JEMS.com Editor’s Note:Pick up a copy of April 2005 JEMS to read “Disaster on the rails” to read about a deadly Los Angeles-area train MCI.Click here to read about the deadly Metrolink crash in Chatsworth.
LOS ANGELES — An out-of-service bus driven by a mechanic collided with a light rail train near downtown Los Angeles during the morning rush Friday, injuring 15 people and rattling commuters a week after a deadly train crash in a suburb.
The impact knocked the front car of the electric train off the track while on a run to Long Beach. The other cars remained on the track, which reopened about three hours after the crash.
“We had an out-of-service bus turn in front of the train,” said Marc Littman, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates both the train and the bus. “We don’t know who had the right of way.”
More than an hour after the accident, the smell of compressed natural gas leaking from the bus was still strong. The bus looked as if it had been broadsided by the train, with a large dent on one side and a bend in the roof. The train showed much lighter damage.
Fifteen people on the Metro Blue Line train, including the operator, suffered minor injuries and were taken to a hospital, Fire Department spokeswoman d’Lisa Davies said.
The crash comes just a week after a Metrolink commuter train smashed into a freight train in the San Fernando Valley, about 30 miles northwest of downtown, killing 25 people and injuring more than 130.
Chris Romero, 31, who lives nearby, said the screeching metal woke him up and he ran to the tracks. The crash, coupled with the Metrolink accident, has made him wary of taking the train.
“With everything that’s going on, it’s scary to go on the Metro,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter.
Metrolink is a multi-county, regional heavy rail system separate from Los Angeles County’s MTA Metro light rail system.
The Metro’s Blue Line, which runs from downtown to Long Beach, started service in 1990 and is the oldest part of MTA’s popular light rail system. Metro Rail service covers 73 miles of track and 62 stations, including street-level light rail, two subway lines and some elevated track. Estimated weekday ridership totals more than 300,000 boardings.
Associated Press writers Noaki Schwartz and Jeff Wilson contributed to this report.
