By Bob von Sternberg
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
Copyright 2006 Star Tribune
A light-rail train collided with an ambulance at a Bloomington intersection late Monday. No one was hurt.
Metro Transit spokesman Bob Gibbons gave this account:
The Allina Health System ambulance had just exited Interstate Hwy. 494 at 34th Avenue S. and had stopped on the tracks that run down the center of the avenue. The driver apparently was waiting for other vehicles to clear the intersection.
The train operator, heading south toward the Mall of America, spotted the ambulance and hit the emergency brakes. “He was able to slow it down, but not stop,” Gibbons said. “So it wasn’t too bad.”
The train struck the ambulance near its rear wheels and spun it around, sending it into the side of the train.
Paramedics in the ambulance boarded the train to check on the operator and the 60 or so passengers. The ambulance had been headed to a call for service.
Train service between Fort Snelling and the south end of the 17-station line at the mall was suspended until early Tuesday. The train operator underwent routine drug and alcohol testing.
Both the train and the ambulance can override traffic lights, and both operators apparently believed they had the right of way. “But the train trumps an ambulance,” Gibbons said.
A handful of other accidents, including two fatalities, have occurred on the light-rail line since its opening in June 2004.