Normal Muni Metro Service Resumes After Castro Station Death

so sad. I remember a few years ago I entered Church St. station and was wondering what was up and then someone came up to me and told me someone had jumped in front of the train. it was not a pleasant sight.

while the shuttle buses are a pain and being stuck downtown truly sucks, this is a tragic situation so folks should keep that in mind.

"We're not sure how he got on the tracks" Talmadge said...

Um, it's not like there's a fence to climb over or or a padlock to break.

I'd suggest not bothering with the shuttles and try to get a home another way if you know the bus routes around the area.

Pardon me for asking the obvious, but if the body is on the inbound track, why - other than the feeling of self-importance police officers seem to get from tying up traffic and wasting other people's time - have they stopped outbound trains during the evening rush? If you wanted to spare people the sight of what happened you could have the outbound trains go through the Castro station without stopping.

I think I answered my own question. Too many in government seem to think that if half the city is delayed because of what you're doing at work, you must have a very important job.

Hell, I'll be one step more brutal. This guy probably got on the tracks the same way that 95% of people hit in a BART or Muni station or almost any other rail transit station do, he jumped in front of a train as a profoundly gruesome and inconsiderate way of killing himself. The investigation should have taken about 5 minutes to review the tape and, if nobody pushed the guy, you remove the body, hose off the train and the tracks and resume normal service.

I was on a BART train once when a woman jumped in front of the train. The driver was clearly deeply traumatized, thousands of people lost valuable time from their lives and the selfish idiot who caused the trouble wasn't even smart enough to get herself killed, just badly injured. Sorry. I have no sympathy for somebody who calculates his or her suicide - or attempt - to harm as many other people as possible.

Doesn't Castro Station have both lines in the middle with platforms on the outside? There is no way Muni or SFPD or anyone is going to be allowed to be standing on one set of tracks while trains are going by on the other, and the crime scene could easily cover both lines. Also, inbound and outbound trains are the same; if you stop the inbound trains you will shortly run out of outbound trains.

First off, thanks to the SF Appeal for keeping this updated, both here and on Twitter, in a timely manner. This was a tremendous help to everyone wondering what was up.

Second, is there any new information as to what exactly happened in terms of was this a suicide , or was it something else? I've seen more than one "death by train" incident in the tunnels, and it's a horrible thing to see.

That said, while Muni is dying the death of 1000 blows, I don't see how they can prevent this kind of behavior (suicide by train). we can't "suicide proof" the world - if that were the case we'd have no knives and no drugs and no food and no...well you get the idea.

Either way, at the end of the day someone died and that sucks. And a lot of people were inconvenienced and that sucks too. I

Every time there is an incident like this, someone will comment on how selfish the person committing suicide is. If someone is in such a state of despair or mental illness that suicide seems like a good option, can you really expect that they will consider the impact on the rest of the public?

It sucks to those of us who are delayed, but there is little that can be done. I've been delayed countless times on Caltrain. The determination of suicide, accident or murder has a big impact on potential litigation, insurance policies and other things, so it has to be done carefully.

Hell, you can walk between Castro and downtown in less than an hour if you don't dilly dally. That's what I would have done. The exercise wouldn't hurt.

Perhaps the person who committed suicide is aware of the media's stance on not covering suicides and decided to perform a grandiose and obstructive exit. Perhaps this person was influenced by Wednesday's Muni incident in which a man died 45 minutes after being hit. That wasn't a suicide so it got a helluva lotta press coverage.

So is it the press that's influencing more visible suicides? It's really hard to diss thousands of people being inconvenienced and stranded without acknowledging that somebody left the planet on their own accord. The suicide a couple months ago at Powell/Market was initially only covered by the Examiner, but the sidebar to that story was how people influenced the person to jump, and there was significant traffic disruption. How can the press ignore the sidebar and disruption?

Media cannot be concerned about spawning copycats because media is inadvertently encouraging more exhibitionist suicides. Thursday the deceased had the press in a stranglehold, posthumously.

On a train from Amsterdam to Dusseldorf, we stopped unexpectedly near Arnhem (think of the film "A Bridge too Far"--that's Arnhem). When I inquired about the delay, the conductor advised that someone had stepped in front of the train, a likely suicide. "Stepping in front of the train is the most common way to commit suicide in Holland", he said. "Why" I asked. "Not enough tall buildings," he replied.