{"id":251332374,"date":"2012-12-18T22:32:54","date_gmt":"2012-12-18T22:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=251332374"},"modified":"2012-12-18T22:32:54","modified_gmt":"2012-12-18T22:32:54","slug":"pedestrian-deaths-on-railroad-tracks-the-failure-of-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=251332374","title":{"rendered":"Pedestrian Deaths on Railroad Tracks: The Failure of Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

[B’ Spokes: I’m going to repeat what I have said before about Baltimore Metro area train\/pedestrian fatalities “Why would anyone walk on train tracks when there is a perfectly good high speed road with no shoulders or sidewalks to walk on? Oh wait.. never mind. I guess as long as the victims are at fault nobody has to do anything to correct this, right?”<\/a>
\nStreets Blog goes into some more detail, and I would like to point out if responsibility is shared it makes it that much harder to hold those who are responsible accountable.]<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

by Tanya Snyder, Streets blog<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

The Federal Railroad Administration estimates that 500 people die every year walking on railroad tracks [PDF<\/a>]. But who bears the responsibility of preventing these deaths? Was it Kristen\u2019s responsibility to avoid trespassing where freight trains roar past? Her town\u2019s responsibility to erect a fence before being spurred on by her death? Should planners have recognized that it\u2019s human nature for people to take a calculated risk to reach the amenities they used? Or was it the railroads\u2019 responsibility to identify where these deaths happen and try to mitigate the risk?<\/p>\n

A recent series by reporter Todd Frankel at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/a> makes clear that the responsibility is shared. But he also points a finger at the railroads, which have been obstructionist as others try to address the issue:<\/p>\n

\n

A few years ago, when the [Federal Railroad Administration] tried to get a better sense of who was walking on the tracks \u2014 by looking at trespassing cases that didn\u2019t end in a casualty \u2014 regulators asked the railroads for help. They wanted the railroads\u2019 internal trespassing reports. The railroads refused.<\/p>\n

The agency recently was forced to concede defeat, noting that it \u201cfailed to garner the necessary support from the rail industry to conduct the study.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there was the issue of where the casualties occurred.<\/p>\n

For years, the agency required railroads to report only the county of a trespassing death or injury. Not the city. Not the closest milepost on the railroad system. Having so few details made it hard to identify hot spots for trespassing, said Ron Ries, director of the agency\u2019s Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Safety and Trespass Prevention Division.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We reported<\/a> in the spring that FRA guidance on pedestrian safety at railroad tracks focused only on approved crossings, ignoring the risks of so-called \u201ctrespassing\u201d that occurs outside of those areas.<\/p>\n

Only in the last year did federal law require railroads to provide GPS coordinates of the crashes. Before that, their crash reports only listed the county where the crash happened, making it impossible to identify where these crashes are clustered. Now, with better information, some danger \u201chotspots\u201d became apparent.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

In an interview with Streetsblog, Frankel of the Post-Dispatch said Hyattsville perfectly fits the profile of a likely hotspot for pedestrian deaths on railroad tracks: \u201cIt\u2019s a residential neighborhood, high density, the speed limit on [the train tracks] is 70 miles per hour, you have both freight and commuter rail,\u201d Frankel said. \u201cAnd you have residential on one side, commercial on the other, so people have reasons to be going back and forth.\u201d [Just like in the Baltimore Metro area.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

He said that when he visited the site, there were obvious paths of well-worn gravel across the track, but the railroads still claim it\u2019s impossible to know what spots are popular pedestrian crossings. Frankel said that tracks that carry fast trains have to be inspected twice a week by a slow-moving truck. Those trucks clearly see the \u201cdeer trails\u201d worn by many feet.<\/p>\n

In Villa Park, he said, where Kristen Bowen died, it felt like a train went by every ten minutes. The frequency of train traffic is another risk factor. And he says passenger trains are more dangerous than freight, \u201cbecause the trains tend to be smaller, lighter, and faster. Quieter<\/em>.\u201d Many of these cases involved commuter rail and inter-city Amtrak trains.<\/p>\n

\nhttps:\/\/dc.streetsblog.org\/2012\/12\/13\/pedestrian-deaths-on-railroad-tracks-the-failure-of-design\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[B’ Spokes: I’m going to repeat what I have said before about Baltimore Metro area train\/pedestrian fatalities “Why would anyone walk on train tracks when there is a perfectly good high speed road with no shoulders or sidewalks to walk on? Oh wait.. never mind. I guess as long as the victims are at fault … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Pedestrian Deaths on Railroad Tracks: The Failure of Design”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251332374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251332374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=251332374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251332374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251332374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=251332374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=251332374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}