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Uploaded: Saturday, July 7, 2007, 11:35 AM
Caltrain to install more fences along tracks
The aim is to discourage trespassing, and prevent injuries and fatalities
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| New fencing is being installed along select locations of the Caltrain corridor in San Mateo County this summer as part of an ongoing campaign to discourage people from walking on the tracks and prevent injuries and fatalities along the train tracks.
About $1.1 million will be spent in 2007 to construct fencing, Caltrain said. The program will invest around $7 million over the next three or four years to complete fencing along the entire Caltrain route.
Money is also being spent to improve safety at designated crossing areas, Caltrain reported. As recently as Thursday a pedestrian was struck and killed in Palo Alto.
The newest fencing segment is in Burlingame, where high-security fencing will be added from the south end of the Broadway station to Oak Grove Avenue, around 3,875 feet, Caltrain said.
Crews have already installed fencing in Redwood City, Belmont and San Mateo.
The locations for fencing are based on a variety of factors, including the number of trespassing incidents and the opportunity to close gaps in already existing fencing, Caltrain said.
Caltrain also received recommendations from locomotive engineers and transit police, as well as from cities along the rail corridor.
— Bay City News Service Are you receiving Express, our free daily e-mail edition? See a sample and sign-up for Express.
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| Comments
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Posted by Richard Arts, a resident of the Menlo Park: other neighborhood, on Jul 8, 2007 at 8:22 am Why don't they just slow down those half empty trains?
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Posted by Martin Engel, a resident of the Menlo Park: Park Forest neighborhood, on Jul 8, 2007 at 10:38 am There was a time, perhaps a generation ago, when train tracks were pretty much unfenced. Those trains that ran through urban spaces were located in industrial areas away from most of the population, or, away from middle-class population areas.
Caltrain, running down the spine of the Peninsula, has its corridor surrounded by ever increasing population densities. More and more, the tracks are in the way – an obstruction –- to urban civic life. People talk about putting the tracks below ground, or up on viaducts. Grade separations are considered a way of isolating the trains from vehicle traffic. All of which is to say that the forces of urbanization and increased population density are in conflict with the existing rail line. That condition will not, by itself, improve.
There is a very strong force of tradition in the railroad industry, and making changes is anathema. Fencing all of the corridor is not – yet – within rail bureaucracy thinking. “Let’s look at the problem areas and fence those” is probably what they said at one of their meetings. They want to electrify. They will then be obliged to fence that high voltage rail corridor entirely and make it as people-proof as possible. Well, why can’t they do that now? There is, on average, one death a month on the tracks. It may never become a zero-defect condition, but they certainly can reduce that mortality rate considerably. And, they certainly should try harder. Full railroad corridor fencing is a minimum requirement.
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