California
Los Angeles
Blue Line
This is an MTA Blue Line
(LA to Long Beach) train, outbound to Long Beach. This is at approximately
Flower Street at about 17th street. The freeway overpass above the
train is the I-10 (Santa Monica) Freeway, looking northbound from the intersection.
This photo was taken in
approximately 1998-1999, when I was still working for the LAPD Transit
Bus Division. I was one of the first units to roll up on the scene.
At this particular location,
as the train travels along surface streets on Flower (heading toward the
junction with the old PE Right of Way at Washington/ Long Beach Ave), the
street is all way one traffic, southbound.
There are a few crossings
over the tracks where traffic can either turn into driveways for businesses,
or in this case, there is a freeway entranceway just to the right, out
of camera, to an onramp for the eastbound 10 Freeway.
There have been a number
of accidents in the same stretch of road, because the drivers get impatient,
and don't want to wait for the red left turn arrows to turn green, so they
run the lights. Unfortunately, although it's been 10 years since
streetcars returned to Los Angeles, the Blue Line only runs along Flower
and Washington streets in downtown, and the trains are still somewhat of
a novelty.
Because of this, knuckleheads
don't think "hey, I could get hit by a TRAIN if I run this light."
They don't look around, they just run the lights. Occasionally the
train takes someone out. I have often referred to the Blue Line as
the "Great White Shark of the Streets of LA" because it just eats anything
that gets in front of it, like this photo shows. We have even had
the Blue Line hit police cars. In this case it hit a full size tractor
trailer that made an illegal left turn in front of the train.
As I recall, the drivers
of the bus and the train sustained no or minor injuries. However
it was a real mess trying to clean up. I remember at one point I
believe they had a crane out there (it was late at night by the time they
finished) and were trying to lift the truck off the tracks and free it
from the train (by the time the fire finished burning, it was pretty well
melted and burned up - this photo was taken early on in the fire).
They had this crane up in the air, and it was coming dangerously close
to hitting the catenary line.
Caption data from Chris
Carson
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