Tonight it took me over two hours to get home.

As most know, I usually take the MetroTransit Hiawatha Light Rail line to and from work. Today was no exception, although I was very disconcerted when no trains showed up between 5:20 and 5:40 at my stop (not even going in the other direction).

Finally, about then, they said that the trains were not travelling down the middle section of the line. I've seen trains be shutdown before, and usually they are fairly quick to bring buses in to reroute people, but for some reason the official word on the platform is terribly slow to get out. I mean, whenever there is a problem, I always have to wait at least 20 minutes before they even tell me why a train isn't coming.

After a train finally came and took us northbound, we got to the part where the buses were to come. And sure enough, there were three buses there within 10 minutes, which was a great response. The MetroTransit employee who was there told us that someone had been killed while trying to cross in front of a train. That's too bad. Twenty minutes later, the bus drove by the scene of the accident, and there was certainly a ton of emergency vehicles. If i could see better, I would tell you about the scene, and although I couldn't see anything terribly wrong (just all blocked off), most of the other passengers could.

Now that I'm home, I now read that a 30-something man on a bike was hit by the train while trying to cross the intersection. As the MetroTransit employee said to us a Fort Snelling, it's another reminder not to try to race the train. This is the third fatal accident on MetroTransit's only light rail line, the first one not involving a motor vehicle, I believe.