Okazaki insisted that the intersection would be safer with trains operating than it is today.
Numerous speakers said some high school students would see the crossing gates and fencing around the tracks as an opportunity to demonstrate their athletic prowess. Others accused the construction authority of having a double standard for safety in heavily minority neighborhoods along Exposition compared with USC.
The tracks will be in a trench where the rail line leaves Flower Street and turns west onto Exposition Boulevard near the southeast corner of the campus. The authority board recently agreed to add a street-level station at USC/Exposition Park.
USC engineering professor Najmedin Meshkati presented PUC officials with a lengthy report on ways the Exposition line could be designed with greater safety features. Some but not all of the features suggested in the report were incorporated into the Exposition project design.
But Meshkati said more could be done to protect the public at street-level railroad crossings. To underscore his point, Meshkati quoted a Southern California transit official who said after a 2003 accident involving a Metrolink commuter train that "every grade crossing is an accident waiting to happen."
jeff.rabin@latimes.com
