Sadly, my sense is that the article's author doesn't understand passenger rail. Nor RR safety. Nor history. And doesn't want to.
> ... a professor of urban and regional planning at Florida Atlantic University who has lived in the area for most of his life. “Brightline is unique nationally,” he said. “It’s operating right through the urban fabric.” Just by leaving their houses, people encounter it, whether they want to or not, and they sometimes have to react quickly, in a life-and-death situation, to a system they don’t intuitively understand. “This is why we see the issues that we have,” he said.
Vs. I live in SE Michigan, and RR tracks go right through all sorts of urban and residential areas. One little old train station near me is now a Montessori preschool. Back in the 1940's, my mother found herself in a situation similar to the elderly couple the article describes dying - but at a grade crossing with 6+ tracks, and boxed in by cars with oblivious drivers. However - the house she'd been born in was 2 doors down from a multi-track grade crossing, and she understood both "there is more than one train in the world" and "sit on the tracks and you will die" - so she got the hell out in time.
