Parents Ask Metrolink for Safeguards at Tracks Near School

Hoping to prevent a tragedy, parents of students from Fulton Junior High School and Valerio Street Elementary School met with a Metrolink representative this week to discuss the shortcut students take across the tracks on the way to school.

The meeting Thursday, which drew about 50 people to the United Auto Workers Local 645 Union Hall on Van Nuys Boulevard, focused on the section of railway at the end of Willis Avenue, between Blythe and Raymer streets. Metrolink trains race daily past this spot, which has no crossing guard, on their way between Moorpark and Union Station.

“I don’t want them to do something after a fatality occurs,” said Rae Sheffield, whose two grandchildren attend the schools. “I want something done before it occurs. You don’t hear the train until it’s on top of you.”

In the morning, the train passes by the shortcut shortly before 7:30, as students are on their way to 8 a.m. classes. Students also encounter the train on the way home from school between 3:15 and 3:30 p.m.

The only way for youngsters to avoid the tracks on the way to school is to go down to Sepulveda Boulevard or Van Nuys Boulevard, both several blocks away. But as many as 50 children choose the shortcut.

“If they don’t use it, they have to go five or 10 blocks out of the way, and children won’t do this,” Bonnie Chisholm, office manager at Valerio Street School, said in an interview. “We’ve been very concerned about this. Metrolink has to put something in.”

During the meeting, Sheffield and other parents asked Metrolink public affairs manager Francisco Oaxaca to consider surrounding the railway with a fence and then building an overpass or providing a bus for students. Oaxaca promised to inspect the site and take the parents’ suggestions back to Metrolink Executive Director Richard Stanger.

Last month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved a pilot effort to spend more than $800,000 to provide fencing, warning signs and ditches along a two-mile stretch of Metrolink tracks in Sylmar, San Fernando and Pacoima, where six deaths have occurred since the rail line began operating last October.

Although Oaxaca said Metrolink does not have the funds nor any regulations requiring it to fence off the eventual 400 miles of track used by Metrolink, “there are some areas where we would consider fencing. This would be one of them.”

In the meantime, Oaxaca said Metrolink will distribute 300,000 bilingual safety flyers during the next month to educate parents and children on the proper way to cross the rail tracks.

“We want the community to realize that we’re listening to what they say and acting on it,” Oaxaca said. “We’re not here to provide lip service.”