By now, many of you have seen the pictures that Gökhan Esirgen took of a car sitting on the Expo tracks at the station of Exposition Boulevard and Vermont Avenue that appeared on the Transit Coalition forum Tuesday evening. A quick call to the Expo Construction Authority confirmed that the picture shows exactly what people thought it showed, a distracted driver actually took a left onto the Expo tracks.
The Authority was quick to point out the signs and other markings which clearly state that cars do not belong on train tracks, perhaps spooked by all the attention given to the on-street crossings for Expo. While my photo library for the station doesn't show the signs, I was mostly looking at the bike lanes which ran parallel to the station not crossing it, I do remember the signage being pretty clear about what was happening.
But in the end, all the signage, gates and safety devices in the world don't amount to much if a negligent driver is determined to cause havoc. In this case, the damage was minimal. The car stopped before it could do any real damage to the tracks and testing resumed later on Tuesday afternoon.
