Commuter Train

"Welcome aboard Metro. Sorry we don't serve coffee and doughnuts." That cheery greeting from a Metro subway operator, booming from his train's public address speakers one recent Monday morning, drew rueful smiles from suburban commuters lurching shoulder-to-shoulder toward the start of another week in their downtown offices. Shove a microphone in front of some people and they can't resist hamming it up. There's something about an open mike in the front cab of a commuter train, pulling a captive audience of several hundred passengers, that tempts subway operators to become amateur comedians and tour guides.

Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley's swift filing of murder charges against Juan Manuel Alvarez in the Metrolink disaster (Jan. 28) may be another legal blunder, a la the Simpson murder trial. In California, a murder conviction must show "malice aforethought," or intent. The penal code defines such malice as "a deliberate intention unlawfully to take away the life of a fellow creature," or "an abandoned and malignant heart." By placing his car on the rails, Alvarez showed himself to be disturbed, deranged and reckless, but can it be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he had malice toward the train passengers, or an intent to kill them?

Three signals that should have warned a Metrolink engineer to stop before hitting a freight train appear to have been working and visible prior to last week's catastrophic collision, federal safety investigators said Monday, hours after some anxious commuters returned to their usual trains. "There were no obstructions to viewing any of the signals," National Transportation Safety Board member Kitty Higgins told reporters as she summed up the early stages of what promises to be a lengthy investigation into the crash that killed 25 people in Chatsworth on Friday.

It happened almost without my knowing. I have more than 10 years of higher education, once owned a two-story, four-bedroom house with a three-car garage, have traveled around the world, am over 40 with two teen-age children, and I was virtually homeless. As I settled in to spend the night in my truck, I was hurt, angry and perplexed. No one ever thinks this can happen to him. A writer and consultant by profession, without recent work, I had gambled on a commission job to pay some bills.

All aboard! Well, not quite. Only 20 of the 140 or so daily passengers on Orange County's new commuter train to Los Angeles have actually been persuaded by the new service to forsake their cars for the train, county transportation officials said Monday. The remaining passengers, officials said, had been regular Amtrak riders anyway.

Five shots were fired at a train filled with rush-hour commuters this morning, causing slight injuries to two passengers, a spokesman for the regional transit agency said. "It missed me by two inches," passenger Darlene Stack said of one bullet. "It sounded like firecrackers, but it wasn't firecrackers, it was gunshots." One man was treated for a scratched forehead. A second passenger was hit in the arm by debris but left the scene without seeking medical treatment.

An unidentified man was killed Thursday by a Metrolink train about 40 feet west of the spot where a bicyclist who ignored an engineer's warning signals was killed three weeks earlier, authorities said. Witnesses told Metrolink officials that Thursday's victim was carrying several duffel-type bags that he placed on the ground next to the tracks before walking into the path of the oncoming train, Metrolink spokesman Francisco Oaxaca said.

Here are the weekday schedules of the three new Metrolink lines. For more information, call (800) 371-LINK. POMONA TO LOS ANGELES Morning Inbound A.M. A.M. A.M. A.M. A.M. Pomona 5:26 6:11 6:51 7:26 8:01 Covina 5:37 6:22 7:02 7:37 8:12 El Monte 5:54 6:39 7:19 7:54 8:29 Los Angeles 6:20 7:05 7:45 8:20 8:55 Evening Outbound P.M. P.M. P.M. P.M. P.M.