As deaths rise on Bay Area train tracks, big solutions are a long way off

The number of deaths involving Caltrain and BART trains is rising, raising questions about what those agencies can do to prevent fatal collisions.

Less than 90 minutes after a man was killed by a Caltrain in San Jose on Tuesday, a woman was fatally hit by a Capitol Corridor train in Hayward. Both fatal collisions took place less than a week after a BART train struck and killed a man at the Powell Street Station in San Francisco on Sept. 19, in an apparent suicide.

The number of deaths involving Caltrain and BART trains is rising. Caltrain has recorded 13 fatal collisions so far this year, while BART has had 6. As of this week, the number of deaths for both agencies was as high as in all of last year, and the 2018 total was higher than that in 2017.

While recent Caltrain and Amtrak deaths remain under investigation, the increases once again raise questions about the best ways to stop people from hurting themselves — whether intentionally or accidentally — on train tracks. Along with the tragedy of a life lost, each incident exacts a mental toll on train operators and staff and can cause serious disruptions for thousands of commuters.

Agency officials say they have launched a number of efforts to prevent fatal collisions, most visibly with signs at stations and at some crossings that direct people who might be contemplating suicide to support hotlines. But more substantial changes to the rail systems’ infrastructure — which could go further in preventing serious injuries and deaths — remain a long way off.

UPDATE 4:20 pm:

Powell Station is now OPEN.

Our thoughts are with the deceased victim, our train operator and first responders.

If you are struggling emotionally or in crisis, there is help. Call 1-800-273-8255.https://t.co/WuCE2KRfta

— SFBART (@SFBART) September 19, 2019

Newly appointed BART General Manager Bob Powers this week pushed back a pilot program that would install a barrier between the platform and tracks at Oakland’s 12th Street Station, which would stop people from falling or jumping into the paths of trains. The pilot was delayed until the agency phases out its older fleet of train cars.

Caltrain, meanwhile, is in the process of raising the tracks in some areas to eliminate potentially dangerous street-level crossings, but billions more dollars would be needed to complete that work, according to spokesman Dan Lieberman.

Caltrain’s project, known as grade separation, “would be the gold standard,” said Karen Philbrick, executive director of San Jose State University’s Mineta Transportation Institute.

That project and the platform barriers that BART is considering seek to “engineer out the opportunity” for people to be seriously hurt or killed, Philbrick said. But, she noted, the agencies “have everything that is competing for time, attention and financial resources.”

BART officials spent $1.4 million studying how it might implement barriers throughout its system such as those already in place in the people movers linking stations to the Oakland and San Francisco airports. The clear barriers would have sliding doors that would be closed whenever trains were out of the station, then open only once the train arrived.

Such a project would represent a major change in the look of BART stations and was estimated to cost $20 million to $24 million to install at each station. It would make BART the first major public transit agency in the United States to adopt the barriers, though others have considered it, and the design is in place in some European and Asian cities, such as Singapore and Copenhagen.

BART had drawn up plans for a project trying out the design at the 12th Street Station in Oakland sometime in the next five years. But spokeswoman Alicia Trost said it would be complicated to try to install while the agency is still running its original fleet of two-door trains and using a software system to manage gaps between trains that is due for replacement over the next several years. Trost said Powers advised the board to hold off on the pilot until it has fully swapped out the old fleet for its new cars — something the agency estimates will happen in 2025.

In the meantime, BART and other agencies have seized on less intensive strategies that Philbrick said have been shown to be effective in reducing deaths.

In 2015, when BART recorded 12 deaths on its tracks, the agency began posting signs in stations that read “Suicide is not the route” and directing people needing help to a local suicide hotline. Similar messages appear on the backs of some paper tickets.

“We know it’s working,” Trost said, adding, “There has been a steady, unfortunate stream” of calls to the hotline from BART platforms since the signs were posted.

There were four deaths in the system in 2016, but the number has increased each year since then.

Most of the deaths on BART’s and Caltrain’s tracks are suicides, according to counts kept by both agencies.

Caltrain also has 250 signs encouraging potentially suicidal people to seek help posted at its stations, and transit police who work in the system are trained in how to approach people who may be looking to harm themselves. In Palo Alto, which over the last decade has been rocked by clusters of suicides in which young people took their own lives on the Caltrain tracks, the city has installed security cameras that alert authorities if someone goes on the tracks.

Capitol Corridor spokeswoman Karen Bakar said the agency has just made signs pointing people toward a suicide prevention hotline, which it plans to install at each of its 18 Capitol Corridor stations in the Bay Area over the next six months. But Bakar added that the grade-separation work underway with Caltrain isn’t an option for Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor, because its crossings are the purview of local city governments and the owner of the tracks that its trains operate on.

Amtrak is on pace for a decline in deaths on its tracks in the Bay Area this year. Federal statistics and reports from this media organization indicate there have been 11 fatal crashes involving Amtrak trains in the Bay Area so far in 2019, compared to 19 last year.

Caltrain, for its part, in addition to its signs and training, is focusing on restricting access to its relatively open tracks, which run through neighborhoods and along thoroughfares such as El Camino Real on the Peninsula and Monterey Road in San Jose, where Tuesday’s fatal collision happened, Lieberman said.

That means fencing off tracks to keep people away and, in the long term, investing in grade-separation projects like the one now underway in San Mateo, he said. Lieberman added, though, that Caltrain estimates it would cost $11 billion to eliminate each of the 42 crossings on its route between San Francisco and San Jose.

“That is the most effective means,” he said of efforts to reduce access to the tracks. “Of course, it is also the most expensive by a wide margin.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with feelings of depression or suicidal thoughts, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline offers free, round-the-clock support, information and resources for help. Reach the lifeline at 800-273-8255.