By admin For over an hour on Oct. 7, Sacramento Regional Transit light rail crossing gates remained down at eight Folsom intersections, prompting some drivers to manually free themselves and others of their traffic trap.
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Motorists, fed up with the second malfunction of the week, got out of their cars and lifted the arms so others could drive under, either venturing into or out of the Folsom Boulevard commuter traffic.
It wasn’t a very smooth merge.
“We had several near misses,” Folsom City Manager Bryan Whitemyer said, referencing traffic camera footage.
The nearly back-to-back malfunctions in RT light rail signals — the other happening on Oct. 5 — has triggered a joint response from the transit agency and the city of Folsom to address recurring equipment failures and delays in reopening the crossings. Whitemyer said similar problems dated back at least a year.
RT issued a statement outlining plans to improve its response, and agency representatives apologized at Tuesday’s Folsom City Council meeting.
“We are here to formally apologize for a disruption that took place October 7,” said Blanca Araujo, RT’s vice president of operations. “I know that there’s been other disruptions that have caused not only inconvenience to our passengers, but also to the Folsom community.”
‘Why does this keep happening?’
Last week, the arms at several light rail crossings lowered and then got stuck on two separate days.
On Oct. 5, crossing gates malfunctioned intermittently between 3:20 and 8:20 p.m., according to a timeline provided by the city. The gates at Bidwell Street lowered about 3:20 p.m., followed by those at Natoma Street and Glenn Drive about 4 p.m. All three crossings reopened at 5:11 p.m.
The Bidwell Street gates malfunctioned again at 7:57 p.m. and remained down for another 25 minutes.
On Oct. 7, the problems spread across eight crossings between the Historic District and Iron Point Road, a stretch of about 2.4 miles. The gates lowered at 5:12 p.m. and remained down until about 7:03 p.m., according to the city’s timeline.
RT personnel manually lifted the crossing gates one-by-one, which took about an hour, and equipment repairs took two hours, RT spokesperson Devra Selenis said. Light rail service also was disrupted, forcing RT to use shuttle buses, known as bus bridges, to transport passengers.
Folsom fielded so many messages Wednesday on the issue that, according to Whitemyer, city operations staff paused and said “this is crazy.” Police dispatch received 150 calls and the Public Works Department answered eight, city spokesperson Christine Brainerd said.
Some motorists grew impatient enough to raise the crossing gates themselves.
“I ran the gate at Parkshore after 50 minutes. It was exhilarating!” one person commented on the city’s Facebook post about the Wednesday malfunction.
“Why does this keep happening? How can we get a solution that lasts longer than two days?” another person posted.
One person commenting on the city’s Monday Facebook alert described the situation as “normal. Just in time for Monday’s 5 o’clock traffic.”
At Tuesday’s Folsom City Council meeting Councilmember Anna Rohrbough described the situation using a malapropism that combined kerfuffle and an obscenity. Rohrbough, who is also on RT’s board of directors, posted on Facebook on Saturday about how “Folsom deserves answers from SacRT. And action.” and went into some details of RT’s action plan.
Whitemyer said at least two crossing gate malfunctions occurred last year, although he did not have specific details.
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“This has not been an infrequent problem,” Councilmember Barbara Leary said Tuesday. “And there’s been different issues. The crossings stuck up, the crossings stuck down.”
Equipment malfunctions
The issues experienced on Monday and Wednesday were the result of different complications, according to Selenis.
A blown fuse near the Bidwell Street crossing caused the Oct. 5 malfunction.
On Oct. 7, two frequency converters failed at a nearby electrical substation, affecting the eight crossings. At the same time, a traffic signal at Hazel Avenue and Folsom Boulevard was flashing in all directions, disrupting train signals at three additional intersections, Selenis said.
“I imagine it was probably heat related because we were several days into a heat wave then, but the transformers within the frequency converters blew, so that’s what did cause the failure,” RT Light Rail Maintenance Director George Kirbyson said at the council meeting.
RT has told Folsom officials that aging crossing equipment needs to be replaced, a process that could take time, Whitemyer said. But he said improving the response to malfunctions was a more immediate priority.
“We need to work together to have better protocols so that we can safely shut down the light rail and quickly open up the crossing arms,” he said.
In a statement Saturday, RT said it was working with Folsom to “improve incident response, strengthen communication and reduce traffic impacts when light rail grade-crossing equipment malfunctions.”
The agency plans to position more maintenance personnel and replacement parts in Folsom to speed repairs. Two line technicians were assigned to the Gold Line starting Monday and RT plans to increase “focused coverage between Rancho Cordova and Folsom” moving forward, Selenis said.
RT also plans to notify track maintenance crews as soon as a signal problem is reported and improve coordination among crews responding to malfunctions.
RT and Folsom officials also are establishing an emergency group chat and procedures to ensure RT security personnel notify Folsom police when crossing signals malfunction.
The crossing system does not automatically alert RT to these types of failures, the agency said. Much of its light rail equipment across 43 miles with 69 crossings is more than 30 years old.
“The upgrade represents a significant multimillion-dollar investment, and funding for implementation remains to be secured,” the agency said in the news release. Selenis added that sufficient local funding is essential for securing state and federal matching dollars and making these repairs.
RT has prioritized replacing the electrical equipment at the intersections between Hazel Avenue and Folsom’s Historic District, Selenis said over email, and has invested $1 million for new frequency converters and $13 million for microprocessors, which are expected to be replaced over the next few months.
Train operators typically are the first to identify crossing signal problems. Residents can report malfunctions by calling RT’s crossing gate hotline at 916-648-8433 and providing the location, nature of the problem and when it began.
This story was originally published October 15, 2026 at 6:00 AM with the headline “Folsom drivers got tired of waiting for RT light rail gates to rise. So they lifted them.”
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