LRT Crash at Franklin
This isn’t breaking news anymore, now delayed by an hour. There’s been an accident on the Hiawatha line close to Franklin Avenue. There’s restricted service on this line at the moment, and the trains are going only as far as Franklin. The bus service has been enhanced to and from downtown.
I got this news on a bus close to the mall when a message was flashed on the driver’s screen and he broadcast it. Within about 15 minutes of the incident, the mall was swarming with buses.
No further details of the accident are available with me. If any of you have any more info on how bad it is, any photos, etc. please post.
I did have a quick chat with the driver, and as he drove off he said this was the first time he had heard of an incident involving the LRT in the two years of its operation.
The driver’s full of shit, too. There’s been a few incidents involving the LRT, including a death, if I’m not mistaken.
Correct, I believe there have been more recent and fatal incicdents.
I heard on MPR this morning that the cyclist ignored the flashing lights and barrier arms and went diagonally through the rail intersection. If that’s true, then maybe natural selection is doing its job. I don’t see how someone could be so careless. I hate making light of a death, but honestly I just don’t understand how you could ignore such obvious warnings. On the other hand, I wasn’t there and didn’t see what happened, so who knows what the circumstances were.
What Mike said. It sucks, and it makes the LRT look bad, even though the system/safety features/train driver probably did exactly what they were supposed to.