Commuter train collides with freight train in LA

[Kontiki]

Well, I guess I stand corrected on that point, although I'm not sure why Kid would quote something that has no mention of freight trains at all.

[gwillybj]

'Total destruction': At least 15 die in head-on Metrolink crash

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-traincrash13-2008sep13,0,2874450.story

excerpts:

Rescue teams worked frantically into the night Friday after a Metrolink passenger train carrying 225 people collided head-on with a Union Pacific freight train on a sharp curve in Chatsworth, killing at least 15 people and leaving more than 135 injured. It was one of the worst train crashes in Southern California history and Metrolink officials said they could not explain why warning systems failed to prevent such a catastrophic collision.

Tom Dinger, an engineer who retired last year from Amtrak after a 43-year railroad career, said normal procedure called for the northbound passenger train to pull into a rail siding at the Chatsworth station to allow the southbound freight train to pass. He said he had steered through that stretch of track hundreds of times. Between Chatsworth and Simi Valley there is only one set of tracks because of narrow tunnels that trains use to go through the Santa Susana Pass.

[Zkribbler]

A kid/fan of the Metrolink driver received a text message from the driver about a minute before the crash. It looks as if the driver was distracted.

He's among the 25 dead.

[Adam Smith]

Just saw this thread and wanted to offer a few comments. Railroad safety is an issue I keep track of in my current job, and was heavily involved in for five years in a previous job.

First, condolences to the victims and their families. Lets hope these and other accidents can be prevented in the future.

Cause of the Accident

This accident has nothing to do with regulation. The legal structure and level of enforcement of railroad safety regulations have been essentially unchanged since the Railroad Safety Improvement Act of 1988, which required better training for locomotive engineers, and its 1989 amendments, which tightened the standards for drug and alcohol testing of railroad personnel.

This accident has nothing to do with privatization. The accident took place on track that was owned, operated, and maintained by a government entity. Even if it had occurred on privately owned track, there is little reason to believe that a privately owned railroad (the freight train was operated by the largest freight railroad in the country) has any incentive to operate unsafely.

Privately owned railroads can be sued and are sued when involved in accidents. (The freight railroad has already been named in a lawsuit, even though it had nothing to do with the accident.) Freight railroads own their own track, so they have large asset bases. The railroad involved is easily identified. A derailed train is not going to leave the scene of the accident. Since freight railroads can be readily identified and can fully pay any accident costs, it is likely that they will take all appropriate safety measures.

Note that these two conditions (large asset bases, easily identified) apply to freight railroads, pipelines, and large airlines, but do not apply to truck or bus companies, small railroads, or small airlines. See Ian Savage, “The Economics of Commercial Transportation Safety”, in Essays in Transportation Economics and Policy, (Brookings, 1999), for a more complete discussion.

The cause of this accident appears to come down to the engineer texting when he should have been paying attention.

Preventing The Accident

Aside from the existing signaling system, there are two train control technologies which help prevent head-on collisions such as this.

Automatic Train Stop (ATS) has been around since the 1920’s. This technology automatically stops the train as soon as it goes through a red signal. Unfortunately, trains can take a long time to stop. The passenger train was apparently doing 42 mph when it went through the red signal, so ATS would not have helped in this case.

Positive Train Control (PTC) stops trains before they go through red signals. Accomplishing this is no small feat, since stopping distance depends on the weight, speed, and length of the train, the grade and curvature of the track, and whether the rails are wet from rain, snow, or ice. (There was even one accident in the UK where a train could not stop due to wet leaves!) Do it right, and its great. Do it wrong, and you totally tie the railroad in knots.

PTC is fairly common in Europe. It has only been introduced in a few places in the US, primarily where there is lots of high-speed passenger traffic but little freight traffic. There are two main reasons for this. First, European trains have much less variance in weight and length, and so are much easier to control. A passenger train in the US might be 1,000 feet long and weigh a couple hundred tons. A freight train in the US can be over a mile in length and weigh over 15,000 tons. Second, the US system, often lacking overhead electrical wires, is GPS based. In most cases there is 18 feet between tracks due to safety regulations. Unfortunately, the available GPS needs a 20 foot separation to know for certain which of two tracks a train is on. US railroads are gradually moving their tracks to 22 feet on center (which, under the safety regulations, allows trains to pass work crews without slowing), but this will clearly take some time and a lot of money.

Risk Analysis

California’s two US senators have introduced legislation requiring PTC on all US rail lines by 2014, citing estimates of an average of seven lives saved per year for an up-front cost of $2.3 billion. The New York Times and other newspaper editorial pages have all chimed in in support. But if you want to save lives, this is not a very good use of the money.

Each year, more than 350 people are killed at highway-railroad crossing accidents. (Federal Railroad Administration, Railroad Safety Statistics Annual Report, Table 1-1.) About half of these fatalities occur at lightly used crossings which do not have automatic warning devices such as flashing lights or gates. (State highway departments decide what type of warning devices to use, but railroads often pay for upgrades.) For $2.3 billion, you could provide automatic warning lights for virtually every highway-railroad crossing in the United States, saving ten times as many lives per year as PTC.

I wish our elected representatives would bother to understand situations before coming up with snap legislative solutions.

edits: grammar, clarity

[Winston]

Adam Smith

[MarkG]

information
Adam Smith

[Krill]

pwned

[Lancer]

Good time for Adam Smith to be around with all the economic stuff transpiring.

[Kuciwalker]

California’s two US senators have introduced legislation requiring PTC on all US rail lines by 2014, citing estimates of an average of seven lives saved per year for an up-front cost of $2.3 billion.

That is utterly disgusting. By the time the effort has paid off we'll have replaced the entire rail system anyway.