Hampton Roads Transit has released its first light rail safety public service announcement.
The agency wants people to identify the “seven warning signs that would have made this trip a safer one.” The answers are here.
5 thoughts on “First light rail safety PSA”
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VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
What a lame PSA
I wonder if the safety system that failed had to do with warning cars of an oncoming train?
Really dumb move by HRT on this ad. The last thing Light Rail needed was more negative press. All this does is remind people that we were stupid enough to A. build light rail through the middle of downtown and B. do it in a way that makes it a virtual guarantee that someone is going to get hit by a train.
Go walk through downtown, it’s hard to imagine someone not making a slight mistake and running onto the track or some kid from TCC listening to an IPOD and getting hit walking into the mall.
They don’t have GATES at the train crossings?!
Yeah, they have gates at train crossings, but that doesn’t do much when the track runs parallel to the road all throughout downtown and the only thing between you and the train is maybe 10-15 feet and a slight embankment…
I won’t address the spot itself, and certainly don’t dispute the merit of safety messages, but rather the release of a safety message featuring a potentially deadly accident so far ahead of the opening of the line and without any accompanying description of a campaign. If they’d announced this along the lines of “Soon, you’ll see light rail trains moving through Norfolk….” this would make more sense and fit into the logic of a soon-to-open system.
Throwing this message out by itself without any sense of connection to a larger safety campaign, not to mention in the absence of any other campaign introducing the Tide, was foolish and may only raise concerns about the ability of HRT to coordinate such a complex project.