Blue Line Accidents

You took great pains in your Dec. 23 edition to tell us how dangerous the Blue Line is because stupid people try to beat a 55-mph train by driving around crossing gates. The universal suggestion seems to be to make the trains travel more slowly. Come on, people--engage brain-housing group. There’s a simple solution to the problem of people driving around crossing gates at railroad crossings: Build crossing gates that are impossible to get around.

WILLIE HUGHES

Los Angeles

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It is always sad when people are hurt or die in accidents, even if overwhelmingly of their own carelessness. This carelessness, or often even recklessness, is by no means the fault of the Blue Line. As a commuter from Long Beach to Los Angeles, I want faster trains. Not slower trains.

Where is the clamor to slow freeway traffic down to a crawl (well, perhaps it is already there) to reduce the death rate there? Need I remind readers that it was the same issue that triggered the slow strangulation of the Red Car? Cities insisted on building unlimited road crossings across the railroad tracks and then passed ordinances compelling the Red Cars to slow down, thus making them noncompetitive with the auto. Deja vu all over again!

CARL SCHIERMEYER

Long Beach

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Other than a suicide in the subway, the MTA’s Red and Green lines run faster than the Blue Line and have had no fatalities. The difference is not speed but grade separation.

Some of the voices lobbying to slow down the Blue Line are long-time rail foes. I don’t hear them trying to slow our blood-soaked freeways from 55 to 35 miles per hour.

ROGER CHRISTENSEN

Sherman Oaks