Metrolink’s Lethal Stretch of Railway to Be Fenced

Transit officials on Monday announced plans to erect safety fencing along a 32-mile stretch of Metrolink tracks between Glendale and Santa Clarita on which almost half of the at least 38 people killed by Metrolink trains have died.

Ten people crossing tracks between Glendale and the Via Princessa station in Santa Clarita have been hit by trains and killed since Metrolink began service in late 1992, Metrolink spokesman Peter Hidalgo said. But the Metrolink count does not include suicides, of which there have been at least six on the same stretch.

Overall, Metrolink says 32 people--not including suicides--have died on the 404 miles of track stretching from Ventura to northern San Diego County since the commuter rail service first rolled in October 1992.

“We don’t understand why this area has experienced such a level,” Hidalgo said, speculating that the tracks may be crossed by more pedestrian and motor traffic because they parallel heavily traveled San Fernando Road.

The mesh safety fences will be built at “strategic” intervals along the 32-mile stretch of the commuter railroad’s Santa Clarita line, such as near bus stops, dead-end streets, overpasses and other heavily traveled areas, Hidalgo said. The fencing is the latest step in a campaign by Metrolink and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to warn pedestrians and motorists away from the tracks, which carry 300-ton trains traveling 45 mph or more.

Officials have already posted signs warning against crossing the tracks and sent more than 1 million brochures to residents of the area, Hidalgo said.

After a teenage couple was killed by a train in Sylmar in March 1993, and the parents of a 23-year-old Encino man killed on a Pacoima track sued Metrolink months later, the commuter railroad erected a two-mile wrought-iron fence along one stretch of tracks in Pacoima. Hidalgo said fatalities along that stretch dropped 95%.

In 1994, a 79-year-old man, his daughter and granddaughter were killed when they crossed unfenced tracks in Glendale and walked into the path of an oncoming train.

MTA Chairman Larry Zarian said his organization has sought to build more fencing for the past 18 months but has been slowed by procedural requirements, such as approval of the expense by the full MTA board and the need to request competitive bids on the project.

“As we began to see the numbers [of deaths] were increasing, we said we have to do something,” said Zarian, who is also a Glendale city councilman. “But something takes a while.”

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Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon, who represents much of the neighborhood surrounding the lethal stretch of tracks and is also on the Metrolink board, said a shortage of funds was also a factor in the delay.

The fencing will cost $756,000 and is financed with funds raised under the terms of Proposition C, a half-cent sales tax, officials said.

Transportation experts have noted that more public attention is focused on train derailments than the hundreds of pedestrians and motorists killed annually crossing tracks.

The Santa Clarita line runs 76 miles between Lancaster and Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, with 18 trains ferrying about 3,800 passengers daily.