Substandard Safety Prevails at the Fifth and Rice Railroad Grade Crossing in Oxnard, California
I have lived in Ventura County, California for almost half my life. I love the place, but I know its history
as a formerly remote, rural county whose patron families did not like
change. In the 1950s and 1960s, their mantra was, “If we don’t build
roads, no one will come”. With or without adequate roads, the people
came. In 1970, the county population was 400,000. In 2013, it had more
than doubled, to 840,000.
In 2004, Ventura County voters spurned a half-cent sales tax that would have been devoted to transportation projects. In 2008,
county officials again ran that idea up the flagpole, only to see it
shot down from every direction. Continued attempts to raise sales
taxes in Ventura County was like a parody of the famous line in the
movie, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. “Roads? We don’t need no stinkin roads!”
In July 2015, the Ventura County Transportation commission announced the
results of their most recent poll regarding a new half cent sales
tax in Ventura County, which would fund transportation improvements.
Although sixty percent of respondents favored the idea, a ballot
measure would require a two-thirds positive vote to succeed. If the
measure appears on the 2016 ballot, we can expect a groundswell of
opposition. Their likely rallying cry will be, “Taxes? We don’t need no
stinkin taxes”.
In July 2015, train crash survivor Marc Gerstel
and I visited the February 2015 Metrolink Oxnard collision site.
First, we paid our respects at the memorial for engineer Glenn Steele,
who died from injuries sustained in the collision. Then, Gerstel and I
agreed that we would use my characters, Plush Kokopelli
and Coney the Traffic Cone to make our visit more meaningful. Almost
immediately, Plush Kokopelli jumped up on the Rice Ave. “crossbuck”,
which is the generic term for the big overhead railroad warning sign.
Aiming his flute down toward ground level, Plush Kokopelli pointed out
a serious safety deficiency. If left unattended, the deficiency could
have catastrophic consequences for motorists and train passengers at the
crossing.
On
the cast metal base of the crossbuck, one of four support flanges was
split wide open, thus weakening the entire structure. Since the split
flange faced Rice Ave., I assumed that a speeding vehicle had hit the
metal base quite hard. If another vehicle were to strike the base at
that vulnerable spot, the crossbuck tower-sign could collapse onto the
roadway and even the railroad tracks.
Meanwhile, Coney had waited patiently while we took pictures of the
damaged base of the crossbuck. By then, he could hardly contain
himself. While standing by the crossbuck, Coney had made friends with a
large Caltrans traffic cone, which was lying on its side, unable to
right itself. After Coney got my attention, I tipped the Caltrans Coney
up, so that it could stand on its own base. Since I have channeled
Kokopelli and Coney for years, I could see that 
my Coney wanted to help Caltrans Coney once again be a productive member of the safety cone community.
Most news reports
about the February 2015 Metrolink collision are incomplete. The driver
of the F-450 work truck, Mr. Jose Sanchez-Ramirez was not a “recent
transplant from Tucson, Arizona”. In fact, he was making his first-ever
trip from Tucson to the Oxnard Plain. There, he was to deliver welding
equipment to one of the local farms. The previous day, after driving
from Tucson to San Diego, his original rig broke down. After waiting
for delivery of a replacement truck, he headed north toward Ventura
County. Somewhere along the way, he was in a minor traffic accident,
which only delayed him further.
After
driving all day and all night without rest, Jose Sanchez-Ramirez
arrived before dawn on Rice Ave., heading south toward Fifth St. Having
no GPS guidance, Sanchez-Ramirez relied on a printout of an internet
map to guide him. There, exhausted and in the dark, he mistook the
railroad tracks for Fifth St. and turned too soon. Eighty feet west, he
stopped on the tracks, thus setting up the pre-dawn collision with
Metrolink Train No. 102.
In July 2015, Marc Gerstel and I stood where Sanchez-Ramirez made his fateful turn.
Beyond the crossbuck, but before the railroad tracks, I placed Caltrans
Coney in his rightful place. If Caltrans Coney had been there,
silently standing guard between the crossbuck and the tracks on that
fateful morning, there would have been no collision. The vigilant
Caltrans Coney would have warned Jose Sanchez-Ramirez against his
errant turn. If that turn had not happened, Glenn Steele would be alive
today and Marc Gerstel would still be an adjunct professor of dental
technology at LA City College.
I
found my first Coney the Traffic Cone almost a decade ago. Since then,
I have collected many of the mistreated and abandoned traffic cones
that I have found along the highway. Some were in good shape while
others were nearly shredded. The good thing about a traffic cone is
that if run over by a vehicle, more often than not, it will pop back
into shape and keep on coning. If you look along the roadsides of
America, eventually you will spot a Coney, standing or lying there with
nothing productive to do.
If you find an abandoned Coney along the road, please pick it up. If you
are in Ventura County, please carry it to the Fifth and Rice grade
crossing. Once there, place it along the side of the road, between the
crossbuck and the tracks. Then, drive away smiling, because you may
have prevented the next Metrolink collision at Rice Ave. and Fifth St.
in Oxnard, California. As Marc 
Gerstel, Coney, Kokopelli and I drove away from the scene; the battered and beaten Caltrans Coney proudly stood guard at the deadliest railroad crossing in Ventura County.
After visiting the collision site, Marc Gerstel gave me the latest facts
regarding that intersection. “According to David Golonski, the
chairperson of the LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency, this is the second
busiest rail corridor in the nation. For the past twenty years, the
Rice Ave. and 5th Street crossing has earned the label as the
‘deadliest crossing in Ventura County’. With a total of fourteen
accidents and four deaths, it is in the ‘top-23 list’ of most dangerous
crossings in California. It ranks as the third most deadly in Southern
California. The proposed solution by Mr. Leahy, which is to install
‘pavement 
sensors that would be faster and cheaper’ than a grade separation is like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound.”
According to the office of Congresswoman Julia Brownley
(D - Agoura Hills), from 2006 - 2014, the Federal Highway
Administration California Division has received over $42 million in
federal money intended specifically for remediation of dangerous rail
crossings. According to Malcolm Dougherty, Director of Caltrans,
the grade crossing at Rice and Fifth is not high enough on the
statewide priority list to receive any of that funding. Despite
Dougherty's statement that, "We are committed to expeditiously
obligating and utilizing all federal funds for this (safety) effort", to
date none of the $42 million has been obligated or spent.
If
the previously allocated, yet un-utilized federal funding were to be
allocated for improvements at the Fifth and Rice grade crossing, there
would be sufficient funds to build and dedicate the proposed "Glenn
Steele Memorial Overpass" at the site of his fatal injuries. If not, I
expect the sixth extinction to be complete and the next ice age to commence before we see any mitigation of the dangers still evident at Fifth and Rice, in Oxnard, California.
This is Part 2 of a two-part article. To read Part 1, please click HERE.
To read all of our Ventura County railroad safety articles in one place, please visit 5thandRice.com.
By James McGillis at 11:57 AM | | Comments (0) | Link
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