Two weeks after the accident at a Fox River Grove rail crossing that claimed seven young lives, the question of how to ensure safety at the intersection has become mired in finger pointing and disagreement.
On opposite sides of the debate are the Illinois Department of Transportation and the Union Pacific Railroad, which operates the line where a commuter express train slammed into a school bus Oct. 25 near Algonquin Road and U.S. Highway 14.
Meanwhile, the National Transportation Safety Board, which is conducting a detailed investigation into the crash, has yet to weigh in. But officials of that agency have expressed serious concerns: about warning systems at the intersection and the tight fit between the tracks and a traffic light just past the crossing where the bus was stopped, its rear section extending over the rails.
As that controversy and investigation continued, Westmont residents were on edge Wednesday after learning of an incident that appeared at first glance to have chilling similarities to the Fox River Grove accident.
A school bus carrying Holy Trinity pupils home Tuesday crossed the Burlington Northern tracks on Cass Avenue and stopped for a red light at Burlington Avenue when the crossing lights began flashing and the gates started to come down.
Passenger Brian Beusse, 12, said he noticed that the rear of the bus was over the tracks.
“I was just yelling, `Train, train, go, a train is coming!’ ” the 7th grader said.
The driver gunned the accelerator and went through a red light, then pulled over to the side of the road to collect herself. The train roared by no more than 10 seconds later, Brian said.
In a statement, Deputy Police Chief Jerry Zywczyk downplayed the incident. “There was no close call,” he said. “Preliminary investigation reveals there seemed to have been a perception of danger which never materialized. A bus did cross the tracks, a train did pass, but the proximity of both occurred in proper sequence and chronological order.”
Nontheless, concern over the Fox River Grove tragedy had prompted Westmont officials to pay special attention to the crossing. Last week, they applied new pavement markings to “identify the clear distance” where a school bus needs to stop to clear the tracks. The crossing’s safety systems also have been checked daily since the Fox River Grove accident, officials said.
The Illinois Commerce Commission, which regulates rail crossings, acted as monitor during Wednesday’s wrangling between IDOT and the Union Pacific.
The commission temporarily deferred action on an IDOT proposal to require the railroad to increase the minimum warning that must be provided as a train approaches the Algonquin crossing to 30 seconds from 20 seconds.
That would give vehicles crossing the tracks adequate time to clear the rails and proceed through the traffic light at U.S. 14, IDOT officials say.
But a railroad spokesman asserted that tinkering with the timing could have unforeseen effects on the performance of the complex rail-highway safety system. Company officials also have expressed concern about the shortened distance between the rail crossing and the traffic light that was the result of a 1990 construction project.
Fox River Grove officials sided Wednesday with IDOT.
“It is unconscionable for the Union Pacific to equivocate or object to increasing the signal warning time . . . unless it is impossible from a technical standpoint to increase the signal warning time as requested by IDOT,” the village said in a filing with the commission.
A few days after the crash, IDOT said its tests found that the railroad signals, though set to provide 25 seconds of warning between the time the bells first sound and a train reaches the crossing, gave as much as 26 seconds and as little as 20.
The 20-second sequence sometimes resulted in an “escape” time as the traffic light changed to green in as little as 2 seconds.
The equipment at Algonquin Road that controls the rail-safety system-bells, lights and gates-is connected to the nearby traffic signal and affects the sequencing of lights.
On Nov. 2, Illinois Transportation Secretary Kirk Brown voiced “serious concerns” about the range “provided through the railroad signaling system” at Algonquin.
But the railroad subtly has raised questions about whether a problem at the crossing may lie in IDOT’s traffic-signal equipment.
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“We know our railroad signals were functioning the day of the accident,” a railroad spokesman said Wednesday.
In its filing with the commission, the Union Pacific cited safety board measurements that found that a “stop line” near Algonquin’s intersection with Northwest Highway is only 30 feet, 4 inches from the tracks, while the bus struck by the train was 38 feet 4 inches long.
The potential for disaster at the crossing was raised 13 years ago in a letter to the Fox River Grove village president from a Chicago & North Western Railway official concerned that a proposed expansion of U.S. 14 would gobble up a chunk of Algonquin Road.
Ultimately, the highway was widened in 1990 from two lanes to five, and the stretch of Algonquin between the tracks and the busy thoroughfare shrunk by about 36 feet.
The railroad’s objections to lengthening the warning cycle at Algonquin raise questions about what should be done at the 14 other locations statewide where IDOT crews have found crossings with nearby traffic signals that provide potentially dangerous short green lights.
As a temporary move to improve safety, the state has altered its traffic-signal sequences at those crossings, where despite the concerns, few accidents have occurred over the last 2 1/2 years.
Computerized records obtained by the Tribune indicate that there was only one crash at those crossings during that period, and traffic-signal timing was not a factor.
In that case, a motorist was killed on July 24, 1994, after she drove around lowered crossing gates at Arlington Heights Road and Northwest Highway in Arlington Heights and an express train slammed into her car.