The crossing gates where the Brightline train and Delray Beach fire truck collided do not entirely block the traffic lanes, as they do at many other intersections. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
I didn’t think I would be using my first editorial for The Coastal Star to advocate for something that should be totally unnecessary.
Totally unnecessary, that is, if only you could trust people to use common sense.
But then a fire truck being driven by a professional plays a game of rushin’ roulette on Delray Beach’s downtown railroad tracks — tracks that just happened to be loaded with an oncoming express train — and trust gets tossed aside just as easily as that Brightline passenger train blasted apart the city’s aerial ladder truck.
Fortunately, no one died in the Dec. 28 crash.
We can shake our heads at someone thinking it’s a good idea to maneuver a vehicle around lowered railroad crossing arms, but when a fire truck is the thing taking that chance it becomes obvious something more is needed.
It’s still not clear what the city’s policy is when an in-service emergency vehicle comes upon lowered crossing gates. Is the driver supposed to wait for the gates to go up or is the driver given the option to proceed with caution depending on the situation?
And absent those gate arms rising, just how do you proceed with caution — how do you get yourself close enough to see if the tracks are clear without being far enough out onto the tracks to put yourself in danger if a train is barreling toward you?
If only Florida East Coast Railway had crossing-arm gates that could block all lanes of traffic on both sides of the tracks, to prevent drivers from making the potentially disastrous mistake of crossing the tracks too early.
Oh, that’s right, the FEC does have such crossing protections and there are many crossings with them right here in southern Palm Beach County. But the crossing at Southeast First Street where the crash occurred included a partial gate arm that only served to stop pedestrians. That arm was not long enough to block a vehicle that intentionally moves into the wrong lane so that it can get on the tracks and try to cross despite the lowered gates and the flashing, red warning lights.
Given what we’ve all seen — the Brightline video of the actual crash went viral and clearly showed the fire truck circumventing the lowered gate arms — it’s time for the FEC to eliminate that driver option and install gate arms at local crossings that block all lanes of traffic on both sides of the tracks when a train is coming.
Seconds matter in saving lives. But so do lowered railroad crossing arms.
— Larry Barszewski,
Editor
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