State employes credit union

When faced with a massive resignaling project on its northeastern Illinois territory that the state wanted done in a short time frame, Metra pondered these questions: From where would the manpower come? How would Metra get the material ordered, delivered, and staged, on time? Who would provide the needed expertise? Should the agency contract-out the work or do it with in-house staff? The answer to the last question was "both."

Metra's Interconnected Crossings Project starred with a tragic accident in 1996. A school bus waiting for a traffic light on U.S. 14 in Fox River Grove, Ill., stopped with its rear end fouling the Union Pacific Northwest Line. A Metra commuter train could not stop in time, and several high school students died.

To ensure that such an accident would never happen again, the Illinois Department of Transportation and the railroads put together the state-wide Interconnected Crossings project, the purpose of which was to upgrade highway grade crossings interconnected with traffic signals and provide simultaneous preemption of traffic signals in compliance with warning times provided by IDOT or another traffic authority. The project also would upgrade control equipment to include state-of-the-art constant warning time and event-recording technology.

Metra's $50.3 million project involved 128 crossings, 56 of which were interconnected with traffic signals. The remainder had to be changed because they were affected by the work at the interconnected crossings. Metra awarded a design/furnish contract to Safetran Systems in fall 1999 for construction equipment, wiring facilities, and miscellaneous materials. Three consultants provided design review and field coordination: Parsons Transportation Group, Parsons Brinckerhoff, and STV. The biggest challenge was the tight time schedule: The project had to be completed by July 2001.

Finding 50 or more experienced signalmen is a challenge in any labor market, so Metra and the Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen and the Brotherhood of Maintenance-of-way Employes worked out several new agreements. Metra and BMWE representatives reached an agreement that allowed BMWE members to transfer to the signal department as assistant signalmen for the Interconnected Crossings project and continue to accumulate seniority. Upon completion of the project, the employees could exercise seniority back m/w, with full service credit. BRS waived the initial two-year training program for new assistant signalmen. CAINAC, Inc., was hired to conduct a basic signaling class.

"Our unions were strongly in favor of doing things in-house," says Metra Assistant Chief Engineer Robert C. Schuster. "They bent over backwards to work with us."

Metra began engineering in March 1999, and completed what would normally be a year's worth of work in four months. The intent was to determine just how long the time between crossing warning system activation and train arrival (25 seconds minimum in Illinois) would have to be extended to allow for traffic to clear. The figure determined was 55 seconds. Work began in October 1999. Part of it involved installing new traffic light controllers, and new electrical interconnects between them and the crossing warning systems, according to Metra Director-Signal Engineering William P. Kaminski.

Addressing the manpower challenge

"We had about 50 qualified signalmen available, but we needed almost 50 more assistant signalmen," says Metra General Signal Supervisor-Engineering Ralph K. Spargo. "Our personnel department recruited at area trade schools and found many qualified people."

While design work was in progress, arrangements were made for more than 40 vehicles, among them trucks, trenchers, and other equipment Metra did not have available. Vermeer supplied all trench equipment; Danella Rental Systems supplied about 40 vehicles. Safetran coordinated all the equipment under the design/furnish contract, acting as general contractor. The state concurred with this system since going out for bids on a public contract takes a long time. To further speed up the operation, Metra staged signalmen crews as an assembly line.

Safetran set up a wire shop for Metra in a 35,000-square-foot facility in South Holland, Ill. Here, signalmen did the wiring for all the houses and cases, which were then transported to the crossing sites. Three five-man crews performed the wiring, one each for the Rock Island, Men-a Electric, and combined South-West/Milwaukee North/Milwaukee West districts. In addition, Metra set up two foundation crews, two local cable wiring crews, two line cable wiring crews, two interface crews, and two cutover crews. These included one foreman, one leading signalman, a signalman/truck driver, and four and five assistant signalmen. Safetran built some of the bungalows, and acquired others from PTMW, Inc. The Okonite Company supplied the cable.

Metra's wiring crews became so proficient that they actually got ahead of the supplier in materials. "Working with experienced Metra signalmen, we came up with a basic design for each house, whether it be for one track, two tracks, or three tracks," says Spargo. "This simplified things for the crews laying out the wiring in the shop." Weekly meetings were held at the wire shop involving suppliers, consultants, and supervisors. And the state had to be kept informed of progress.

Safetran arranged containers to transport cable to the crossing sites, pre-cutting the cable to the correct length for each site. Out at the sites, first the line cable crew would go in, hauling cable from location to location. A local cable crew would install track wire and cable under the street to the crossing warning mechanism. Another crew would set house foundations, installing the houses when they arrived in the field and terminating the cable. The field wire crew would do much of the traffic signal interface wiring. A test crew would then check everything out.

"We finished this project on time because we had a team effort, from upper management through engineering to the construction forces," says Spargo. "Everyone bought into it and worked as a unit to solve problems. It came down to the last day, with the final cutover on June 30."

"Everybody pitched in, including the transportation department, especially during the cutovers," says Schuster. "We made all the cutovers on weekends. Some of them required fancy footwork, depending on where we were."

The end result was a project that not only fixed the crossing problem, but pleased communities along the railroad, "We had been receiving complaints about crossings from towns and villages along our route, so we did corrective work," says Kaminski. "We did things like using landscaping blocks to build retaining walls instead of railroad ties. And since we eliminated pole lines, the whole area looks a lot better."

As for the new assistant signalmen, during the Interconnected Crossings project, Metra had to postpone other capital projects. Now, there's a substantial backlog, so all the new hires have been reassigned or are in training. "They should all have long, active careers with Metra," says Schuster.