90 freight trains pass through every day, Kent said.
Between Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway and Union Pacific Railroad, an average of 150 trains pass through the county daily, Furtney said.
The trains are carrying goods of all kinds, including clothing, food, electronics, grains and coal from throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico, officials said.
“We generate $12 billion for our railroad,’ Furtney said. “In terms of our business, it’s big.’
The Union Pacific Railroad is the biggest by a slight margin over the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway, he said.
“It’s a considerable industry. All of us together move 40 percent of all the stuff from major destinations including Canada and Mexico,’ he said.
With so much cargo passing through, drivers are bound to wait for a train at some point in their daily commute, officials said.
Cheryl Donahue, spokeswoman for San Bernardino Associated Governments, the county’s transportation agency, said officials are concerned with the county’s growth and anticipate an increase in train and truck traffic in the coming years.
Freight train traffic is expected to be three times the current amount, she said.
The growth means more trains, more often.
Residents will likely be stuck in traffic or rerouted to overpasses, underpasses or nearby streets so trains can keep moving.
The expensive route
Sanbag planned to deal with the growing number of trains by using state money to build bridges and underpasses, Donahue said.
But the state budget crisis has put those projects on hold, she said.
Sanbag identified a number of intersections as part of the Alameda Corridor East Trade Plan with funding from the Traffic Congestion Relief Program.
The program sets aside $273 million for federal projects for transportation agencies and for Sanbag. That would leave $95 million as San Bernardino County’s share, Donahue said.
Sanbag has identified five busy railroad crossings in the county that should have an overpass or underpass, she said.
The projects were close to being in the final design stages with construction scheduled to start in early 2004, she said. Those projects, however, have been put on hold.
“We are hoping for a miracle at this point,’ she said.
Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, is concerned with freight shipping and plans to push the Alameda Corridor East farther into San Bernardino County, said Jim Specht, Lewis’ spokesman.
The Alameda Corridor East stems from Los Angeles County’s Alameda Corridor, which separates freight train and vehicle traffic to reduce congestion and increase traffic flow.
Lewis has told the Bush administration that the movement of goods should be part of highway and transportation funding, and he believes the administration is receptive to the needs of the county, Specht said.
Railroad officials said such planning is ideal. The deterrent is the cost.
Building overpasses and underpasses cost millions of dollars, Furtney said.
A cheaper way is closing access to train tracks and rerouting drivers to a nearby street where trains do not pass, Kent said.
Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway officials have identified hundreds of crossings that can be barricaded and motorists could be detoured to alternate crossings, she said.
Such action would be beneficial, she said, because the number of places where vehicles would cross railroad tracks would be lowered. The only people with access are emergency personnel and other city or county officials who absolutely need to cross, she said.
Operation Lifesaver
Faced with large costs, budget cuts and impatient drivers, officials have turned to organizations like Operation Lifesaver to educate the public and save lives.
According to Operation Lifesaver officials, California is among the top 15 states in the country with highway and railroad crossing fatalities.
Operation Lifesaver officials speak at schools, organizations and with law enforcement agencies to pass the word about the dangers of railroad tracks and crossings, said Tracy Berge of the Southern California Operation Lifesaver and rail-safety coordinator for Metrolink.
Residents are told of the laws governing the railroad tracks and are warned that jogging, walking or parking on railroad tracks is illegal.
The tracks, Berge said, are private property.
Even walking beside the tracks is illegal, she said. Trains are wider than the tracks and someone close to the tracks, but not on them, can be injured.
Also, walking on the tracks is dangerous because there is little warning that a train is approaching, she said. Metrolink trains can reach 79 mph.
People set on committing suicide by deliberately stepping in front of a train will continue to be a big problem, Berge said.
When a person is killed, others are affected, Furtney said.
Engineers are often so traumatized by watching the train kill someone, that they often have a difficult time operating the trains again, he said.
“I’ve hit a couple cars. I’ve never killed anyone, but I’ve hit a couple of cars when people went around the gates,’ said Joe Freiler, a Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railroad engineer of 10 years.
“It’s very important for people not to run around the gates. Most of the time, they go around and they don’t realize another (train) is coming,’ he said.
In Freiler’s case, the times his trains have hit vehicles didn’t result in serious injuries. The people got out of their cars. But his uncle hasn’t been as lucky.
“He’s killed about 10 people,’ he said. “It’s pretty simple if you don’t want to get hit, stay off the track.’
Freiler said he knows many other engineers like his uncle who have struck vehicles and pedestrians who were on the tracks.
“You kind of just tell yourself ahead of time that it’s not your fault, but when you hit kids it’s really hard to put that aside,’ he said.
Suicides are part of the job, Freiler said, but the most traumatic collisions involve drivers who make last-minute decisions to beat the train.
“It’s hard. Even though you tell yourself it’s not going to bother you, it still does.’ he said.
Deadly accidents are not just reserved to freight trains.
In early January, a Rialto man was killed when his car was torn to pieces by a Metrolink train.
Laurence Macias, 45, was driving south on Cactus Avenue south of Rialto Avenue when he crashed through the mechanical railroad crossing arm and ran into the eastbound train, police said.
The impact hurled Macias’ car about 300 feet.