Metro Eastside Gold Line Pre-Opening Meetings Focus on Safety
By EGP News Service
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will hold safety education meetings in East Los Angeles throughout March and April in advance of the opening a six-mile rail line extension through the community.
The meetings, to be held at five local public libraries, are part of Metro’s “Look, Listen and Stay Alive” campaign, warning residents to exercise caution around the soon-to-open Gold Line Eastside Extension.
Metro’s Community Relations staff has already visited 60 schools in the service area and delivered 85,000 fliers with safety information door-to-door in East Los Angeles.
Gound was broken in July 2004 on the Eastside Extension, which is set to open this summer.
The Gold Line, which is currently 13.7 miles long, has had only one fatality since opening in 2003, and that was ruled a suicide, said MTA spokesman Marc Littman. That gives the Gold Line the best track record of the Metro-operated rail lines, according to statistics provided by Littman.
Figures up to Nov. 24 show that the vast majority of fatal accidents on Metro’s rail lines have occurred on the 22-mile Blue Line between downtown Los Angeles and Long Beach. There have been 92 fatalities — 20 of which were suicides — on the Blue Line tracks since it opened in 1990, Littman said.
“They’ve learned lessons from the Blue Line,” Littman said.
Metro board member and Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, whose district includes East Los Angeles, has proposed installing four-quadrant crossing gates at every place the line crosses a street.
Metro staff members are examining the feasibility of the adding the gates, which were not part of the original design, and will present their findings to Metro’s Board of Directors at a later date, said Metro spokesman Jose Ubaldo.
Metro’s Eastside rail safety awareness sessions will be held on the following dates and locations:
—March 3 at 6:30 p.m. at the Benjamin Franklin Library, 2200 East First St.;
—March 7 at 10:30 a.m. at the East Los Angeles Public Library, 4837 E. Third St., and on March 11 at 6 p.m.;
—March 19 at the Little Tokyo Library, 203 S. Los Angeles St., and on March 21 at 10:30 a.m.;
—March 24 at 6:30 p.m. at the Stevenson Public Library, 803 Spence St., and on April 4 at 10:30 a.m.; and
—April 6 at 6:30 p.m. at the Anthony Quinn Library, 3965 E. Cesar Chavez Ave., and on April 18 at 11 a.m.
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February 26, 2009 Copyright © 2009 Eastern Group Publications, Inc.
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