[Editor’s Note: Mr. Goodmon leads the Citizens' Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line, fixexpo.org]
The Los Angeles-to-Long Beach MTA Blue Line, America's deadliest light rail line, was involved in yet another pedestrian fatality last Friday in Watts.
The fatal accident came just hours after Ray LaHood, the Secretary of of Transportation, held a town hall with U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at MTA's headquarters to discuss the federal transportation funding bill currently being drafted in Congress.
The death is the 99th in more than 850 accidents.
These multiples are higher than any other rail line in the country over a period of almost 20 years, dating back to July 1990.
Rail safety experts and advocates all point to the Blue Line's inherently unsafe street-level crossings, where the 225-ton trains travel at high speeds up to 35-55 mph in densely populated urban areas and across congested streets, and MTA's callous disregard for public safety.
“It is so bad the train operators nicknamed the Blue Line, 'Death Row,'” said Lester Hollins, a former MTA light rail operator.
Mr. Hollins continued: “MTA knows that people are going to die and that passengers and operators are going to be injured when they build these street-level crossings.
“We didn't have all of those accidents or any deaths on the Green Line, which operates for over 20 miles grade-separated — without crossing a street, including elevated for four miles in El Segundo. MTA and the politicians know what they need to do to stop painting the tracks with blood. Build the lines underground or elevated. But they just don't want to.”
If the Geography Were Different
I believe that if America's deadliest light rail line were rolling through Hancock Park, Beverly Hills and Westwood, MTA would have shut it and rebuilt it in a trench or elevated years ago.
But because most of the deaths and accidents are happening in South L.A., Watts, Compton and Willowbrook mostly, they keep getting away with it.
The Fix the Expo Rail Campaign has been the most vocal opponent of the street-level design in the South L.A. portion of MTA's under-construction Expo Line Phase 1 from Downtown L.A. to Culver City.
MTA is appropriating exponentially more money to build the line elevated across the streets in the Culver City section.
The group is currently in the administrative courts fighting MTA's proposed street-level desires at the doorstep of 2,100-student Dorsey High School.
Russ Quimby, the former Chairman of all rail accident investigations for the National Transportation Safety Board, testified that the Dorsey holding pen design has a high risk of a “catastrophic accident” that would “kill or seriously injur[e] scores of students in a single accident.”
Last year the Fix Expo Campaign demanded a Congressional investigation into the Blue Line and MTA's rail planning practices. The request, coupled with several catastrophic transit system accidents, has resulted in the Federal Transit Administration adopting a rail safety oversight role for public transit systems nationally.
Also, MTA Director and County Supervisor Mark-Ridley-Thomas, who represents the communities impacted by the Blue Line and Expo Line, has called for a re-evaluation of the MTA policy that determines whether rail crossings are built at street-level, elevated or underground.
The Supervisor's letter requests the policy be replaced with one that puts more emphasis on safety and recognizes the inherent equities.
We are making headway.
Yet the heart-breaking deaths on the tracks continue.
How many more people must die because of MTA's mistakes?”
Mr. Goodmon may be contacted at dg@fixexpo.org
