City to look at at-grade safety

CITY HALL — After recently getting a green light from the California Public Utilities Commission to build a controversial at-grade railroad crossing at Flower Street, city officials are now fulfilling their part of the bargain — upgrading crossings throughout the city with state-of-the-art technology.

The City Council will vote Tuesday on measures that could begin that process.

"As part of our settlement [with commission staff and other interested parties] we needed to show commitment to some other improvements," City Manager Jim Starbird said. "We're essentially complying with the things they wanted us to do within 30 days of [the commission's] approval to show we were serious with moving forward."

Commission staff members had also previously opposed the crossing, citing safety issues with design, but withdrew their opposition in December, much to the dismay of local homeowners who vocally challenged the project.

Their concerns included train noise and heavy traffic cutting through their neighborhood from Glenoaks Boulevard and other major streets to get to the crossing, which will be an access route to the Walt Disney Co.'s new Grand Central Creative Campus.

If the council approves the upgrades, city officials will be making approximately $6 million in changes to five city crossings to make them safer. Upgrades would use technology such as specialized warning signals and gates around the crossings.

As the Flower Street Crossing is already set to be built with these new standards in mind, Tuesday's vote will impact the other city crossings.

But some are still not happy with the new crossing coming into the area.

Glendale resident Al Hofmann — who does not live near Flower Street, but who has involved himself in the issue — does not agree with the way the Flower Street crossing is going in, saying that it could cause problems.

"One of the problems I see is that the track elevation is very high and some vehicles may have a hard time going over it. I think [the city] can do better," he said.

Hofmann is in the process of discussing some ideas with city officials on how he feels the crossing could be made safer, but said that even with improvements and new signals, it still could cause a traffic problem.

"My problem with signals is that no matter how fancy or how controlled they are, it's still a signal, and when people are in a hurry, they always try to beat the system," he said.