Los Angeles County Supervisors Don Knabe and Michael D. Antonovich introduced a motion this week before the Metrolink Board of Directors, requiring mandatory annual disaster simulation and emergency management training exercises for all five counties served by the agency (Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside).
The motion directs the Metrolink CEO to seek input from County, State and Federal emergency management agencies and other urban commuter rail agencies to develop a risk assessment analysis of the current Metrolink system’s single-tracking, at-grade highway/rail crossings, freight movement coordination, terrorist targets, tunnels, bridges, and stations.
The recent head-on collision of these two trains should never have happened, said Supervisor Knabe. It must be made evident to all of us in Southern California that the lessons learned translate into an improved, fail-safe rail traffic management system which can be counted on to avoid future train-to-train collisions, without exception.
With nearly 1 million boardings a month, Metrolink faces major challenges with sharing track with freight and Amtrak trains, at-grade highway crossings, homeland security and other infrastructure and technological issues, said Supervisor Antonovich. It is imperative that Metrolink inventories all challenges facing the system, develops a strategy to fund the necessary mitigations, and has an integrated and comprehensive emergency management plan for the five counties.