‘Don’t risk it’: Worried about train-related deaths, cities help set up new rail safety campaign
The messages will be blasted around you — on the radio and on billboards — in the hopes somebody hears them and takes heed: Don’t risk it when it comes to taking on a train.
The “Don’t Risk It” campaign is being launched by the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, which decides how to spend federal money on important transportation projects. The new campaign aims to raise awareness that motorists must stop at railroad crossings and shouldn’t try to beat the train. The goal: to help reduce crashes at train crossings.
Five cities — Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, Deerfield Beach, Hallandale Beach and Hollywood — each chipped in equal shares for the $125,000 campaign, which begins Tuesday.
The campaign will runs through July 5, one of the latest educational efforts to plead with the public to take a minute to let the train have the right of way, on social media and more.
“These are not the trains we had when we were kids,” said Pompano Beach Mayor Rex Hardin. “Those trains, they moved at a snail’s pace.”
The focus of this latest educational campaign are the freight lines and Brightline, whose tracks run along the Florida East Coast Railway line.
Brightline’s current top in-service speed is 79 mph.
Most of those killed have been suicides, drivers maneuvering around crossing barriers to try to beat the trains, or pedestrians who were intoxicated or mentally ill, according to a 2022 Associated Press analysis.
In response to those accidents, Brightline has installed infrared detectors to warn engineers if anyone is lurking near the tracks so they can slow down or stop, and added more fencing and landscaping to make track access more difficult, according to The Associated Press.
And last summer, Brightline received $25 million as part of a joint federal and state initiative for safety upgrades along the FEC corridor, including new crossing gates, signal systems, pedestrian gates, pavement markings and roadway profiles. In December it announced $20,000 in federal money to help keep people alert to the dangers of its high-speed trains in an online campaign aimed at people in Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie, Indian River and Brevard counties.
In 2022, there were 31 incidents of cars being hit on the rail in Broward on the FEC tracks, 22 of those resulting in fatalities, according to the MPO. Data is not yet available for the first five months of this year.
Over the weekend, a woman was killed when she was hit by a Brightline in Deerfield Beach. Sheriff’s Office detectives say witnesses saw the woman walk around the protective barrier on Hillsboro Boulevard and head northbound on the Brightline train tracks as a cargo train was passing southbound on the adjacent east side track. She was struck by the Brightline train that was traveling southbound on the tracks, and the impact of that collision caused her to fall into the adjacent tracks, where she was struck by the FEC cargo train, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
Nationwide, a person or vehicle is hit by a train every three hours, according to Operation Lifesaver, a 50-year-old, nonprofit public safety education organization dedicated to reducing collisions, fatalities and injuries at highway-rail crossings and preventing trespassing around railroad tracks.
But Gregory Stuart, the executive director of the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, said the fatalities are not only people committing suicide, but people simply impatient to wait for the train to go by.
And the railway is only going to get more busy, he said, referencing Broward County’s commuter rail project along the FEC, a project proposed to offer commuters even more options.
Last year the Broward County Commission approved $15.5 million for development and a study, and directed the county to seek federal dollars to construct the first segment of a commuter rail link that would provide local train services between Aventura and a point south of the New River in Fort Lauderdale, a distance of 11.5 miles.
A study is expected to be available next month that would describe the different financial options of the rail gaining access over the New River by bridge or tunnel, said Broward Mayor Lamar Fisher.
“Take a breath,” suggested Fisher of the request to slow it down and wait at a train crossing. “It’s just not worth it trying to get over a track when a train is coming. Life is more sacred than trying to get to a meeting. You need to sit back and chill. It’s only going to be a couple minutes anyway.”
Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com. Follow on Twitter @LisaHuriash
