Safety at Metra

Our ongoing efforts to improve rail safety throughout our system include numerous programs that incorporate the 3 E's: education, engineering and enforcement activities.

Metra’s Operation Lifesaver Station Safety Blitz Program is a part of our ongoing safety education efforts designed to enhance passenger awareness about the potential hazards of disregarding pedestrian railroad warning devices. A team of Metra Safety Department personnel, Metra Police and local police and fire personnel engage commuters by handing out printed educational materials explaining the importance of obeying railroad crossing warning devices and discussing general railroad safety. The 2024 safety blitz schedule can be found here.

Metra also works with the Operation Lifesaver program to provide rail safety education to community groups, schools and businesses across the Chicago region. To schedule a presentation, contact Anthony (Tony) Mills. Email: safetypresentations@metrarr.com or Phone: 312-623-5445.

Metra proactively reinforces the importance of railroad safety through numerous interactions with our region’s schools. Our goal is to work together as a community to support parents and educators as they teach our children that obeying safety laws is a matter of life and death.

In a society where children are besieged by conflicting information and multiple distractions, we need to reinforce safety messages as often as possible. Metra focuses its rail safety efforts on two distinct programs:

• The Operation Lifesaver Train Safety Awareness Program is a comprehensive train safety program that educates children and adults of the dangers of Metra’s at-grade crossings and trespassing along our railroad’s right-of-way. Metra’s Operation Lifesaver Presenters conduct approximately 950 free presentations annually to children, ranging in ages from preschool to 18 years, community groups, school bus drivers, professional truck drivers, emergency responders and other organizations throughout our service area.To schedule a presentation, contact Anthony (Tony) Mills. Email: safetypresentations@metrarr.com or Phone: 312-623-5445.
• Metra also encourages young people throughout the region to become directly involved in creating our safety messages through our Safety Competition. The submissions created by our region’s children become part of each year’s safety campaign. The program has helped us to create another way to work the safety discussion into our region’s classrooms.

Positive Train Control (PTC) is a system that will automatically stop a train if the engineer fails to obey a signal or exceeds the speed limit, thereby preventing train-to-train collisions, unauthorized entry into work zones and derailments due to speeding or moving through misaligned track switches. The system integrates GPS, trackside sensors and communications units, onboard computers and Metra’s centralized train dispatching system. Together, these components track trains, convey operating instructions and monitor the crew’s operation of the train.

The final bill for implementation on Metra comes to about $415 million, money that for the most part had to be diverted from our already inadequate capital funding. It costs about $20 million annually to operate and maintain. The work was completed by the year end 2020 deadline and the result is an even safer system for riders.

Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) rules require locomotive engineers to sound train horns between 15 and 20 seconds, but no more than a quarter-mile, in advance of all public grade crossings. Train horns must be sounded in a standardized pattern of two long, one short and one long blasts. Under the FRA mandate, the pattern must be repeated or prolonged until the lead locomotive or lead cab car is in the grade crossing. Train crews also may deem it necessary to sound a horn as a warning when there is a vehicle, person or animal near the tracks. Track construction, workers within 25 feet of a live track or malfunctioning crossings, also require crews to sound the horn.

FRA rules allow communities to reduce train horn noise by establishing Quiet Zones. Communities that wish to establish a Quiet Zone are responsible for the process and associated costs, which may include improvements to the crossing or roadway design that mitigate the increased risk caused by the absence of a train horn. Only the FRA can grant a Quiet Zone. For more information on creating a Quiet Zone in your community, please visit the FRA’s website.

Even if a community establishes a Quiet Zone, train horns may still be used if workers are within 25 feet of the track or in emergency situations, such as a person or a vehicle on the tracks, or at the discretion of the crew.