Every year, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) gives out awards to various transit agencies that make no sense at all, unless the purpose of the awards is to give the agencies political cover for their screw ups. Last week, APTA gave a safety award to Virgin Trains (formerly known as Brightline).
Brightline/Virgin trains in Florida have killed 22 people since they began operating in late 2017, including several since the name was changed from Brightline to Virgin earlier this year. Virgin claims the accidents aren’t its fault; people are simply trespassing on its tracks. But if you put a dangerous animal, or a dangerous machine, in an urban environment, you can’t claim innocence when people are hurt or killed because they failed to avoid your danger.
APTA’s award to Virgin says that the company created a “mobile barbershop situated in a see-through container on the back of a truck” and took it to low-income neighborhoods, giving free haircuts to anyone promising not to play on the train tracks. Yet, amazingly enough, people are still getting hit by Virgin’s trains.
This week, APTA gave the head of Sacramento Regional Transit, Henry Li, the award for being the best transit CEO in the country. “His leadership at SacRT has created phenomenal results not only in the quality of service, but also in the restoration of positive financial ratings, increase in ridership, implementation of innovations, and the rebuilding of public trust,” claims the award.
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What are they talking about? In the two years before Li was named head of SacRT, the agency lost 14 percent of its riders. In the two years after being named head, it lost 13 percent of its riders. Is a 1 percent reduction in the loss what APTA means by “increase in ridership”? By the way, the agency is so far on track to lose another 9 percent in 2019. Among major transit agencies, only a couple are losing riders faster than SacRT.
What is going on here? APTA should be looking at safety and ridership records when it gives out its awards. Instead, it looks at the lip service agencies pay to safety and ridership.
Alternatively, it is picking the agencies with the worst records and giving them awards so that the agencies will have something, at least, to show to politicians and regulators when they ask for more money or (in the case of Virgin) permission to run extra fast trains through urban neighborhoods and on tracks that also run freight trains carrying liquid natural gas. Whatever the reason, these awards are about as believable as anything else coming from APTA, which means not believable at all.
I have come across planners who are furious at cars for killing 40,000 people per year but won’t get rid of passenger rail that kills people on the tracks in their area. An interesting ideological hypocrisy.
How many of those deaths are attributed to the drivers believing they can beat the train.
A lot of these deaths are from trespassers that would not be trespassing if the built environment around them discouraged their actions. There was a bicyclist in Boyton Beach who died at a crossing that merely blocked half a lane. At a minimum all crossings for these trains should block the entire roadway. There should be fences, medians or landscaping the largely prevents people from going around the gates. These things are not all that expensive. We’d expect much more from a freeway.
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How many of those deaths are attributed to the drivers believing they can beat the train.
” ~ Lazy Reader
I couldn’t find anything defenitive but IIRC all Virgin Trains USA deaths have not involved autos.
This points to all the more need for a built environment that discourages the dangerous trespassing. For example, I think most people would agree that fencing isn’t difficult nor expensive. And it’d be worth it to solve a few lives.
Here’s a tragic example of the issues Brightline exacerbates. The issue was already there but it’s easier to dodge a 25mph train than a 79mph passenger train.
Where this 74 year old man died was on a stretch of 2 1/2 miles with no pedestrian / biclyst crossings. So people do what they always do, cross the tracks where they have easy access. As you can see on google streetview, FEC and Brightline have no visible signage. Heck, just a couple hundred feet of fence, even on one side of the tracks would stop 99% of people from tresspassing. What’s the use, you can’t get across without climbing a fence.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/pompano-beach/fl-ne-pompano-brightline-fatality-20190412-story.html
https://www.google.com/maps/@26.2107873,-80.1320223,3a,37.5y,78.68h,90.7t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sC8jdDeFAONfsF4DfyXJjaQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
This isn’t just Brighline’s issue. CIty, County, FL DOT and USDOT do not seem to take into consideration the impact and likely behaviors of pedestrians when closing crossings.
To my knowledge no one knowledge no one has every looked at pedestrian trespasser accidents of open crossings versus closed crossings. From how I’ve seen people act, I suspect closed crossings rate of accidents w/ pedestrians isn’t all that dissimilar to open crossings.