Commuter rail tests show peril at signals
Engineers see vehicles trying to cross tracks
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The Music City Star is to begin service next month. Engineers doing test runs have seen vehicles try to cross the tracks in front of them, nearly causing accidents. ALAN POIZNER / FOR THE TENNESSEAN |
By TRAVIS LOLLER
Staff Writer
Published: Tuesday, 08/08/06
A school bus that tried to beat a train at a crossing. A backhoe that got stuck on the tracks. Cars that drive around the warning gates.
Engineers testing the new Music City Star commuter rail have seen a lot of dangerous driving in the weeks since they started trial runs of the trains between downtown Nashville and Lebanon in preparation for a Sept. 18 startup.
In one case, a train operator had to make a sudden stop to avoid a collision.
"Just today we saw two people with the gates down on their cars," engineer Lane DeVors said last week. The cars had stopped for the train, but not in time, and been caught with the warning gates on top of their cars, he said.
Tennessee is 15th among U.S. states in highway-rail crossing collisions and 14th in fatalities among people walking on or near train tracks, according to Federal Railroad Administration statistics.
If drivers and pedestrians don't learn to be more careful, the additional trains of the commuter rail could mean even more lives lost, said Jill Moody, state coordinator for the nonprofit rail safety group, Operation Lifesaver.
The Regional Transportation Authority, which runs the Music City Star, does not want to see that happen.
"Promoting rail safety among both motorists and pedestrians is our number one goal," spokeswoman Teresa McKissick said. The agency has trained several safety educators and voluntarily installed equipment to ensure that all 31 public crossings on the new route have lights, bells and warning gates.
There also are 15 private crossings, but McKissick did not know how many of those were protected by gates.
Last Thursday, DeVors said, at one of the public crossings a school bus ran across the tracks right in front of a train.
"The bus was stopped at the crossing when the lights started flashing and the gate came down, and the bus driver just took off," he said. "I think he panicked."
The bus was on a training run and was not carrying students, Metro Public Schools spokesman Woody McMillin said of the incident at Andrew Jackson Parkway in Hermitage. The driver has since resigned.
In another incident, on Beckwith Road in Mt. Juliet, "a pickup truck started pulling out in front of us and then hit (a) ditch at 20 mph … sideways," said engineer Shaun Watt.
Right now, the trains are running at only 30 mph. But by the time they are ready to carry passengers in mid-September, they'll be going 59 mph, the engineers said.
That may not sound like a lot, but trains can't stop as quickly as cars can.
"It takes a mile to stop when we're going full speed," said engineer Rob Corriveau.
A lot of the recent incidents could be because residents aren't used to seeing so many trains on the tracks during the day, Moody said.
Craig Wade, general manager of Nashville and Eastern Railroad, which runs the freight line on the tracks, said the company runs two trains between Nashville and Hermitage regularly during the day. The others run at night.
Freight trains are generally much longer and run more slowly, typically at 29 mph.
Corriveau said he thinks drivers see a flashing rail warning and think they're going to get stuck waiting for a long freight train to clear the tracks, so they may try to beat the train.
"What they don't realize is by the time the gates go down, it takes (the commuter trains) about 30 seconds to clear the crossing," he said. The Music City Star trains consist of only two and three cars plus a locomotive.
Last Friday, a Music City Star train was able to stop just in time when it came upon a backhoe that had tried to cross the tracks in a Wilson County field and gotten its bucket caught, Corriveau said.
"He got hung up, and he couldn't move forward or back," Corriveau said. "We only had about 1,000 feet to stop, but we made it. When he saw us, his eyes got huge."
The Music City Star will make stops in Martha, Mt. Juliet, Hermitage, Donelson and the downtown station near First Avenue and Broadway on its 32-mile run.
Schedules remain in flux, but they generally follow peak commuter hours. The latest schedule has trains leaving the suburban stations between 6 a.m. and 7:50 a.m. and leaving downtown Nashville between 4:20 p.m. and 5:45 p.m.
There are a few off-peak and reverse commute trains, as well. The full ride from Lebanon to downtown lasts 50 minutes.
According to the Music City Star Web site, a prepaid ticket from Lebanon to downtow
n is $5, while a ticket from Donelson is $4. A monthly pass from Lebanon is $168 and from Donelson is $134. •
Published: Tuesday, 08/08/06