A train passed through the Hersey Street crossing in Hingham during a test run. Since the line began running, some cars have been caught between crossing gates.
(Jim Davis/Globe Staff)
Bella English
Jane Gilmartin lives near one of the worst train crossings in Hingham. She's not the kind of person to say, "I told you so," but it seems that some of her predictions about the new Greenbush line have come to pass, including safety concerns and mass confusion.
Granted, it's only a few weeks into the MBTA's new line that runs between South Station and Scituate, with stops in Braintree, Weymouth, Hingham, and Cohasset. But in Hingham, confusion over railroad crossing gates, plus at least one malfunction and a near-miss, prompted the Police Department to leave a message on residents' answering machines telling them that even when a gate is up, if the red lights are flashing, Stop.
In one instance, after starting into the crossing a driver got stuck between the gates. In another, an elderly man narrowly avoided getting hit because of confusion about the gate.
"The lights were flashing , and I didn't realize where I needed to stop," says the trapped woman, who did not want to be identified because she's embarrassed about not stopping when she should have.
"All of a sudden the gates came down, and I was in between them. I could see the train coming. Luckily, there was enough space for me to wait to let the train go by. I wasn't on the tracks."
The woman, who describes herself as "one of the few people who think the trains are a good idea," says she believes that time will take care of the kinks.
Gilmartin agrees it's just a matter of time - before a tragedy occurs. "The worst crossing is right outside my kitchen window, and I'm just waiting for an accident to happen." The intersections, she says, were tricky to maneuver even before the trains came.
"The one by the South Shore Country Club is so confusing; there's something like 12 traffic lights with arrows and double lanes where there never were before."
Even though she can see her house from the country club, she has opted to detour around downtown Hingham to get home. And she says a lot of people are doing the same, trying to avoid the seven crossings in Hingham altogether. This, of course, creates its own traffic nightmare: On her street, alone, says Gilmartin, it has increased tenfold.
There have been false alarms, too. One woman was driving to the commuter boat when the lights started flashing and the gates came down at a crossing to signal an approaching train. But the train never came. The gates went back up, and the cars started moving through the crossing. Then the gates began to close, and this time, a train came tearing down the tracks. One man's car was on the tracks, but a sensor kept the second gate up, and he made it out the other side.
"About 10 or 20 seconds after that, the train came flying by. If he had panicked and just stayed there, he could have gotten hit," says Hingham police Lieutenant Michael Peraino. The department has gotten dozens of calls, which continue daily, from confused and concerned drivers. He stresses that the MBTA has been responsive, sending workers to problem sites immediately.
But the MBTA insists that the gates aren't malfunctioning and that they are designed to come down as the train is approaching the nearest station. "We definitely will work with each town" where residents are apprehensive, "but the gates are working properly," says T spokeswoman Lydia Rivera. "We think as time goes by, the communities will adjust."
Still, the Hingham Police Department says the design is faulty and needs to be changed.
Police and fire officials hope to meet soon with MBTA representatives. "We are going to request that they change the sequence of the gate closings, so that the gate does not come down until the train is pulling away from the station," says Peraino.
Under the current system, if there are lots of passengers getting off and on, the wait at the crossings is long; if there are few passengers - as there are during off-hours - the wait is short. The changing duration of the gate closings is confusing to drivers, says Peraino.
Still, it's incumbent upon drivers to stop at the flashing red lights, gate or no gate, just as they would stop at a red traffic light. Hingham police are patrolling the crossings to inform drivers if they are too close to the gates - and to ticket those who disobey the red lights.
Apparently, there have been glitches with the gates in Cohasset and Scituate, as well, Peraino says. "You have to figure that this whole corridor hasn't had a train in over 50 years," he says, "so people aren't used to dealing with them."
Why don't the trains also blow their horns when they approach each crossing? Under federal law, train whistles are required at crossings. But the five towns on the Greenbush line entered into an agreement with the Federal Railroad Administration to be declared "quiet zones," since the area is so thickly settled. Horns are sounded only in emergencies.
In Hingham, says Peraino, half the town is for the horns, half against. Says Jane Gilmartin: "I have a very real feeling that with the first fatality - which in my opinion is not a matter of if but a matter of when - they will bring those horns back, and rightfully so. But I will have to move. I don't think you could actually live through that, with trains coming through 24 times a day."
After enduring a day and night of horn-testing by the T, before the line opened, Gilmartin and her daughter Isabelle wrote a song to the tune of "I've Been Working on the Railroad."
Theirs is called "I've Been Living Near the Railroad." At the end (cue: "fee, fi, fiddly-i-o") it goes: "So Greenbush, please stop blasting that horn, while we're all in bed. Please stop blasting that horn - oh, my aching head!"
Columnist Bella English can be reached at english@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
