This is regarding “Boy’s death linked to engineer error; Rules breached, Metra official says” (Page 1, Feb. 25). My heart goes out to the DeLarco family, whose 10-year-old son was killed by an oncoming train in River Grove. (Michael S. DeLarco of Schaumburg had just exited an eastbound Metra train Monday evening when he was struck by a westbound express train.) Such a tragic loss. While blame is being handed out to the operators of the trains for not observing safety procedures that would have prevented the boy from crossing, the fact remains that there are no gates at the pedestrian crosswalks at many stations.
I was on a train four years ago that struck and killed a woman at the Glen Ellyn station. She was not a regular train rider and didn’t pay attention to the lights and bells and walked in front of an oncoming train in the crosswalk. Her death would likely have been prevented if there had been gates at the station.
Are crossing gates so costly that it prohibits their use?
