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Promoting Safety Among Metro Systems Neighbors and Riders

The Metro System consists of almost 85 miles (including the unique Metro Orange Line) of rail and asphalt spreading through neighborhoods of businesses, churches, homes, parks, and schools. When the Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension rail line debuts in late 2009, the Metro System will spread east another six miles, bringing light rail to neighborhoods eager for electric light rail.

And while this is good news for a population appalled by its own commute times, Metro System expansion does present communities with new neighbors: 60-foot-long buses and 90-foot-long light rail cars.

The Metro Orange Line, for example, predominantly constructed on an unused freight train line owned by Metro, carries dozens of buses and thousands of riders each day across the San Fernando Valley. Regardless of the Metro Orange Line’s benefits, the San Fernando Valley’s 1.4 million residents now share their streets, intersections, and crosswalks with a vehicle weighing in at a trim 47,000 pounds (unloaded).

Working to ensure that all parties, including transit riders, live safely together is the job of Metro’s Transit Safety group, a division of Metro Community Relations.

Educating Riders and Neighbors

Safety Events

Metro’s Transit Safety Group concentrates on these lines:

• Metro Blue Line
• Metro Gold Line
• Metro Orange Line

Metro’s Transit Safety Group will also train users and neighbors on the following projects when they are complete:

• Metro Exposition Line
• Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension

For the Metro Orange Line, the Transit Group promoted transit safety through multiple channels. These included:

• Developing DVD-based safety material that was delivered to 45,000 addresses along the Orange Line’s route.
• Creating age-specific animated safety videos and presenting them to 102 schools within 1.5 miles of the Orange Line
• Using renderings of Orange Line stations to create site-specific tutorials on Orange Line operations and traffic control
• Producing interactive station-by-station DVD for schools and homes

Clear Results

“Prior to transit safety training, 79 people died on the Blue Line. Since we created the light rail transit safety program, accidents have dropped dramatically.”

While ridership on the Metro System of trains and buses have been rising, injuries and deaths have not. Weekday ridership on the Metro Orange Line, for example, averaged

Neighboring Schools Trained
Metro Line	Neighboring Schools
Blue Line	117
Gold Line	97
Orange Line	106
Eastside	74
Total	394

21,828 boardings in May, a milestone the Environmental Impact Report predicted would be reached in 2020.

After customizing its training program to fit Metro Orange Line situations, the Transit Safety group trained neighbors and riders along the 14-mile length of the busway. Since its opening in October 2005, there have been only seven accidents on the Orange Line and no fatalities.

Case Study: the Metro Gold Line

“The main result of the training is no serious accidents on the Gold Line since it opened.”

For the Metro Gold Line, the Transit Safety group began presenting to children with the beginning of the school year, giving its first presentation October 4, 2002. The original plan was to address all the children affected by the Gold Line before Metro began pre-revenue operations early in 2003.

The group's work took on an added urgency when Metro Board Member Gloria Molina required all school children along the alignment be safety trained before any movement of trains took place. Since Segment 7 was the first area, etc.

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