FTA: "…California’s terrible commuter rail service speeds and on-time performance are growing worse, due to homeless camps near the tracks and transients wandering on the rails.
The Sacramento Beereports that train engineers are warning system operators and passengers that homeless people wandering on the rails have been hit, and engineers have been forced to slow and make high-speed emergency stops to avoid hitting transients.
But even with Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor passenger service, which operates between Sacramento and Silicon Valley, combining with the Union Pacific Railroad freight service on adjacent tracks to report homeless encampments to law enforcement, California’s homeless have civil rights allowing them to nest on city sidewalks and near isolated train tracks. {emphasis added…SP}
My thought was that this is the first mention I’d ever seen that “Trespassing” was a Civil Right.
If this is the case, is it only out in California? Or is it somehow, to be applied Nationwide? WHERE or from WHOM has this Legal Opinion originated?
Based on some of the Threads on this Forum, it possibly, can be a game changer. Rail Fans and Photographers would certain be among the first to be effected, IMHO. [:-^]
[Note P.S.] Due to the way the ‘Program Works’ on this Forum…I had attempted to put an apostrophe in the Title line, but it came back as almost unreadable…[|(]
The article I had linked was done in conjunction to an artilcle that was in the Sacramento Bee Newspaper “Capitol Corridor trains have been running late. It’s not because of freight traffic” By Tony Bizjak
FTA:'…Trains along the popular Capitol Corridor are running later than before, and homeless camps are partly to blame.
Rail officials say more people have trespassed on train tracks in the last year, forcing engineers at times to hit the brakes to avoid a possible crash – and at times tragically unable to. That’s left trains loaded with commuters or freight grinding to a halt in the middle of nowhere.
Capitol Corridor board chair Lucas Frerichs said the issue is foremost about human safety. But, it’s also a business problem…"
So for the folks who did not like my first choice… Maybe this linked article is more compatable(?) [banghead]
I had the Santa Fe side of the LA Terminal in the 1990’s … the only thing that has apparently changed is the size of the problem. Parts of LA were an open dump … and the City badgers the living crap out of you to clean up after their finer invasive citizenry and turns their back on the source of the problem.
There are two kinds of homeless. Those that really want someplace to call home; and others that have no desire to be ‘trapped’ in a permanent living location.
I thought that those who looked to Breitbart for actual information mostly looked at the pictures due to their inability to actually read any words of three letters or greater.
I took a Capitol Corridor train last week and it was on time and very nice. The interior of the double-decker cars reminded me of commuter cars in the Netherlands. Modern, clean and convenient. And I would not call any of the Caltrain commuter trains slow. They are fast and fun to watch.