A safety debate
Everyone agrees quad gates wouldn’t prevent all fatalities. According to police, the two people killed by trains last month in Boynton Beach each went on the tracks despite the arms of gates being down.
There’s no fail-safe measure to protect those who deliberately cross tracks as trains near, said Gregory Stuart, executive director of the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization. “It would be nice to have quad gates [but] it’s very expensive,” Stuart said. “It’s not absolutely necessary.”
Still, some South Floridians think the quad gates can be a good deterrent.
A driver who beat a Brightline train last month did so by maneuvering around the openings left by a two-gate crossing at Northeast Second Street in Deerfield Beach. Had a quad gate been there, the driver of the pickup might have thought twice: It would’ve meant plowing through the arms of the formation to get past.
“You can’t fix stupid,” said Geoff West, who witnessed the driver beating the Brightline train and recorded it on dashcam video. “There are still going to be people who try to do it, but if you make it hard enough they won’t be able to get around the gate.” There are 24 quad gates planned in Broward County, costing about $5 million, according to Paul Calvaresi, a manager with the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization.
Dozens of other crossings are not scheduled to get quad gates, Calvaresi said. The crossings selected to have them installed were chosen “judiciously, based on calculated risk and in the context of the surrounding areas.”
Boynton Beach had already planned to add quad gates to meet regulations for quiet zones, but decided to erect quad gates at two more train crossings in response to the two fatalities last month on the tracks. The sites were chosen because of high traffic — and happened to include the location where a bicyclist was killed last month.
Boynton Beach Commissioner Joe Casello said people aren’t used to the “quiet, sleek” high-speed Brightline trains that began service in January. So the extra gates are proactive to protect the people who “make foolish decisions.”
“It all comes down to money, the bottom line,” he said. “Here in Boynton Beach, we think it’s a good investment. If this shows us results maybe it will be the cornerstone of other cities following suit hopefully. If this provides us with added safety benefits, maybe other cities will see the good in it.”
Jeff Livergood, Boynton’s director of public works and engineering, said the final costs haven’t been tallied because the gates haven’t yet been designed, although the upgrades are estimated between $100,000 and $150,000. Livergood said the seven gates will be funded by the state and the Palm Beach Transportation and Planning Agency.
South Florida’s other set of train tracks, the South Florida Rail Corridor, is used by Tri-Rail, Amtrak and CSX. There are a combined 100 rail crossings on the tracks used by Tri-Rail, and 39 of them are quiet zones, meaning they have extra security with either quad gates or other means, such as 9-inch medians, said Bonnie Arnold, Tri-Rail spokeswoman.
Steven Amoruso survived being hit by a Brightline train in Fort Lauderdale last month at Northeast Third Avenue. Amoruso’s brother said he wants to see added protection at the gates.
No quad gate is there now, but there is one planned. What’s there now is “by no means an adequate barrier,” said Ralph Amoruso. “A herd of buffalo can go through.”
Barry Leff, the Amoruso family’s attorney, said the onus is on government and the railways to treat people as children, acknowledging people make bad decisions. “You wouldn’t leave the top of stairs ungated when a baby is learning to walk,” he said.
“That event was a catalyst for the improvements as we recognized that tragedy occurred with a slower-moving freight train, and we need to act quickly… before Brightline service begins where we have three times the frequency that are moving at twice the speed,” said Delray Beach Mayor Cary Glickstein.
Officials last month spent $94,000 for fencing and other improvements to create a barrier along both sides of the tracks that stretches the length of a city block. Even more improvements could be discussed by commissioners, Glickstein said.
“Even a fence isn’t going to prevent someone from trying to climb over it, you can only do so much,” Glickstein said. But “it’s not a chain-link fence that’s easy to climb. Eventually landscaping will be planted to be more of a barrier.”
He cited a 2015 tragedy when a 16-year-old baseball player was struck and killed by a train, and police said they think he didn’t hear it coming because he was wearing headphones.
“You need to be proactive: Protect the public from themselves,” he said. “Let’s make it as difficult as we possibly can.”
West Palm Beach authorities said they, too, are considering adding barriers to keep people off the tracks.
In Hollywood, authorities are now inspecting crossings and considering fences and landscaping such as shrubs as a buffer to prevent people from crossing the tracks, said city spokeswoman Joann Hussey.
lhuriash@sunsentinel.com, 954-572-2008 or Twitter @LisaHuriash