After determining that safety gates at an Elmwood Park railroad crossing appeared to be working properly, federal investigators on Thursday suggested that a crash between a Metra train and several cars was caused by motorists who ignored warning signs and stopped on the tracks.
“Remember who drove the car into the crossing area. Who drove the car? The train didn’t drive there. It goes there. It can’t go anywhere else,” said Mark Rosenker, acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, at a news conference. “The decision-making process was made by a driver. People have to be sensitive to the dangers of these rail crossings.”
The accident Wednesday evening has renewed questions about whether the crossing can be made more safe, perhaps by coordinating nearby traffic lights with the railroad crossing gates to allow drivers to clear from the tracks. But state officials said Thursday they decided about a decade ago not to coordinate them.
Although the engineer tried to stop the rush-hour train, it smashed into five cars on the tracks, and those cars then caromed into 11 other vehicles, officials said.
The crash injured at least 13 people, according to Metra officials. Three victims remained hospitalized Thursday, two with serious injuries.
But no one was killed when the train slowed to 65 m.p.h. and hit the cars, according to the NTSB.
“We were very, very lucky last night,” said Rosenker. “People could have died. When you look at the pictures of the automobiles that were crushed, it’s amazing that they weren’t.”
Investigators determined that the gates went down nearly a minute before impact, giving some drivers enough time to jump from their cars as some witnesses reported.
Investigators shifted their focus to whether the crossing should have included a system to coordinate the train and traffic signals, a safety measure designed to prevent cars from becoming trapped on the tracks during heavy traffic.
Rosenker told reporters that a coordinated signal system might have detected the oncoming train and overridden the traffic lights, allowing cars to get off the tracks in time. Witnesses have said that no cars went around the safety gates but were instead trapped on the tracks.
Federal officials had recommended interconnected signals at dozens of train crossings in Illinois after a 1995 accident in Fox River Grove. In that crash, seven students died when a Metra train struck their school bus, which was stranded on the tracks because of a red light.
David Rayburn, the NTSB investigator-in-charge, said guidelines recommend coordinated signals if an intersection is within 200 feet of a rail crossing. The Elmwood Park crossing is several hundred feet away.
Rayburn said officials have considered extending that distance. Rayburn also said investigators will review whether there are enough signs warning drivers of the long crossing.
After the Fox River Grove crash, state officials reviewed hundreds of intersections and railroad crossings.
Most of the 320 interconnected crossings in the state have been set up in the years since that review. But engineers and officials determined that the Grand Avenue crossing in Elmwood Park should not have interconnected signals in part because the tracks are more than 200 feet from the traffic light, according to Michael Stead, who heads the rail safety section at the Illinois Commerce Commission.
The tracks that cross Grand Avenue diagonally are 364 feet from the 76th Avenue traffic signal at their closest, and as much as 500 feet at their farthest.
The crossing’s configuration would make it necessary for traffic lights on Grand Avenue at both the 76th Avenue and 75th Avenue intersections to be interconnected, as well as a separate railway crossing on 75th Avenue, said Stead.
Now, the average wait at the crossings is 45 seconds, Stead said. Interconnecting all of the traffic signals to the railroad signals would boost that wait to an average three minutes, Stead said.
“We don’t think that would be realistic,” Stead said, adding that it would encourage drivers even more to slide around gates.
He said all options will be on the table as the NTSB and state officials review the accident. But he doubts interconnecting the crossing will work.
Federal transportation records show 26 collisions between trains and cars at that crossing since 1976. Of the five collisions since 2000, all occurred between 4:30 and 6:30 p.m., during the evening rush hour. The 26 collisions have resulted in two deaths and 10 injuries, federal officials said.
Last year, also on the day before Thanksgiving, a Metra train struck a car traveling westbound on Grand Avenue, causing two injuries.
Federal records show that the driver had stopped on the crossing even after the gates went down.
Rosenker called the site a “very unique crossing situation.”
In this year’s accident, Rosenker pointed to the heavy holiday traffic as a contributing factor. The traffic might have endangered motorists.
“Last night was different,” Rosenker said. “Different because of the extremely crowded roads, perhaps because of the Thanksgiving holiday. Perhaps people weren’t focusing, perhaps they were thinking about a Thanksgiving dinner with their family.”
One witness confirmed Thursday that motorists continued to enter the crossing even though they realized that they would have to stop.
Juan Ramos, 58, of Franklin Park, who was two cars from the crossing, said the practice is common and he always worries that those motorists are putting themselves in danger.
“We were screaming `Move! Move!'” he said. “But where were they going to move? Once they got on the tracks, they had nowhere to go.”
By Thursday morning, the train crossing was largely clear of the mangled cars and other debris. Several motorists noticeably slowed down before crossing the tracks.
But just hours after the crash, some drivers found themselves stuck on the wrong side of the gates–but still shy of the tracks–as trains passed Thursday.
Investigators plan to interview the train’s crew Friday morning. Officials have determined that the train was traveling 70 m.p.h., within the speed limit.
Officials also plan to study surveillance video from the crossing that they hope will supplement data from the signal boxes.
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jjlong@tribune.com
