Railroad Safety

I am writing because we at Santa Fe Railway are concerned about situations like the one that was reported in your newspaper (March 24) about a 10-year-old Carlsbad boy who was hit by an Amtrak train near Agua Hedionda Lagoon. Thankfully that young man was not seriously injured and will live to tell about his encounter with a train. About a dozen people have not been that fortunate along the tracks in San Diego County during the past year and a half.

If either Amtrak (operator of the train) and/or Santa Fe (owner of the tracks) had been contacted, we could have explained to the reporter that there has been an extensive “Operation Lifesaver” campaign in San Diego County during the past year. Operation Lifesaver is a program to expand railroad safety awareness among pedestrians and motorists of all ages.

Operation Lifesaver is a nationwide program that is in all states except Hawaii. It has been operational in California since 1979. Organizations ranging from the California Highway Patrol, Department of Motor Vehicles, Caltrans, Office of Traffic Safety, the railroads, Federal Railroad Administration, California Public Utilities Commission and others have committed resources to improve awareness that railroad tracks are not playgrounds and that trains win when they are challenged by motorists or pedestrians.

Nowhere in your article was there mention of the 17 danger, no trespassing and no parking signs that are lining a half-mile section of track where the 10-year-old was struck. Nor was there any mention of the fact that he and his friends were illegally trespassing on railroad property.

Despite the young man’s claims that he was not playing “chicken” with the train, many people do indeed play chicken with trains traveling through the area under discussion. To an engineer sitting in the locomotive of a 90 m.p.h. Amtrak train (135-feet-per-second), any pedestrian activity is cause for alarm. Trains cannot stop on a dime and with steel wheels on steel rails a train moving at high speed may take more than a mile to come to a stop after the emergency brakes are applied.

And what about the hundreds of people on the train and their safety? What about the train crew, especially the locomotive engineer who on a daily basis has to watch people playing carelessly with their own lives.

With the demand on Amtrak and transit agencies to provide faster, more frequent service, and freight business growing, more, not fewer trains will be operating over the tracks between Los Angeles and Orange counties to San Diego in the future. We at Santa Fe hope The Times will help readers understand that common sense dictates they stay away from railroad rights-of-way, except at public crossings.

MICHAEL A. MARTIN, Manager-Public Affairs, Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co.