Bay Area Rail Line Posts Signs to Deter Suicides Along Tracks

At 8:40 one Friday morning three years ago, railroad engineer Chris Payne was easing his locomotive through the Redwood City station, rolling at only 20 mph because of nearby track construction. Behind him were 375 tons of iron and steel as well as hundreds of Caltrain passengers.

For some reason, one man on the platform ahead stood out, Payne recalled. “I just noticed the guy as I was approaching him.”

The man, Ralph Gilbert Young, 70, suddenly jumped in front of the engine’s path.

“I hit him in midair,” said Payne. “I had nightmares for a month.”

Young, a native Californian who lived nearby, died instantly, one of 54 suicides in the last nine years along tracks operated by Caltrain, a popular commuter railroad running from San Francisco south to Gilroy.

Only 77 Miles of Track

California annually leads the nation in railroad fatalities, although the Federal Railroad Administration does not list suicides separately because they are sometimes hard to classify.

But the 54 recorded by Caltrain recently alarmed agency officials because they operate only 77.2 miles of track. By contrast, Southern California’s Metrolink, with more than 400 miles of rail crisscrossing densely populated Southern California, suffered 32 suicides in virtually the same period.

“It was suggested to me that there’s nothing we can do about it,” bristled San Mateo County Supervisor Mike Nevin, who serves on the tri-county board overseeing Caltrain. “I said, ‘Well, we can do something about it.’ ”

Nevin proposed a new safety program a few months ago after another name was added to the roll call of those who walk, run, jump or simply lie down in front of trains.

Along the tracks north of San Jose and at 33 stations, the rail link is posting signs offering hope to people who may be contemplating suicide. Each shows a pair of interlocked hands and promises “There is Help,” listing a toll-free phone number for the Suicide Prevention Hotline.

Mike Scanlon, executive director of Caltrain, said, “I want to know that we took our best shot to try and prevent suicide.”

Caltrain has been run by three Bay Area counties since 1992. But its route dates to the Civil War when the area was sparsely settled. In the subsequent decades, bustling communities such as Burlingame, San Mateo, Redwood City, Palo Alto and Menlo Park have grown up. Between San Jose and San Francisco there are 45 grade crossings.

“It’s a railroad that runs through a heavily urbanized area,” Scanlon said. More than 10 million passengers board annually.

A train trip in the locomotive’s cab shows the dangers faced daily. Trespassers stroll a few feet away. Joggers run alongside. Eager ready-to-board riders step across yellow do-not-cross platform lines as the train nears. At any moment, one may decide to step in front of the train.

Will the help-is-available message change troubled minds?

“I think it’s really hard to measure the effectiveness of something like that,” said Stephanie Hazen, who heads the crisis intervention and suicide prevention center in San Mateo County that fields the hotline calls. “But even if one person sees the sign and it makes him realize that help is out there, it’s worthwhile.”

Anger Is Said to Play a Big Role

Ed Pederson, Metrolink’s manager of safety and security, said the railroad industry will be keenly watching results. He is concerned that the signs may provide a suicide notion to “people depressed already.”

People who kill themselves in such a violent manner are “most serious about suicide,” said Dr. Herbert Hendin, medical director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

They are “usually pretty angry, angry with themselves,” said Hendin, a psychiatrist, as demonstrated by their intentional “attacking and disfiguring” of themselves.

Many of the Caltrain suicide victims have provided warnings, coroner’s investigations show:

* A Redwood City man in his early 30s was depressed because he was unable to care for his children. He had said “if he was going to kill himself it would be by a train,” one report states. With photographs of his children displayed on his nearby bicycle, he put his head on the tracks one spring night in 1995.

* A Millbrae octogenarian had tried suicide previously and had asked his wife if she would remain in their house “if something happened to me.” With his arms in the air, the retired naval architect walked in front of an afternoon train in 1996.

* A Menlo Park teenager depressed over her father’s death had attempted suicide a few months earlier. She walked in front of a train two hours before sunrise one day in 1996.

* A 43-year-old Belmont woman suffering from chronic depression had also tried to kill herself a few months earlier but was not under medical care. The homemaker knelt in front of a train during an the evening rush hour in 1997.

In every case, railroad personnel like Chris Payne become secondary victims:

“It scares . . . you for a while,” said Caltrain engineer Darrell Jacobson, 51. He has been at the controls for three suicides.

Payne, now Caltrain’s safety officer, experienced about a dozen deadly incidents--suicides and fatal accidents--the last of which prompted him to change his job.

“It wasn’t a matter so much of not being able to drive trains anymore, but trying to . . . help the situation,” said Payne, who has spent 30 of his 49 years working on the railroad.

Engineers know the physics all too well; there’s no way to quickly stop their trains, which travel at speeds of up 79 mph. High up in the locomotive’s cab, they are often the last ones to see the victim, whose final act may be to ignore the frantic cacophony of warning sounds and the desperate waves and shouts of train personnel.

An awareness of how Caltrain personnel may be affected was shown in a poignant letter the railroad recently received from the relative of a man who had stepped in front a train.

“My heart goes out to you. . . . I am so sorry that you became involved with our family in such a tragic way. . . . As I explained to [his] daughters, were there any way the engineer could have stopped the train, he would have.

“I told them how very sad you must feel. They understand. . . . Had he been thinking clearly, had he been thinking at all, had he stopped to think of the person behind the controls, of those who would have to step in. . . . Please forgive [him].”