4 Gates Proposed at Blue Line Intersections

The Blue Line rail accident that took six lives last weekend might have been prevented if four barrier gates--rather than the standard two--had been in place at the intersection where a train collided with a taxicab, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s safety chief said Thursday.

The taxi, whose driver was unlicensed, was carrying five passengers when it collided with a southbound train at Greenleaf Boulevard and Willowbrook Avenue.

The empty commuter train, which was going out of service and heading back to its service yard, was traveling 55 mph when the cab went around a barrier gate, investigators said.

Only one intersection along the Blue Line’s 22-mile route--at 124th Street in Los Angeles--is equipped with four barrier gates, part of a federally funded demonstration project.

“The staff feels that in this particular accident a four-quadrant grade-crossing protection device may have deterred the driver of the taxicab from entering the intersection, thus avoiding the collision,” safety director Paul Lennon told the MTA board Thursday in his review of the accident.

After Lennon’s report, MTA directors voted to undertake a sweeping assessment of the agency’s safety measures and press for installation of quadrant gates at problem intersections, although regulatory hurdles could take months, if not years, to clear.

With the exception of 124th Street, the MTA now uses two gates at each intersection, which is standard throughout the United States. The gates close to stop oncoming vehicle traffic, assuming cars will stop at the gates and wait for trains to pass. But what often happens, as was the case in Saturday’s collision, is that motorists enter the open lanes on the wrong side of the street, drive in front of the gates, and try to beat the train through the intersection.

MTA investigators, including Lennon, continue to insist that the driver involved in Saturday’s crash, who was behind the wheel of an unlicensed cab with a suspended license, was 100% responsible for the accident.

During the board debate, directors argued that the transit agency must act much more aggressively to stop carnage on the rail line.

Since it opened in 1990, 53 people have lost their lives along the Blue Line right of way, by far the worst record of any of California’s five light-rail systems and said to be one of the worst in the nation. All those who died in the accidents were either on foot or in motor vehicles hit by the trains. In each case, investigators said the accidents were preventable.

While investigations have cleared the MTA in the accidents, Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who heads the 13-member MTA board, said steps have to be taken to protect people from themselves.

“We are going to have to do something that takes into account human error,” Burke said. She compared such measures to protect people from themselves to laws restricting the use of lethal poisons.

Burke said that in addition to installing quadrant gates, the MTA should explore grade separations along the Blue Line tracks. That would involve either raising or lowering tracks through heavily trafficked intersections, a costly countermeasure that transit agency planners decided against in building the system.

With the exception of a few stretches where it runs on elevated tracks, the Blue Line runs at street level, traveling over pedestrian crosswalks and moving through intersections heavily used by cars, trucks and buses. The trains’ travel through densely populated neighborhoods, at speeds that studies show are among the fastest in the nation for a light-rail system, has led critics and system administrators to conclude that accidents are inevitable.

“It’s going to happen again, and again and again, and we are all talking about reactionary stuff,” board member Jose Legaspi said during the debate. “We’re talking about righting something that we could have avoided in the beginning.”

Legaspi said he found the Blue Line’s safety record and MTA’s response very upsetting, particularly in light of a planned Blue Line extension into the Eastside of Los Angeles and to Pasadena, where it will also run at street level.

The MTA board was told installation of four quadrant gates could take months, if not years, because the safety measures would have to go through a California Public Utilities Commission approval process and then receive funding.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and City Councilman Hal Bernson, who both sit on the MTA board, said the MTA could not wait and called for immediate action, such as publicizing punitive measures announced earlier to keep people and vehicles out of the Blue Line right of way, particularly the increase from $104 to $271 in traffic fines that will take effect Jan. 1 for people caught ignoring train warning signals.

Bernson said he thought the MTA should go back to the Legislature and ask for fines of as much as $1,000.

That prompted a retort by Burke, who noted that the Blue Line goes through many low-income communities where the $271 already would put a sizable dent in a household’s income.

“We are not trying to penalize people in poor neighborhoods, we are trying to save lives,” Bernson responded.

In another action, the MTA board approved a study that would extend late night Blue Line, Red Line and Green Line service to Staples Center and other entertainment venues.

The request for the study was made by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who said the MTA missed an opportunity “to promote its mass transit service” to the downtown sports and entertainment complex.

Critics say the cost of extended service, estimated at $1 million to $5 million, would not be justified by the very small number of people they expect to use it.