Rowland Community Day School tries to get students back on track. But when it comes to safety, the school wants students to stay away from nearby railroad tracks.

The steel rails run right through the middle of Rowland and Hacienda Heights. These busy mainlines carry vital freight, as well as passenger trains.

Traffic halts when the long freight trains rumble alongside Valley Boulevard. Motorists are often tempted to rush through these intersections before the warning arms have completely lowered.

“What does the average motorist do when they see the crossing guard coming down?” asked Ron Garcia, a safety spokesman for Operation Lifesaver. “They speed up to sneak through before the train comes!”

Garcia was one of the speakers who spoke to the Rowland students on April 1.

As a locomotive engineer with more than a decade of experience with BNSF Railroad, Garcia knows firsthand what happens when the train beats the car through the intersection.

“By the time an engineer sees your car on the track, it’s already too late to stop the train. I hit a work van once and had a near-miss another time,” said Garcia, who used to drive trains between Los Angeles and Barstow.

The safety spokesman noted that a freight train traveling at 55 mph will take a mile or more to stop. And an eight-car passenger train traveling at 79 mph will also take more than a mile to come to a complete halt.

See the whole story in the Rowland Heights Highlander.