Light Rail System Halted After Car Gets Stuck On Tracks

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- The light rail system was shut down at the height of rush hour Tuesday morning.

Mike Schuh has more.

The light rail was stopped for 40 minutes but Brontray Singleton waited for an hour.

"I'm supposed to be going to BWI," Singleton said. "This fool tried to drive down here on the light rail. But we ain't going nowhere no time soon."

The driver says he was on his way home to Dundalk, but declined to get into any detail.

"I'd rather not be on camera," he said.

His car didn't fare well. It's leaking fluids, three of his four tires are popped and there's damage to the bumper, body and bottom.

He made it a full block between the north and south-bound rails but got hung up trying to exit at a pedestrian crosswalk.

All of this took time: time for the driver to calculate what this will cost to fix and time for Ivy Ennels to send a picture to his boss.

"Holding everyone up for work," Ennels said.

The car was dragged off the track. Supervisors appeared and once they realized the tracks weren't damaged, the rails were reopened---but not before Singleton told it like it was.

"He's holding up everybody that's trying to get to work this morning," he said. "Everybody, they're going to see it on the news."

The police say driving onto that section and making the wrong turn is fairly common---but if it happens to you, back up. The last thing you want to do is get onto a section of railroad tracks where it's hard to get on or off.

The driver didn't get a ticket.

The driver told police with all the damage, he's a mechanic.

The MTA says there have been 12 incidents at that location since 2008.