WILMINGTON, Mass. — Citing new safety concerns at the same railroad crossing, Wilmington town officials are demanding action from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority less than a month after a driver was killed by a train.
Roberta Sausville Devine, 68, was driving across the north Wilmington crossing on a Friday night last month when the Haverhill Line Commuter Rail train struck her car after the crossing arms failed to come down before the train approached.
The MBTA attributed the tragedy to “human error,” as investigators found that a signal maintainer for Keolis, which operates the public transit system, had not returned the safety system to its normal operating mode after performing regular testing.
The Wilmington Board of Selectmen released a statement Friday claiming two additional safety failures had occurred at the same crossing Friday morning.
The first, town officials said, occurred shortly after midnight when the crossing gate came down and remained stuck until a Keolis worker arrived.
Then, at 6:44 a.m., the selectmen said in a statement, “the crossing gates were reported to be deploying into the horizontal position just as a train proceeded to cross Middlesex Avenue with inadequate advance notice to pedestrians and motorists.”
The Board of Selectmen, along with Town Manager Jeff Hull, are now calling for answers from the MBTA, who they say have not communicated with them about what changes have been made since last month’s tragedy.
“I just question whether the T is taking this as seriously as they should be. This is just an incident that shouldn’t be happening. For ongoing issues less than a month after that episode, it’s incredibly frustrating quite frankly that we’re not getting more of a response from the T,” Hull said. “People need to be comfortable that they can drive across their local roads and not worry about getting seriously injured or killed.”
But the MBTA denied any safety system failures occurred on Friday.
“The railroad crossing’s safety system this morning performed as it was designed to,” MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said in a statement.
Pesaturo explained the mix of melting snow and salt from treating the roads created “ponding” in the tracks at railroad crossings shortly after midnight. Sensing that, the safety system’s gates were automatically lowered, “as designed,” he said.
“This is the manner in which crossing systems around the world operate,” Pesaturo said. “It is not a failure nor a malfunction of the crossing’s safety system.”
Pesaturo said for the first half of Friday morning, the commuter rail trains stopped about 50 feet from the crossing and then slowly rolled through until the salt-water was gone and the trains returned to standard operation.
“At no point today were the gates up while a train was traveling through the crossing,” Pesaturo said.
The selectmen also expressed concern about equipment issues at the Glen Road crossing in town.
“The Board will continue to work with our legislative delegation to press the MBTA to be more responsive and forthcoming and to give the matter of safety at the north Wilmington rail crossing the priority attention that it demands,” the town wrote.
Meanwhile, residents and those who drive through north Wilmington are taking precautions as they cross the tracks. Boston 25 News witnessed several drivers significantly slowing down, hesitating and looking both ways as they approached the crossing even as the crossing gate was up.
“When you hear someone got killed, it takes on a whole different sound,” said Sandra Gracia, who works at the salon feet from the crossing. “You hear the train go by, and it just goes through you now.”
“Every train track I cross in my car, I stop now, because I don’t want that to be me,” added Gracia’s coworker Cassie Fitzmaurice, who now parks on the opposite side of the Middlesex Ave., tracks, so she doesn’t have to cross them.