BRIGHTER SHADES OF METRO
Fresh new look aims to make rail cars more visible, reduce crashes
Metro has the blues — and reds — in hopes of getting people to give their trains a second look.
Pending approval by its board, scheduled for Thursday, Metropolitan Transit Authority is planning to spend $326,000 to affix a new, more colorful pattern to the front of all its light rail vehicles. The upcoming work builds on previous efforts that added the decals to 19 of the agency’s 71 trains, which occurred after two high-profile incidents in which bicyclists pedaled in front of oncoming trains.
“They do make the trains more visible,” said Metro board member Jim Robinson, who leads the agency’s public safety committee.
Metro trains are gray, a decision made when the Red Line opened in 2004, in an effort to make sure the trains did not look like the transit agency’s red, white and blue buses. That decision, however, has a downside in terms of safety, officials said.
“It blends in with the urban canopy,” Robinson said, comparing them with the newly-colored railcars. “These stand out now.”
The color change comes as Metro leads the nation in railway fatalities for a light rail system. In the first three months of 2017, the latest time period tracked by federal officials, two bicyclists and a pedestrian have died along Houston’s tracks.
Rice University physics professor Marjorie Corcoran was killed Feb. 3 at Hermann Park and Sunset when she rode her bike in front of a southbound train.
Two days later, Bilal Muslim, 60, was struck as he pedaled his bicycle along the light rail tracks near Loop 610 as the Super Bowl
was going on nearby.
On March 25, Moises Espinosa was killed when he stood in front of an oncoming train near Neyland and Fulton. His death was classified a suicide by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.
Metro’s four collisions with people — including one in which the person survived — exceeds even the number of people struck from January to March by much larger systems in Los Angeles, Denver and San Francisco — though many systems do not share streets with vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists, as Metro does.
The deaths built on a common refrain from critics that the at-grade system is unsafe, particularly in places where pedestrians and vehicles cross the tracks.
Improvements eyed
The incidents, and the resulting media attention, spurred Metro to re-evaluate a number of its safety efforts. Transit officials met with Rice and cycling advocates, and painted warnings and hung signs urging cyclists and pedestrians to pass with care.
Train operators also were instructed to blow their horns when approaching stations, an increase from a bell signal that was typical with station arrivals.
Metro is looking at similar improvements at other locations, notably near schools where student crossings are common. At Sunset Boulevard near the Rice campus, officials hung banners encouraging people to watch for trains and traffic and repainted the crosswalks red along the tracks to indicate to people it wasn’t a safe place to stand. Crews also embedded tiles spelling out “LOOK” where the crosswalk passes across the tracks.
Collisions reduced
Adding colorful decals to trains builds on those efforts, officials said. Since adding the colored fronts to some of the trains, officials estimate a 25 to 30 percent reduction in collisions, said Andy Skabowski, the transit agency’s chief operations officer.
There is not a broad consensus among transit agencies when it comes to train appearance, though many of Metro’s peers for years have included bold colors on the outside of their vehicles. San Diego’s trains are red, and often feature full-size advertisements. Dallas Area Rapid Transit trains are yellow and white. Phoenix’s Valley Metro has an aquamarine stripe along the bottom of rail cars. MetroTransit in Minneapolis has yellow and blue designs on the front of its trains.
If approved, all of Metro’s trains could have the new blue and red designs on each end by Oct. 31. A contractor applies the decals, though Metro maintenance workers can make minor repairs.
The proposed contract includes wraps for 61 trains, which gives Metro nine spare sets of decals for repairs to the 71 light rail vehicles. Metro operates three different models of light rail vehicles.