BY ED FELIEN
On Sunday, Jan. 3, around 6 p.m., 61-year-old Daniel Wiese, a resident at the nearby Dungarvin Group Home’s Hiawatha Campus, was hit and killed by a northbound train at the 32nd Street intersection while trying to cross the tracks in his electric wheelchair. Other disabled residents have complained that they have difficulty crossing the tracks in motorized wheelchairs, especially when there is fresh snow.
In the past year two other people have been killed by Metro Transit trains, and three others have been seriously injured. The total casualties for the Hiawatha Death Star since its beginning has been three pedestrians before the latest death.
I think Aldous Huxley said, “Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.”
But speed at what cost?
Wikipedia says about the Blue Line: “Trains can reach speeds of 55 miles per hour, but the ‘general service speed’ is about 40 mph.” The time between stops from Lake Street to 38th Street is two minutes, from 38th Street to 46th Street, two minutes; from 46th Street to 50th Street, two minutes. If instead of going 40 to 55 mph between these stops the trains went no faster than 30 mph, that would mean no more than three extra minutes between the four stops.
The cost/benefit analysis of three minutes additional ride time versus four human lives is a proper subject for public discussion. But there are no public officials willing to talk about this—taking the risk of angering constituents by even considering slowing down their commute time by three minutes.
The Hiawatha Line is, of course, built on the wrong side of Hiawatha. There is railroad right-of-way on the other side of Hiawatha Avenue that would have been much more suitable and much safer. Also, the University Line runs right down the middle of University Avenue, when it could have run on a railroad right-of-way just two blocks to the north. The University Line has also claimed pedestrian casualties.
Huxley stole the title of his most famous book from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” where Prospero’s daughter Miranda stares at creatures from the modern world and says, “Oh brave new world that hath such people in it.” Huxley’s point, I believe, was that Miranda’s wonder about humanity had turned to horror.
After a fatality last fall there was a discussion on a neighborhood online forum where most participants blamed the bicyclist for not paying attention to warning signs. The most recent fatality has not even seemed worthy of discussion.
Oh, Brave New World, indeed.
