Rohnert Park set to finalize request for SMART to reduce train speeds through fatal crossing

The Rohnert Park City Council on Tuesday expects to formalize its request that SMART reduce the speed of its commuter trains through an intersection where five people have been hit and killed in just over a year.

Led by Mayor Gina Belforte, council members earlier this month signaled their intent to follow through on that appeal with a letter to Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit and its 12-member board of directors. Pending a vote Tuesday on the final version of the correspondence, City Council members seek to slow down trains at the road-level crossing at Golf Course Drive near Commerce Drive, increasing safety and addressing concerns that the high rate of speed at that location is drawing those considering suicide.

“We believe the Golf Course Drive crossing is emerging as a magnet,” a draft of the council’s letter reads. “We recognize that reducing the speed would not eliminate all risks, but believe it would reduce the attractiveness of this site and save lives. We also recognize that slowing the speed will affect SMART’s schedule, but believe a few seconds change in the schedule is worthy of consideration.”

In the letter, the council also plans to ask that the speed of the trains at the Golf Course Drive intersection be placed on an upcoming SMART board agenda to initiate a public discussion. A train was clocked as fast as 68 mph in one of the deaths ruled an accident at that intersection.

In addition, council members will renew an invitation to SMART board members and operations staff to join them at a future City Council meeting.

In July, top officials with SMART, including General Manager Farhad Mansourian and Jennifer McGill, the agency’s police chief who is now also its operations manager, met with city staff members to discuss possible safety upgrades at the city’s crossings. Those discussions led to SMART installing sidewalk fencing designed to prevent accidental pedestrian deaths at the Golf Course Drive crossing and city staff members agreeing to pursue an outside study to review safety at Rohnert Park’s three crossings, which the council approved at a cost of $66,000. However, Mansourian, McGill and other SMART officials ignored the mayor’s invitation to talk and left City Hall before the start of a City Council meeting that night, Belforte said.

Belforte has since called SMART’s response to a rising number of deaths at the crossing “inadequate” and repeatedly requested they show up to a public meeting.

“To have SMART show up at a meeting I really don’t think is a lot to ask,” Belforte said in an interview earlier this month. “I think the community needs to know that SMART knows what’s happening, that they care and that they are trying to come up with a plan.”

Interview requests left with Mansourian on Friday went unreturned. He previously declined to comment on why he and other SMART staff members left City Hall without discussing safety with Rohnert Park council members.

San Rafael Mayor Gary Phillips, SMART board chairman, has raised doubts that lowering the speed at points along its current 43-mile line from San Rafael to the northern outskirts of Santa Rosa would prevent someone from dying if they step in front of a train. He said the decision is more an operational matter than about policy direction, which the board oversees, and he is likely to defer to SMART staff members, who to date have shown little interest in reducing the speed of the train, let alone discussing it publicly.

“I’m skeptical I guess,” said Phillips. “I don’t think the speed is a factor in whether someone survives or not. I’m more than willing to consider other possibilities.”

Phillips said he wished to receive Rohnert Park’s correspondence before considering the topic for an agenda and opening it up to board discussion. The Rohnert Park City Council will look to finalize the letter addressed to him at its Tuesday meeting starting at 5 p.m.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin Fixler at 707-521-5336 or kevin.fixler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @kfixler.