Accident May Raise Concerns of Commuters : Transportation: Metrolink officials are looking for ways to prevent crashes while reassuring passengers about safety after fatal collision.

The Metrolink rail line’s first fatal accident last week could mean a turning point for the fledgling commuter system as it struggles to woo riders, some transit experts said.

The accident could raise two key concerns among potential passengers as they consider switching from driving their cars to using public transportation: Will the crash prove to be an anomaly? Or will Metrolink be plagued by more mishaps that threaten passengers’ safety and cause inconvenience?

Regional officials await the outcome of the accident investigation to learn whether they can take further measures to prevent collisions between trains and motorists--the goal of a federal program.

The federal drive began after 1,200 people were killed in highway-rail crossings in 1972. Today, the number of such fatalities has been halved. During the first six months of this year, 312 people were struck and killed at nearly 300,000 rail-automobile intersections nationwide.

To reduce accidents, the government is spending about $160 million to improve crossings and erect warning devices such as gates and bells. However, the privately owned site of last Wednesday’s Metrolink crash had no warning equipment. Several federal agencies have also worked jointly to reduce crossings.

Even so, collisions at rail-highway crossings account for half of all deaths caused by trains each year.

“Grade crossing accidents are more numerous than other train accidents,” said Grady Cothen, associate administrator for safety with the Federal Railroad Administration. “Certainly, in terms of impact on the public and employee safety, they are the single major problem we face.”

Transit experts say it is too early to tell whether the fatal accident will influence the 3,000 passengers who regularly ride the double-decker trains.

But Richard Stanger, executive director of the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, said riders will not be deterred from taking Metrolink this week. And, according to Stanger and other officials, their contention that the system is safe was bolstered by the fact that only 12 passengers were slightly injured when the train--traveling 77 m.p.h.--derailed.

“The car protected the passengers. There were only minor injuries and the train stays upright and protects human life in the train--that’s a testament to the safe design of the car,” Stanger said. “The passengers were very well protected and shouldn’t feel that the train is unsafe to them.”

The collision killed Jaime Farias, 37, of Los Angeles, a dump truck driver who suffered massive head injuries when his vehicle was struck by the oncoming train.

Diana Gottshall, a Santa Clarita resident who works downtown and was on the train when it hit the five-ton truck, takes a fatalistic attitude toward riding the train.

“You fly, you drive, you cross the street--you can get killed all those ways,” she said. “If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. I was more nervous riding in a van pool with a really, really bad driver than I am on this train.”

Others say the accident will affect Metrolink ridership only if it proves to be the first of a string of similar events.

“It wouldn’t affect the public attitude unless you get a rash of these--we’ve become so inured to traffic accidents,” said Wolfgang Homburger, a retired transportation engineer. “An accident is purely accidental. It’s only when you get a pattern that you can blame the designers or the operators.”

Still, other transit experts said that the response to incidents such as Wednesday’s accident can be emotional and even irrational.

“People perceive that if they are driving themselves, they have control of their destiny; and if they are sitting in a bus, plane or train, somebody else is controlling their destiny,” said William Garrison of UC Berkeley’s Institute for Transportation Study.

An accident, he said, “does have an effect but there’s no analytical base for saying how many riders you are going to lose.”

For Metrolink officials, the accident evoked painful memories of the Blue Line, which was plagued with more than 100 accidents--including seven fatalities--after it began operating in 1990.

In fact, this was the sort of incident that Metrolink officials had hoped to prevent when they sent out 1 million mailers, posted crossing guards and sent speakers to schools before Metrolink began service Oct. 26.

Their campaign was inevitable, given the Blue Line’s checkered beginning--and the growing reliance among cities and counties upon rail to solve congestion woes.

Some officials fear that with the growth of rail systems, the number of accidents could again increase. And the collisions could be more severe because trains travel faster than before and the weight of some cars and trucks is diminishing, warned the Federal Railroad Administration’s Cothen.

“It’s the social cost of having a technological system,” said Garrison of Berkeley.

Despite efforts to install more warning devices, only one-third of all public grade crossings have them. At the nation’s 115,425 private grade crossings, which are intended for use by the owner and select others, only a stop sign and a private railroad crossing sign are required.

The solution, many experts say, is to eliminate grade crossings altogether--a lofty goal in view of the 300,000 crossings that intersect rail lines nationwide.

High-speed bullet trains, such as the French line that operates between Paris and Lyon, have no such crossings and no fatalities. In fact, for the first time in 28 years of service, the bullet train in Tokyo struck and killed a man last week--an incident that police called a suicide.

“Rail is extremely safe; what is so dangerous are the cars and trucks going across the tracks,” said Gilbert E. Carmichael, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration. “A train going 79 m.p.h. needs one-quarter mile to stop--what we want to do is start eliminating these at-grade crossings.”

But the alternative to grade crossings is expensive. A vehicle overpass can cost upward of several million dollars to build, depending on the terrain, experts say. As a cheaper alternative, Carmichael and other officials are pressing to eliminate unnecessary crossings, or ones duplicated by others nearby.

The Pacoima private crossing at Del Sur Street, where the Metrolink accident occurred, is an unnecessary crossing because there is another one nearby, officials said. After the crash, officials announced that the Del Sur Street crossing would be closed.

In the coming days, local officials, as well as those from the Federal Railroad Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, will try to answer a number of questions about the Pacoima collision, including what cautionary signs--if any--were posted, how far down the tracks the truck driver could see, and how familiar the driver was with the intersection.

The days ahead may also prove stormy for Metrolink officials.

City Councilman Nate Holden, a mayoral candidate and chairman of the council’s Transportation Committee, has called for an investigation. And some longtime critics have begun to speculate that Metrolink officials may have overlooked crucial safety issues.

“Obviously,” Homburger said, “they are going to be ducking a lot of missiles thrown at them.”