A look at the intersection of Main and Jefferson

The Chronicle reported a couple of days ago that the man killed recently by a MetroRail train was not legally impaired.

Also, Don Gallagher -- who moderates the Houston-MET Yahoo group -- visited the intersection where the fatal accident occurred and sent out his observations:

The entire time from when a green light starts to turn yellow until the trolley car gets a vertical bar (go signal) is 4.75 seconds. The light is yellow for approximately 3 seconds of that time. The "all red" interval is perhaps 1 second tops if that.

The key point here is that the trolley driver CANNOT see any cars approaching the intersection and the cars CANNOT see any trains traveling South (North ones can be seen easily) due to a one story building built close to Main Street.

In addition, the signal lights are all sychronized on Jefferson (all
turn green together....EXCEPT for the Travis Street light which is
still an old signal unit. Travis is the street prior to Main for those traveling East on Jefferson. This simple mistake creates a potential frustration level for drivers who are used to controlled traffic flow. The Travis light turns green and one suddenly sees Main go yellow.

Forgetting that mistake (which adds to the potential for accidents,
the building blocking views, the fact that there is no signage warning about trains and the over head wires looking simply like electric or telephone lines AND a very short signal timing leads to a deadly situation.

Who is at fault? The designers and those who oversee the construction. Metro has frequently commented that they were changing the signals to a 10 second interval with all directions red. This is not true at MANY of the intersections I passed through.

[snip]

[T]he time for the driver to even see the train is perhaps 1 second or less and so it is impossible to stop. He had ZERO time to make any corrections from the time he would have seen the train, even if he were looking to that direction (his left).

I checked John Gaver's site and he lists two accidents last year at Main and Jefferson (10/22 and 12/15), then the fatality on May 10, and another accident at that intersection on May 13, with four injuries.

RELATED: Metro sees nothing wrong with dangerous intersection (blogHOUSTON),

Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/29/05 10:49 AM | Houston Transit | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (3)

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