REGIONAL REPORT : Rail Experts Predict Rise in Accidents : Transit: The growing Southland network of commuter trains increases danger. Motorists and pedestrians will be targeted in safety-awareness campaigns.

After years of decline in the number of railroad casualties, safety experts fear that a recent upturn in deaths and injuries may continue as trains begin to roll across an extensive commuter rail network planned for Southern California.

Transit officials plan aggressive public education campaigns before their latticework of commuter rail lines connects Los Angeles with five outlying counties within the next four years.

Their aim is to avoid accidents such as those that resulted in four deaths and 13 injuries on the Metro Rail Blue Line between Long Beach and Los Angeles during its first six months of operation.

While railroad education programs receive widespread applause, many safety experts worry that a surge in accidents is inevitable along new commuter rail lines. It takes time, they say, for risk-taking motorists and pedestrians to realize that light rail and other commuter trains move faster and whiz by more often than familiar, slow-moving freight trains.

“It sounds fatalistic, but we are going to see accidents going up,” said Donald Costan, administrative manager of the state Office of Traffic Safety in Sacramento, who coordinates a statewide public education campaign. “It is simply because people are not used to seeing trains coming across their streets.”

A recent report by the state Public Utilities Commission underscores the concern. Its statistics show that collisions on light rail lines statewide boosted the overall number of train accidents in 1989 after years of decline. Preliminary figures for 1990--expected to be released in several months--suggest that the upswing continued last year, the report’s author said.

Although concerned about the trend, transit officials point out that the 35 deaths in 273 accidents at public railroad crossings statewide in 1989 represent a minuscule problem compared to the 5,381 killed in hundreds of thousands of highway accidents that year.

Transit authorities hope to relieve automobile congestion and reduce highway accidents with 412 miles of commuter rail lines to be operating by 1995 on existing tracks connecting Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura counties.

Transportation planners say the rail network should remove the equivalent of 23,000 cars from overloaded Southland freeways.

“We would like to run our trains with no accidents, but that particular downside is far outweighed by taking 23,000 people off the freeway in rush hour,” said Dana Reed, chairman of the Orange County Transportation Commission.

Reed leads a six-county group of transit officials that make up the Southern California Regional Rail Joint Powers Authority, which eventually will own and operate commuter trains on the 412-mile system.

Running 10 to 12 fast-moving trains a day on each leg of the system increases the potential for collisions at each of the more than 100 intersections with public streets along the routes, said Richard Stanger, director of rail development for the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.

One indication of the hazards of the new commuter network has emerged in the early experiences of Los Angeles’ light rail system, the Metro Rail Blue Line, which began operating in July.

The 22-mile Blue Line crosses public streets at about 90 intersections, many of them along Washington Boulevard, officials said. In the first six months of operation, there were 35 collisions between trains and cars or trains and pedestrians.

As the light rail system expands into Pasadena and Glendale, dozens of street-level crossings will be placed in the path of light rail trains making hundreds of trips a day. Other routes in the Los Angeles Metro Rail plan will run underground, on elevated tracks or along the median strip of a freeway.

San Diego has its own 38-mile light rail system that runs trains from downtown San Diego to Tijuana and El Cajon. Transit officials plan to extend the San Diego Trolley to Del Mar and to begin light rail service from Oceanside southeast to Escondido.

It is regionwide plans to expand the commuter system that have transit officials concerned.

“Those of us involved in the day-to-day (operations of) railroads are aware of the wave that’s coming,” said Michael Martin, a longtime Santa Fe official based in San Bernardino. “With each additional route that is opened up, the potential increases for train and auto accidents.”

The PUC, which was called the California Railroad Commission until 1946, issues an annual report examining railroad accidents.

As in previous years, most accidents at railroad crossings in 1989 occurred when cars either ignored warning signals, drove around gates blocking the tracks, or ventured onto the tracks in stop-and-go traffic.

Even using its emergency brakes, it takes a train traveling 60 m.p.h. about a mile to stop.

“People seem to underestimate the size and speed of the train and believe they can make it,” said Paul King, author of the PUC report. “Often, it’s blatant risk-taking.”

In Chatsworth, four teen-agers were killed by an Amtrak passenger train Dec. 22 when the driver of the car ignored flashing red lights and swerved around two cars stopped at the crossing in an attempt to beat the train.

“Everyone’s goal is zero accidents,” said Raymond Toohey, a senior transportation engineer with the PUC office in Los Angeles. “I don’t know if that is possible given the amount of traffic in the L.A. Basin.”

Toohey and other engineers and safety specialists are reviewing each public crossing on the Blue Line and every proposed commuter line to determine what measures could be taken to reduce casualties.

In some cases, such as on the Blue Line, transit officials are considering curbs to prevent cars from attempting to get around barrier gates.

Transit officials say a permanent cure is possible by building a bridge or underpass at street-level crossings.

Transportation planners say such projects can cost $8 million, on average, and often are financially out of reach. Mike Zdon, a senior transportation planner for the San Diego Assn. of Governments, has received a cost estimate of $30 million to lower tracks at one station proposed for Solano Beach. Spending that kind of money is not feasible, he said.

The Los Angeles-San Diego corridor, the second busiest rail corridor in the country after Washington to Boston, witnessed a series of heavily publicized train-related deaths last year. Two of the deaths occurred when a freight train hit two commuters cutting across the tracks on a well-used shortcut at the Del Mar station north of San Diego in December.

“It’s a concern,” said Edward Pederson, manager of safety for Amtrak’s Western division, in which trains on the Los Angeles-San Diego corridor move as fast as 90 m.p.h.

Amtrak officials have joined other transit officials to push a safety education program, called Operation Lifesaver, that warns of the dangers posed by playing on railroad tracks or attempting to beat trains to railroad crossings. “Whenever there is a tie, the train always wins,” Pederson said.

Ginger Gherardi, executive director of the Ventura County Transportation Commission, has embraced Operation Lifesaver and has plans to begin preaching its message before the commuter trains roll.

In a view representative of other transit officials, Gherardi said she decided to emphasize safety education after watching in horror the start-up problems with the Blue Line. “Before commuter rail service is introduced in the county, we will do broad outreach,” she said.

Although the Blue Line has earned the reputation of a troubled test case, Los Angeles County transit officials point out that they initiated a train safety campaign before the line began operation.

“We concentrated on the children,” said Stanger of Los Angeles County. “The children are not the problem. It is the parents. Now we are targeting the parents.”

California, with its 9,000 public railroad crossings, ranks seventh in the nation in accidents at crossings, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. Railroad accidents are declining nationwide, unlike in California.

Some transit officials believe that accidents will continue to climb in California until motorists slow down or wise up.

“The bottom line is that you can’t be hit by a train if you are not on the tracks,” said Santa Fe’s Michael Martin. “It sounds too simplistic, but you would be amazed at the situations that people put themselves in.”

SLIGHT UPSWING IN TRAIN ACCIDENTS

After a decade of declining accidents at railroad crossings, safety experts are concerned about a recent upturn in collisions with cars and pedestrians and the resulting injuries and fatalities. Experts worry that accidents will increase with the expansion of light-rail and commuter trains in the state’s urban centers.

1989:

Accidents: 273

People injured: 86

People killed: 35

Source: California Public Utilities Comission, Railroad Safety Branch