Caltrain 314 hit and killed a woman this morning, stopping train traffic in both directions for more than 90mn. We were on the train, and were allowed to leave at about 9am in Redwood City, to be picked by a bus or ride our bicycles the rest of the way.
Our condolences go to the family of the victim; on the train, the conductor first announced the delay was due to some slight medical emergency, which wins the understatement of the year award. Insensitiveness awards goes to the guy sitting across from us, who sighed looks like we'll be here for a while. Memo to this guy: we ran over a pedestrian, maybe we are not in such a rush. Actually, the insensitiveness award is shared with the guy on his cell phone who was bragging: I felt it! I felt it!. Dumb ass, if you knew better to gloat about a tragedy, and if you knew just a bit of physics, you knew you felt the engineer hitting the brakes.
Anyone else thinks that Caltrain has a wee security issue here?
Picture of the scene at Redwood City from CBS 5
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I am not sure I would call this a "runaway" train, but my condolences to the friends and family of the victim. In an odd twist of fate, I decided to skip coffee and take train 312 this morning, so I was fortunate enough to be ahead of this tragedy.
Doug over at www.municide.com was on the train too; he has some phone pics of the goings on.
About two years ago, a woman committed suicide by walking in front of a southbound train just north of the Mountain View station, so close that waiting on the Northbound platform I could see the tarp they had covering her body. Caltrain was doing the best they could, single tracking it, and I got a seat on the bike car across from a woman coming back from school who was freaking out. I distracted her until we were past the scene by asking her about law school.
I don't think Caltrain has a security problem. These incidents will happen no matter what they do, and while todays accident may be a terrible mistake, I've been on two other trains where it was careless stupidity (a car stopped on the track and a pedestrian ducking under the gates to get through before the train crossed), but they can reduce the number of accidents with grade separations like in Hillsdale and San Mateo.
Grade separations are expensive, but without them many of these accidents will still happen.
It all comes down to money...is building massive grade separations the best use of our public dollars? If you know someone who was killed by a train, I can understand thinking that we should separate all grade crossings, but it doesn't seem realistic to me.
I was also riding on this train this morning. My distinct impression is that the train was not moving very fast when this occurred, which to me suggests either a terrible mistake on the part of the woman, or perhaps suicide.
I am certainly not trying to minimize this tragedy and its impact on her family, to which I extend my condolences. But I saw nothing happen that would lead me to conclude that Caltrain was in some way negligent in this case.
Just my two cents.
I was on a train one or two behind the accident. It's strange to have something that seems like such a big deal (commuting delays) put into the proper perspective.
One thing I can blame Caltrain for is an obvious lack of communication. All of the conductors have radios and walkie-talkies, but no one seemed to know anything about what was going on.
I was on the train also - 2nd car from the back. All day I was wondering if the person thought the train was gonna stop at Redwood City and decided to take a chance and cross or if it was suicide. Either way it was a tragedy. The thing that bothered me in addition to the weird announcement about a "slight medical emergency" was the time it took to get us off the train and the lack of coordination moving passengers (all except Yahoo-ers who had their corporate shuttle pick them up). I was surprised that a Caltrain representative was not onsite until 9am, right before we started unloading. You always wonder, if there's an emergency, how our services will react. I have to say I'm not too confident with CalTrain.
Mike: yes, it all come down to money. It says a lot about this society that it rather pay the price of accidents like pay the costs of preventive measures. No dense urban environment in a city the size of San Francisco will have a train running through at 50 mph in Europe, not one I'm aware of.
I didn't mean to come off so harsh in my comments. In my opinion, we have squandered so many of our tax dollars (at all levels of government) while letting our infrastructure crumble. Caltrain should have been upgraded and improved long before now, but it was never a priority. Long-term maintenance doesn't make for good press==>votes.
Once again there will be much hand-wringing about the safety of grade crossings, and then it will fade away until the next incident.
Sorry to hear that the information flow was so poor for those stuck in trains along the way. I was once delayed by a grade-crossing crash (property damage only, fortunately), but we got pretty good information and I was able to make phone calls to let people know I would be late. The time estimates they gave for restarting service were reasonably accurate.
The Chron is reporting that it was probably not a suicide, and the victim went around the lowered crossing gates. Her friends say she may have seen the northbound train pass by and thought it was safe to go, not realizing a southbound train was coming by next.
Cedichou, why wouldn't an SF-sized city have trains running through it at 50 miles per hour? Cars go fast enough to kill pedestrians all the time, right there on the streets, and they go still faster on the freeways. It would be helpful to have trains and streets completely grade-separated from each other if it's affordable (and it's not), but it's pretty easy to prevent yourself from being hit by a train--watch, listen, wait for the train to pass, and don't stop your car or stand on the tracks.
And, back to the "50 mph" comment, if the primary goal of preventing collisions were maintaining reliably speedy Caltrain service--well, slowing the trains won't make them any faster.
Michael Patrick: I don't see why they should. Wait: they should not. They don't any place else. Even BART has grade separation. Cars don't go 50mph in cities, last time at check. 35mph is the limit, and a car stops on a dime, the train yesterday stopped in half a mile.
If it is so easy to avoid trains, then why do people keep colliding with them? Have you clicked the links in the last sentence: that is five occurences in about a year, two lethal in 2006.
I don't have data, but it seems to me that making baby bullet run fast without committing to the corresponding infrastructure improvement is begging for trouble.
why wouldn't an SF-sized city have trains running through it at 50 miles per hour? Cars go fast enough to kill pedestrians all the time, right there on the streets, and they go still faster on the freeways.
Trains take much longer to come to a complete stop than a typical car (due to the weight) so there's a small chance of a driver being able to prevent such an accident. A CalTrain conductor couldn't stop a train in time if he saw someone or a car on the tracks.
No, cars don't go 50 except on freeways, but I meant that they do go fast enough to cause injury or death to people on foot--the fault being sometimes with the driver and sometimes with the ped (though usually with the car).
But avoiding these incidents usually depends on the individual. The same goes for avoiding train collisions. How do people find themselves on Caltrain's tracks, about to be hit by a train? Gates will malfunction, but far more often it's because they were not paying attention, they went around the gates, they tried to beat the train, they were not acting responsibly (including suicide), or some other similar scenario resulting from mistakes the individual could have easily prevented.
Slowing the trains down makes sense when it's one of those lesser-used tracks branching out from the main line, but Caltrain is on the main line, does not share right-of-way with busy streets, and at grade crossings intersects at mostly right angles. Caltrain and its tracks are conspicuous, have no unregulated street-level crossings (as far as I know), and do not have confusing layouts. The trains rumble, whistle, shine lights, and have red & white stripes at either end; the gates flash and ring bells; lots of mechanisms are there to warn people of danger.
It's common sense that trains can't stop on a dime; therefore, don't expect them to do so. When you're driving and see tracks, DO NOT EVER stop on them. When the gates are lowered, do not drive around them or speed through the crossing. The DMV tells all recipients of drivers' licenses the same. And do not walk along tracks, and do not cross on foot unless you are absolutely certain no train is coming (and that's easy to gauge).
I wouldn't argue against grade separations in key locations, especially if trains there commonly go above 50, but I agree with the other Mike that doing them at all Caltrain's crossings is unrealistic.
(By the way, just as a side note, the matter of the babysitter here in San Jose is very different because there were no safe, regulated crossing points, grade-separated or otherwise, near where the child died. That I find truly unacceptable.)