A man has died following a collision involving a CTrain and another vehicle Wednesday.
The collision shut down the eastbound lanes of a major thoroughfare in northeast Calgary.
Police initially told Global News that officers were called to what they believed may be a “life-altering” collision at about 8:25 a.m. along Memorial Drive Northeast on the overpass above Deerfoot Trail.
Shortly before 5 p.m., police confirmed the man involved in the collision had died.
Police said an investigation is ongoing but it’s believed a vehicle driven by a 48-year-old man went into the path of an eastbound CTrain driven by a 70-year-old man.
The CTrain struck the front passenger side of the vehicle and pushed it along the tracks, police said. The driver side of the vehicle hit a support beam, damaging the vehicle.
The driver was pulled from the vehicle and taken to the Foothills Medical Centre where he was pronounced dead.
The operator of the CTrain was uninjured.
Speed or impairment are not considered to be factors in the collision, police said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the City of Calgary said:
“As part of our commitment to ensuring the safety of our transit system, we continuously monitor its overall safety performance to assess what needs to be changed or improved.
“We maintain a variety of crossing safety infrastructure throughout our system to ensure a safer environment for all road users; we will be investigating this incident to see whether short-term and long-term improvements are necessary to enhance safety measures.”
Stuart Brideaux, a public education officer with Calgary EMS, spoke to Global News about what happened. When asked about what it’s like for paramedics to respond to such incidents, he acknowledged it is difficult for the victim and everyone else at the scene as well.
“Scenes like this can be taxing for all first responders involved given just the severity of what happened,” he said.
The crash shut down eastbound Memorial Drive at St. George’s Drive for some time. It appeared that Deerfoot Trail was also impacted in the area of the crash but police did not mention any traffic disruptions there.
Shortly before 2 p.m., it appeared that the car involved had been removed from the scene.
Anyone with information about what happened is asked to call police.