Commuter Rail

L.A.'s deputy mayor for transportation, Jaime de la Vega, was waiting for me at the top of the escalator at the Universal City train station Friday morning. When I arrived, he handed me his keys, and the race to City Hall began. De la Vega was taking the Red Line. I would be driving his Hummer, so I guess you could say we'd both be traveling by locomotive. "I'll meet you in the City Hall rotunda," De la Vega said. I've spent three years kicking De la Vega around for being such a knucklehead and driving a gas-guzzling military-style vehicle in a city choked with traffic problems he's supposed to be solving.

Metrolink fares will hold steady for now, but weekend service in Riverside and Orange counties will be sharply reduced next month to deal with a budget crunch caused by a fall in ridership and revenue at the regional rail service. The board of the five-county commuter train system, which has been struggling with unprecedented, recession-driven financial turmoil for months, also voted Friday to cut two off-peak weekday trains on the Inland Empire/Orange County line. All of the trains being eliminated averaged less than 100 passengers as of October, officials said.

More than a decade ago, Metrolink and other commuter rail services throughout California sought and received permission to bypass a federal requirement to install simple safety signs intended to help avoid accidents like last year's Chatsworth disaster. The action was disclosed this week in a technical and financial analysis of high-tech train collision avoidance systems prepared by the staff of the state Public Utilities Commission, which shares some oversight responsibilities for commuter rail systems.

The head of Southern California's regional commuter rail service was replaced Friday in a management shake-up that officials hope will better position the agency to tackle major safety and financial challenges in the wake of last year's Chatsworth disaster. FOR THE RECORD: Metrolink collision: An article in Saturday's Section A about the demotion of Metrolink Chief Executive David R. Solow said last year's Chatsworth train accident, which killed 25 and injured 135, was the worst in modern California history.

In the latest fallout from last year's Metrolink disaster, the Southern California commuter rail agency could begin directly hiring and managing its engineers and conductors next year, taking full responsibility for key tasks historically delegated to outside contractors. The move, which officials say appears likely, comes after Metrolink's relationship with the current provider of train crews, Connex Railroad, was soured by allegations of lax oversight.

For the second time in less than three months, a Metrolink train and a freight train heading in opposite directions collided Thursday morning, raising fresh concerns about the commuter rail line's ability to navigate tracks it shares with other carriers. The Rialto crash was far less serious than the catastrophic head-on collision in September between a Metrolink train and a Union Pacific train in Chatsworth that killed 25. Thursday's accident occurred about 11:30 a.m.

In the wake of the devastating Chatsworth train crash last month, Metrolink's board Friday appointed an 11-member panel of industry experts to take a comprehensive look at the commuter rail's safety and operating procedures. The group, composed of people from industry and academia and a passenger advocate, is supposed to issue a draft report in 60 days. Improvements that can be made more quickly are expected to be forwarded to Metrolink in seven to 10 days.

Metrolink has amassed the most fatalities among commuter railroads of similar size in the United States over the last decade, a statistic boosted in part by three deadly train collisions in the past five years, according to federal reports. Cars and pedestrians at the 464 street-level crossings on Metrolink's right of way are a key factor in the fatalities, but the agency also stands out from some counterparts in how much it shares tracks with freight trains. The cause of Friday's accident is yet to be determined, but investigators are focusing on a series of signals that should have warned the train's engineer to wait for a freight train to move off a shared track west of Chatsworth.

For the second time in 10 days, a motorist was injured in a collision with a Gold Line train after crashing through lowered fiberglass crossing gates along the route between Los Angeles and Pasadena, raising anew the issue of safety along commuter lines running through heavily populated areas.

Re "State puts brakes on bullet train plan," April 29 In seeking to kill high-speed rail service, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reveals the vision of a toad and the ethics of a toady. For 50 years, California has been proving that building ever more freeways and few alternatives is a sure formula for ever more traffic jams. But the governor wants to keep right on making the same old mistake over and over. Of course he brings good news to the auto industry, which put him into office in the first place by financing a rollback of the auto tax. Were it still in effect, it would have been yielding the billions for roads that Schwarzenegger would now steal from the future -- which is high-speed and commuter rail.