FORT WORTH -- The Trinity Railway Express roars through the crossing at Galvez Avenue and Riverside Drive 37 times a day. Add in freight trains, and you are up to 55 trips in a day.
Galvez Avenue also has far more crashes than any other TRE crossing. In the last ten years, there have been four. That is a third of the total number of TRE train crossing collisions, including a fatal crash that Refugio Duran will never forget.
"As soon as the train hit them, I guess the girl died on impact," Duran recalled as he replayed the scene in his mind. "It pinned them up against a wall back there."
Duran said the driver went around the crossing arm and disregarded lights and warning bells. Two weeks ago it nearly happened again. That incident was the last straw for the TRE.
"We just don't want to risk the public safety or the safety of passengers," said Joan Hunter, TRE spokeswoman.
So on Monday the TRE put up emergency concrete barriers, closing off the crossing entirely.
Officials will ask Fort Worth city council to make it permanent.
"I don't like that. Because it's harder to get across the street from the bus stop," said Hope Dickens. She rides her motorized chair across the tracks to the Community Food Bank. The director there says hundreds of families will need to find a new way to get to them.
"It's nothing that we wanted," said Regena Taylor. "And from what I understand the community didn't want it either. But we also want to be safe."
Taylor said people will learn to live with it, if it means no one else will die at the crossing.
As a safer alternative, the Galvez neighborhood can still be reached from 4th Street.
E-mail jdouglas@wfaa.com
