Crossing
controversy
Amtrak says engineer followed rules before fatal crash
HARTFORD
- Residents are expressing concerns about a railroad crossing after an Amtrak
train struck a pickup truck and killed its 31-year-old driver last week.
Shortly before 7:30 a.m. Thursday, Heather Sheree Balven, of St. Louis, drove into the path of a
Chicago-bound Amtrak train going faster than 70 mph at the intersection of
Seventh and Olive streets. The impact demolished Balven's
Ford truck.
A village employee, Robert Preston with the Hartford Parks Department,
witnessed the crash. He said he saw the truck approaching the intersection but
did not hear the train sound its horn until it was virtually at the crossing.
The tracks, which are owned by the Kansas City Southern railroad, have an
X-shaped "cross-bucks" warning sign, but no gate, lights or bells.
"I was drinking my cup of coffee when I saw a white truck go across the
tracks, and I heard an Amtrak (train) coming," Preston said during an
interview with The Telegraph last week. "I kept waiting for the horn. Any
other time, those horns would give you a headache."
Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said the train's event
recorder, which is similar to an airplane's "black box," shows that
the engineer followed protocol in sounding its horn.
"Our train was going just under the speed limit there of 79 miles per
hour, and we were sounding our horn, and of course, as it happened, we were
braking," Magliari said. "So, everything
from the download of the locomotive (event recorder) shows we were doing
everything we were supposed to be doing."
Magliari said the engineer sounded the alarm at the
marked designation. He said that before every railroad crossing, there are
markers that engineers look for to know when to sound the train's horn.
Amtrak trains also have flashing lights on the front of the locomotives that
can be seen by motorists, Magliari said.
He said that Amtrak trains travel through Hartford 10 times per day. He said
five trains are northbound service from St. Louis to Chicago, and five are
southbound from Chicago to St. Louis.
A man working with Balven claimed that visibility
along the tracks could be tricky.
"I'll cross it a couple, three times a day, and going from east to west,
you can see pretty good," said Stephen Smith, who
works for L.G. Barkus and Sons at the job site.
"But when you are coming from the west going east, when you cross that
little park there, you've almost got to be on one set of tracks before you can
see the farther east tracks."
Lt. John Grigg with the Hartford Police Department
said the crash is the first one at the intersection that he can remember during
his career with the village. Unlike what Smith said, Gregg said visibility for
motorists is unobstructed at the site.
The collision remains under investigation.
Balven worked as a geotechnical engineer with Terracon Consultants Inc., which is a subcontracting
company doing work for Keystone Pipeline.
Village officials say they've never known of any push to get crossing gates or
lights at that crossing.
Illinois Commerce Commission officials, who oversee the state's railroads, said
the collision that killed Balven is the first and
only accident at that crossing on record.
Elsewhere in the state, the Illinois Department of Transportation reports,
there were 129 collisions between trains and vehicles throughout Illinois in
2008, and 130 in 2007. Fifteen people died in vehicle-train collisions in
Illinois last year, and 16 people died in 2007.
Meanwhile,
10 pedestrians were killed by trains in Illinois last year, and 12 were killed
in 2007.
The Associated Press contributed some information for this
article.