Transit Officials Look to Stop Deaths on Tracks

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  Kelly Shaw-Kuska, 46
• Trevor Newman, 16
• Chris Mongillo, 15
• Ryan Hoover, 21
• David Smith, 56

Those are the names of the five people killed since December on rail lines in the Levittown area.

On Wednesday, SEPTA officials and local officials flooded Philadelphia area’s 161 transit stations to inform passengers about the dangers of trespassing on train lines.

After the deaths of eight people across all of SEPTA’s transit systems so far in 2013, the transit organization is working to reduce trespassing. The five above, were  people trespassing on the West Trenton and Trenton rail lines.

“You wouldn’t walk down the middle of the highway, why would you walk along the tracks?” SEPTA General Manager Joseph Casey asked. “The tracks are the highway for our trains,” he then said.

Scott Sauer, SEPTA’s system safety director, told media gathered at a press event along the tracks near the Bensalem, Lower Southampton and Philadelphia border that a strike by a train traveling along the tracks is usually deadly.

He added that the trains approach at high rates of speed and, due to their weight, the trains have trouble making quick stops.

TMA Bucks President Bill Rickett, a former volunteer firefighter in New Jersey, said he has seen what the victims of a fatal train strikes look like and is working to spread the message of rail safety to local schools across the county.

Officials said that about half of deaths on the tracks are suicides, but a number of other incidents are caused by people on the track who were not paying attention or had music buds in their ears.

In the case of Neshaminy High School student Trevor Newman, he was trespassing on the tracks while walking to meet a friend and did not hear the train traveling not to far from his Middletown Township house. Friends said the teen suffered from some hearing impairment issues.

SEPTA officials worked with officials in Hatboro, Montgomery County in 2011 after five people were struck by trains in a small stretch of railway in just over a year, Sauer said. He hopes to implement similar partnerships in Lower Bucks County.

Sauer and other officials said building a fence along its rail system is not likely. Sauer told LevittownNow.com that a fence along the tracks could trap people from fleeing an oncoming train, delay first responders and provide problems when maintenance work needs to be performed.

“You can never be too rushed to be cautious,” Sauer said. “Just taking a few seconds to check your surroundings, staying behind the yellow lines on platforms and not running to catch a train or bus can be the difference between life and death.”

“SEPTA wants its customers to know we are very concerned about their safety, and we want people to stay off the tracks at rail stations, its dangerous to be on them at any time. The culture of thinking when at a station has to be safety and awareness.  And if you see something that doesn’t look right, call the police,” SEPTA’s regional coordinator for paratransit Cassandra West said outside the Bristol Borough station.

Transit police officer Dwayne Morrison was at the Bristol Borough train station and also warned passengers of thieves that target riders.

“Its getting close to summer time and there are pickpockets out there looking for targets wearing ear buds, we want the public to be safe and aware at all times because there are groups that work together looking for that one person to target,” he said.

Wednesday’s safety blitz is believed by officials to be the only one of its kind undertaken by a transit agency in the country.

Related:

• Man Killed By Train Saturday ID’d
• Memorial Created for Man Killed by SEPTA Train
• Person Struck by Train in Bristol Borough
• Morrisville Man Killed by Train Sat on Track