Twin Cities Green Line Claims First Fatality
5th September 2014
Last Sunday, a pedestrian was struck and killed by the Twin Cities new Green light-rail line, which opened for operation in June. Shannon Buchanan was apparently crossing a pedestrian way over the tracks and was hit by a train going about 30 mph.
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The FTA no longer includes fatality data in the National Transit Database, but the last time data were available, light rail was involved in about 12 fatalities per billion passenger miles carried while buses were involved in only about 4 fatalities per billion. Apparently, it’s a lot safer to get hit by a 50,000-pound bus than a 300,000-pound train.
September 5th, 2014 at 09:56
The news media in Houston finally got tired of reporting the almost daily wrecks caused by the city’s light rail system. Part of the problem is that the Crusties that live in part of the area served by the short rail system did not want to be disturbed by loud train whistles, so the train’s warning system is a very quiet “meep-meep” that sounds like a muted version of the cartoon Roadrunner. Cars, buses, trucks, pedestrians, pets – the train hits them all.
The excuse for building the system was that it would help the city win the selection as a site for the Olympics. Since it wouldn’t actually move any people associated with an Olympics, it became a huge joke just to hear the politicians mention that “logic”. It has very few riders and does nothing to ease traffic congestion.
There were only two real reasons the system was built: 1) It made the Lefties happy-happy that they could have a rail system like those really cool towns in Europe and 2) plenty of contractors pocketed large sums of public money (which they shared with their friends on the Dem. ticket). Ultimately, those are the reasons almost all light rail is constructed in America.