Safety tops list
of Greenbush concerns

By JENNIFER MANN
The Patriot Ledger

In the decades-old battle over the return of the Greenbush commuter line, train opponents have raised a host of concerns. But one issue always tops the list: Safety.

It only takes mention of 15-year-old Kelly Boyd of Abington, who died in 1998 when she rode her bicycle around safety gates and into the path of an oncoming commuter train, to signal the risks that run with a railroad track.

So how safe is Greenbush?

The train has safety measures many trains in the state and nation don’t have. But still, train officials and safety advocates say it takes a safe-minded community for a safe rail line.

“Safety has a lot to do with personal responsibility and accountability,” said Scott Farmelant, spokesman for the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad, which operates trains on the MBTA-owned line. “The system is set up to provide safeguards, but people have to be responsible within the system.”

It is a common mantra, almost a cliché, but one backed by facts.

Trespassing - anytime a person enters the private right-of-way of the tracks - is the leading cause of railroad deaths in the country, according to Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Warren Flatau. Accidents at grade crossings are the second-highest cause - combined, the two make up 90 percent of all fatalities.

Over a 10-year period in Massachusetts, there were far more trespassing deaths - 57 - than any other single cause, according to Federal Railroad Administration statistics. There were 12 deaths at grade crossings, and only one death in a train accident.

“It’s very rare that you find any incident that doesn’t involve somebody doing something that they probably would be better off not doing,” Farmelant said.

And Massachusetts’ rail fatalities are a small fraction of those occurring nationwide: During the same 10-year period, there were 5,017 trespasser deaths, 3,930 grade crossing deaths and 117 train accident deaths overall.

“When you consider it is probably one of the 10 busiest commuter rails in the nation, they generally have a good safety record,” Flatau said of the MBTA trains.

The 17.8-mile Braintree-to-Scituate Greenbush line will be the third and final restored branch of the Old Colony line.

The Plymouth and Middleboro Old Colony lines reopened in 1997, and have seen 11 suicides, one undetermined death and three deaths ruled accidents.

The accidental deaths include: Vanda Depina, 20, who in 2002 was struck while crossing the tracks in Brockton; Lauren Branco, 26, who in 2003 was struck while walking next to tracks near the Pine Street crossing in Abington; and Boyd, at the Pine Street crossing.

One perennial problem is that people don’t realize the right-of-way is private property for a reason, said Ed O’Connor, executive director of Massachusetts’ Operation Lifesaver, a train safety program that has gone town-to-town, school-to-school in preparation for Greenbush.

“The engineer has no clue you’re standing around the corner,” he said. “There’s no indication you should be there, and he has to assume nobody is out there.”

Jeanne Little of Abington can see the Pine Street crossing from her home. About 30 feet separate her backyard, where her 8-year-old plays, from the tracks.

She was nervous about the train before Boyd was struck nine years ago. And she’s still nervous now.

“Do I feel like they’ve done anything as far as safety?” she asked, referring to measures at the crossing since Boyd’s death. “No. But I don’t know what they could do.”

What worries Little is the scene she sees about four to five times a year: The crossing gate goes down, no train appears for five to 10 minutes, so cars finagle a way through the crossing.

“Finally, they just get sick of it,” she said. “I mean, how long are they going to sit there with no trains coming?”

For Greenbush, mitigation and drawn-out debates between communities and the MBTA resulted in safety measures that other rail lines, including the other Old Colony branches, are without.

Take quadrant gates: Installed at the major intersections along the corridor, four traffic arms block both sides of the road to prevent cars from swerving around gates as Little described.

“You don’t find that in most parts of the (commuter rail) system because of the costs associated with it,” Farmelant said.

Janet Murray, an early train opponent who joined Weymouth’s mitigation committee, said many things, like the quadrant gates and extra fencing, were fought for with cases like Boyd’s in mind.

“We stayed away from the emotional part of it, but we talked about what we could do to prevent that from happening again,” she said.

Still, she added: “You’re never going to have a safe train line when you have human beings who make choices and make decisions that are not sound.”

Jennifer Mann may be reached at jmann@ledger.com.