Children Near Blue Line Are Getting Lesson in Train Safety

“I’m not going to play near railroad tracks because it’s dangerous,” Christopher Ellis, 10, a fifth-grader at Los Angeles’ 92nd Street School, said Thursday.

His classmate Carla Benjamin, 10, agreed.

“Trains are hard to hear,” she said. “They are fast and smooth and dangerous.”

Elisa Goulet said she learned to stress train safety after her son lost a hand 27 years ago when he was 14, playing on the tracks.

“I’ll never forget him crying: ‘Mom! Don’t let the doctor cut off my hand,’ ” she recalled. “His hand was already gone. What could I say to him?”

To prevent such tragedies, transit and school officials unveiled a 10-lesson curriculum Thursday aimed at teaching schoolchildren who live along the 22-mile Metro Blue Line the importance of train safety.

Six people have died and 52 have been injured in accidents involving Blue Line trains since the line opened two years ago, Southern California Rapid Transit District officials said.

The education campaign comes at a time when RTD officials have instituted several measures designed to reduce train-car collisions. County transit officials recently installed hidden cameras and deployed additional sheriff’s deputies to catch more drivers who risk injury or death by driving around barrier gates as trains approach.

RTD officials introduced the curriculum at the 92nd Street School in South-Central Los Angeles, where children were handed buttons, coloring books and puzzles--all stressing the need to respect trains.

And they were introduced to Travis, a six-foot-tall owl whose motto is “Be Safety Wise!”

“Public safety has to be as much a part of the RTD’s business as operating trains,” said RTD Board President Marvin Holen. “This creative approach will make our safety training programs much more effective for young people who must cross the rail lines on their way to school and back.”

About 60,000 students in 84 schools in the Long Beach, Compton, Lynwood, Downey and Los Angeles Unified school districts will receive the lesson plans over the next three months. The 40-page bilingual curriculum teaches train etiquette, schedules and travel times, bus and pedestrian safety rules, and damage caused by graffiti and vandalism. Students also receive free field trips aboard the Blue Line.

A number of transit authorities have requested the curriculum, including Calgary, Canada; Denver, and Santa Clara County, said Sumire Gant, an RTD publicist who developed the program.

At 92nd Street School, Principal Nancy Parachini said the problem is not caused by children, but by adults.

“It is more a community problem with adults trying to drive around the gates when they are down,” she said.

Fines for skirting around a gate are $68, officials said.

RTD board member Antonio Villaraigosa said the lessons will enable teachers to “use children as a conduit to educate their parents” not to be reckless around trains.