The good news is that it took a month before a Brightline train on its new Orlando route killed a pedestrian. The bad news is that it did so in the same circumstances as previous fatalities south of West Palm Beach: a busy railroad crossing with inadequate crossing gates that previously saw only a few slow freight trains per day now populated with frequent fast passenger trains.
The crossing where a pedestrian was killed by a Brightline train last week is shown in this Google street view. Note that crossing gates only block the right side of the road, so pedestrians on the left side are not prevented from crossing tracks when gates are down.
This isn’t part of the route that was built new but an existing freight line that is being used by Brightline trains. When Brightline introduced fast passenger trains to a corridor previously used by slow freight trains, it should have installed better gate crossings. Instead, all it did was issue “ public service announcements on railroad safety that emphasized when the arms go down, don’t go around.” Since, as the photo above shows, the arms don’t completely block the sidewalks when they go down, that’s not very useful advice. Brightline’s failure to add better crossing gates despite the high number of deaths in the Miami-West Palm Beach corridor shows its callous disregard for people’s safety.
One report indicated that the fatality “appears to be a suicide.” Even if true (and it may only be speculation), that doesn’t absolve Brightline from guilt. Just as highway agencies use fencing and nets to protect people from committing suicide by jumping off of bridges, railroads should use fencing and crossing gates to discourage suicide by train.
“appears to be a suicide.” Even if true (and it may only be speculation), that doesn’t absolve Brightline from guilt…….
So brightline made him suicidal?
When people die result so called “Poor design” train crossing it appears justification to shut down entirety of it’s operation.
Yet more pedestrians are killed every month (68) in Florida by cars than the number of pedestrians killed by Brightline in its entire existence (“the deadliest train per mile in America”).
Stroads are bad. People know it, highway departments know it, local governments know it, Even the Federal Highway Administration knows it. So now what? Now we look at our local stroads and decide: Should this be a street, or should it be a road? To Auto drivers, it’s a racetrack.
West of Tampa, Florida, US-19 runs along the Gulf of Mexico, eight or nine lanes of pure American stroad. Thou far from the desert of SouthWest, it’s nick name is “Death Valley”
Non-freeway arterial roads, or “Stroads”, which typically carry large volumes of traffic at high speeds, are the most dangerous for people on foot, accounting for 60% of all fatalities in US. But as the Antiplanner aruged 6. in his Mobility principles. Segregation of use.
Segregation of Use is the problem. Without sidewalks/crosswalks and contemporary zoning practices that segregate retail from housing, it’s extremely dangerous to leave suburban enclaves just for a gallon of milk. Stroads carry huge volumes of traffic because huge volumes of retail, business and residential subdivisions along it. Which are impossible to cross and traverse any other way except by car. more pedestrians (100) were killed in one Florida city (Jacksonville) alone than Brightline in its entire existence in the entire state of Florida.
When a pedestrian or vehicle is hit by a train, the odds of it being the train’s fault are virtually none to nil. The only excuse would be in the event of a signal failure, or a failure by a signal maintainer.
You will never, ever stop a determined craver of their own demise from splattering themselves all over the coupler and pilot of a locomotive or cab car.
San Francisco spent 130 MILLION dollars
More than that cost of the fuking original bridge on anti-suicide nets to deter suicides.
They still have suicides.
LazyReader, think about what you’re talking about. You’re comparing an entire state’s deaths to a single lines. That’s not apples and oranges, that’s apples and boulders stuff. Be less _LAZY_ with your thinking.
LazyReader, think about what you’re talking about. You’re comparing an entire state’s deaths to a single lines. That’s not apples and oranges, that’s apples and boulders stuff. Be less _LAZY_ with your thinking.
Brightline’s safety issues are a case of regulatory failure. Regulations should’ve required safety measures that are lacking. They did not. Failure.
By that reckoning, every street everywhere should have barriers to help keep vehicles and pedestrians separate whether the pedestrian wants to be separated or not regardless of the inconvenience and expense that such barriers will bring.
I will bet that none of you have ever attended the aftermath of one of these nuts’ transformations into kit form.
Nothing stops a determined lunatic. Nothing.
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?I love your website and your take on (often questionable) transportation projects and policies, but I must disagree with your article on the Brightline crossing and pedestrian fatality. I believe you have incorrectly interpreted the Google StreetView photo of the railroad crossing equipment on Aurora Road southwest of its intersection with Harbor City Boulevard. There are indeed pedestrian crossing gates for both directions on the sidewalks along Aurora Road. If you click on the Google StreetView link below the photo in your article, you can scan further to the left and you will see the separate pedestrian gate, controlling pedestrians walking southwest, adjacent to the northeastbound traffic lanes. Likewise, on the right side of the photo in the article (or the corresponding linked StreetView image), there is a separate pedestrian gate southwest of the crossing, controlling pedestrians walking northeast, adjacent to the southwestbound traffic lanes. For each direction, the longer vehicular crossing gate also blocks the pedestrian sidewalk on the “near side” approach to the crossing, while a shorter pedestrian crossing gate blocks the pedestrian sidewalk on the “far side” of the crossing.
Moreover, if you look at a previous StreetView photo of the crossing from 2019, prior to adding the second track for the Brightline project, you can see that vehicle-pedestrian or pedestrian-only crossing gates were provided for all four pedestrian approaches to the crossing even before the Brightline project. For what it’s worth, it should also be noted that the most current StreetView photo is nine months old, and there appears to be railroad crossing equipment in the process of being added in the raised median area, either to supplement the vehicular crossing gates that may be too short, or to provide so-called “four-quadrant” crossing control in an effort (along with the raised median) to preclude vehicles from going around the gates.
One further random observation. An aerial view indicates that the crossing may be roughly 200 feet from the nearby signalized intersection at Harbor City Boulevard. The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) states that traffic signals within 200 feet of a railroad crossing should be interconnected with the crossing controls, with appropriate signal-preemption phasing. Typically, this requires a fairly long advance notice of the approaching train in order to allow the signal to change and provide adequate time to clear vehicles off the tracks. A pedestrian encountering this possibly significant delay may become impatient, and choose to cross, notwithstanding various gates, bells, and flashers. A mis-judging of the train approach speed by an understandably impatient pedestrian can have unfortunate, fatal consequences. It’s not known whether this signal is interconnected, so my explanation of the incident may be just speculation. But perhaps no more speculative than investigators believing that it appeared to be a suicide.
The Brightline project may have its problems, but lack of pedestrian crossing gates at this particular location is not one of them.