Tag Archives: Commuter train

Federal Regulation (U.S.), Positive Train Control, Public safety funding

Railroads face big fines for failure to meet federal safety deadline

Repost from McClatchyDC

Railroads face big fines for failure to meet federal safety deadline

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Feds plan to enforce Dec. 31 deadline
  • Penalties could add up for railroads
  • Congress hasn’t provided much funding
By Curtis Tate, August 7, 2015

An Amtrak Capitol Corridor train from Sacramento, Calif., arrives at Diridon Station in San Jose on Aug. 10, 2012, alongside trains of Altamont Commuter Express. Amtrak and commuter railroads must install Positive Train Control this year under a 2008 mandate from Congress, but most will miss the deadline.

The Federal Railroad Administration plans to impose big penalties on railroads that fail to meet a year-end deadline to install a new collision avoidance system, including more than 70 percent of the nation’s commuter railroads.

Congress mandated Positive Train Control in 2008, but most of the nation’s commuter and freight railroads won’t have the system ready by Dec. 31. The technology is required for about 60,000 miles of track, including those that carry passengers or chemicals that are poisonous or toxic by inhalation.

A push in Congress to extend the deadline by three to five years has stalled, and lawmakers aren’t scheduled to return to the Capitol until next month.

Despite the commuter rail industry’s best efforts, implementing PTC nationwide by the end of this year is not possible. Michael Melaniphy, president and CEO, American Public Transportation Association

In a Friday report to lawmakers, the FRA said it planned to enforce the mandate they set in 2008. As of Jan. 1, 2016, railroads that have failed to install Positive Train Control on the required track segments face fines up to $25,000 a day for each violation.

“The potential civil penalties that FRA could assess are substantial,” the agency wrote.

Only 29 percent of the nation’s commuter railroads will meet the Dec. 31 deadline, according to the American Public Transportation Association, and the rest may need one to five more years.

“Despite the commuter rail industry’s best efforts,” said Michael Melaniphy, the association’s president and CEO, “implementing PTC nationwide by the end of this year is not possible.”

FRA has requested funding from Congress every year since 2011 to help commuter railroads install Positive Train Control, including $825 million in President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2016 budget. Lawmakers have only provided $42 million to date.

“Congress has not provided a guaranteed, reliable revenue stream for implementation on commuter railroads,” the agency wrote.

The agency has used other tools to help commuter railroads, including $650 million in grant funds, $400 million of which came from the 2009 economic stimulus.

In May, FRA issued a $967 million loan to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the nation’s largest commuter rail agency, to install Positive Train Control on the Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road.

Melaniphy said that commuter railroads have spent $950 million to date on the system, but need nearly $3.5 billion to get the job done.

The National Transportation Safety Board has recommended the system since 1969, but Congress didn’t require it until the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008.

Twenty-five people were killed in August of that year when a Metrolink commuter train smashed head-on into a freight train near Chatsworth, Calif.

Positive Train Control could have automatically stopped the train before it ran past a red signal. Metrolink is one of the few commuter railroads that will meet the Dec. 31 deadline.

$25,000 Maximum fine, per incident per day, for missing Dec. 31 deadline

In other more recent fatal crashes, trains approached curves at two or three times the appropriate speed, and the system could automatically have slowed them down.

Four people died in December 2013 when a Metro-North commuter train jumped the tracks north of New York City. The train was traveling 82 mph at a curve restricted to 30 mph.

In May, an Amtrak Northeast Corridor train barreled into a 50 mph curve north of Philadelphia at 106 mph and derailed. Eight people were killed.

Amtrak will meet the Dec. 31 deadline for installing Positive Train Control along the Northeast Corridor, which it owns. On other routes, it will depend on freight railroads, some of which will be ready, while some won’t.

According to FRA, only freight hauler BNSF and two commuter railroads, Metrolink and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, have submitted safety plans required under the 2008 federal law.

AMTRAK, Commuter train, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Positive Train Control

Most Commuter Rails Won’t Meet Deadline For Mandated Safety Systems

Repost from National Public Radio

Most Commuter Rails Won’t Meet Deadline For Mandated Safety Systems

By David Schaper, June 03, 2015 3:48 AM ET
Despite Congress mandating all railroads be equipped with a Positive Train Control system by the end of the year, Chicago's Metra system isn't expected to reach that goal until 2019. Most commuter trains won't meet the deadline.
Despite Congress mandating all railroads be equipped with a Positive Train Control system by the end of the year, Chicago’s Metra system isn’t expected to reach that goal until 2019. Most commuter trains won’t meet the deadline. M. Spencer Green/AP

Many investigators say Positive Train Control (PTC), an automated safety system, could have prevented last month’s Amtrak train derailment. Amtrak officials have said they will have PTC installed throughout the northeast corridor by the end of this year, which is the deadline mandated by Congress.

But the vast majority of other commuter railroad systems, which provided nearly 500 million rides in 2014, won’t be able to fully implement positive train control for several more years.

On the southern edge of downtown Chicago, a few dozen commuter trains idle as they prepare to take thousands of people from their jobs downtown to their homes in city neighborhoods, and suburbs both near and far. Just behind the tracks is a nondescript, two-story brick building that houses the control center for all these rail lines, and the brains of what will be Metra’s positive train control system.

“Out of this building, we control the Metra electric district, the Rock Island,” Sal Cuevas, chief dispatcher of the control facility. “Over 300, 350, maybe 400 trains out of this facility that we control.”

That’s about half of the commuter trains Metra moves into and out of Chicago each day. Cuevas is tracking their movement, their speed and any potential problems or delays they might encounter, from bad weather to maintenance crews. It’s done in coordination with the 500 freight trains that move through Chicago every day.

Getting positive train control on line won’t make his job any easier, but Cuevas says it will make the movement of all those trains safer.

“Integrating that system with our current train control system will hopefully minimize incidents,” he says.

But that won’t be happening for some time.

Positive Train Control is a system that integrates computer, satellite and radio technologies to slow down or stop a train if the engineer becomes incapacitated or makes a mistake, such as missing a stop signal or going too fast around a curve.

Seven years ago, Congress mandated all freight and passenger railroads implement positive train control by the end of this year. But Metra’s executive director Don Orseno says Chicago’s commuter trains won’t make the deadline, and it won’t even be close.

“Our expectation for Metra to be fully operational is in 2019,” he says. “There’s a lot of reasons why its taking so long. Number one: it wasn’t invented.”

Orseno says railroads have had to develop PTC from scratch and it’s a very complicated system. Information about track conditions, speed limits, the movement of other trains and all kinds of other data has to be downloaded into computers in the railroads’ control centers and in the locomotives.

Those computers have to be able to communicate with every track signal and every other train. So there’s new signaling equipment to install, new radios, new computer hardware and new software to run it all, because these positive train control systems have to be fully inter-operable between all the railroads and all their equipment.

In Chicago, the nation’s busiest rail hub, that’s 1,300 and passenger trains a day.

“We operate the most complex system in the country, there’s no question about that,” Orseno says.

He adds that in mandating positive train control and imposing the December 2015 deadline, Congress provided almost no funding for it.

“The system comes at a very expensive cost,” he says. “We’re looking anywhere from about $350 million for this system, and you’re talking about commuter rail service. There’s not that kind of money out there.”

And it’s not just Chicago’s commuter rail agency that’s struggling to build, fund and implement positive train control. Most commuter trains across the country won’t have it by the end of this year.

“About 29 percent of our systems anticipate they’ll be able to make the goal this year, about seven systems in the country,” says Michael Melaniphy, president and CEO of the American Public Transportation Association.

Melaniphy says some commuter rail agencies will need another three to five years to complete PTC installations because of the scale and complexity of the systems and the resources needed.

“There are only so many people that are experts in this area,” he says. “They can only produce so many of the radio sets that are needed and the spectrum that’s needed to run those radios in a given time.”

Acquiring that radio spectrum for PTC has been especially difficult for commuter railroads.

“Many of the operators will be able to obtain in some segments but maybe not along the entire corridor,” Melaniphy says. “They have to figure out who owns the spectrum in a given corridor and negotiate with them to either sell it or lease it.”

Melaniphy is hoping Congress will allow the FCC to provide commuter railroads with the radio spectrum they need for free. He’s also asking Congress to pay at least some of the estimated $3.5 billion cost of PTC, and extend the deadline to give commuter and freight railroads more time to implement a safety system they all agree they want and need to implement.

Commuter train, Derailment, Public transit, Rail accidents, Rail crossings, Train collission

Another derailment: Fifty hurt when Southern California commuter train slams into truck

Repost from Reuters
[Editor: Significant quote: “…in a move that may have helped avert a more catastrophic accident, the train used an emergency braking system moments before impact, and the rail cars had safety features that helped absorb the energy of the crash….”  It’s a good thing that safety improvements in commuter cars are well ahead of those for hazmat tank cars.  – RS]

Fifty hurt when Southern California commuter train slams into truck

By Michael Fleeman, OXNARD, Calif. Tue Feb 24, 2015 5:40pm EST
An aerial view shows the scene of a double-decker Metrolink train derailment in Oxnard, California February 24, 2015. REUTERS-Lucy Nicholson
An aerial view shows the scene of a double-decker Metrolink train derailment in Oxnard, California February 24, 2015. Credit: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

(Reuters) – A Los Angeles-bound commuter train slammed into a produce truck apparently stuck on the tracks in a Southern California city before dawn on Tuesday, injuring 50 people in a fiery crash, some of them critically.

The truck driver, who was not hurt, left the scene of the destruction in Oxnard on foot and was found walking and disoriented one or two miles away, Assistant Police Chief Jason Benitez said.

Benitez said the 54-year-old driver from Arizona was not arrested but investigators were trying to determine if there was any criminal wrongdoing in the 5:45 a.m. PST (8:45 a.m EST) wreck, which overturned three double-decker Metrolink rail cars. Two others derailed but remained upright.

While no-one was killed, the force of the impact ripped the truck apart and left burned-out chunks and twisted wreckage still smoldering hours later.

Benitez said it appeared that the truck driver had taken a wrong turn in the pre-dawn darkness and ended up on the tracks, where the rig became stuck as the train approached at 79 miles per hour.

But in a move that may have helped avert a more catastrophic accident, the train used an emergency braking system moments before impact, and the rail cars had safety features that helped absorb the energy of the crash, Metrolink spokesman Jeff Lustgarten said.

“I think we can safely say that the technology worked. It definitely minimized the impact. It would have been a very serious collision, it would have been much worse without it,” Lustgarten said.

The crash came three weeks after a Metro-North commuter train struck a car at a crossing outside New York City and derailed in a fiery accident that killed six people.

TRAIN OPERATOR CRITICAL

Ventura County Emergency Medical Services administrator Steve Carroll said 50 people were hurt in the Oxnard incident, 28 of whom were transported to hospitals.

Among the most seriously injured was the train’s operator, who was in critical condition in the intensive care unit at Ventura County Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Sheila Murphy said.

The operator, who has not been publicly identified, suffered extensive chest injuries affecting his heart and lungs but was able to communicate with doctors, Murphy said.

National Transportation Safety Board Member Robert Sumwalt said investigators would examine the train’s recorders and seek to determine if crossing arms and bells were functioning properly.

“We are concerned with grade crossing accidents. We intend to use this accident and others to learn from it so that we can keep it from happening again,” Sumwalt said.

The incident took place where the Metrolink tracks cross busy Rice Avenue in Oxnard, a street used by a steady stream of big rigs and farm trucks and lined with warehouses and farmland.

“It is a very dangerous crossing,” said Rafael Lemus, who works down the street from the crash site. “The lights come on too late before the trains come. It is not safe.”

A Ventura County Medical Center spokeswoman said the hospital had received nine victims, three of whom were listed in critical condition.

Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center received six patients with minor injuries such as back, leg or shoulder pain, said spokeswoman Kris Carraway. St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital in nearby Camarillo was treating two patients for minor injuries, a spokeswoman said.

The wreck triggered major delays to Metrolink lines across Ventura County, forcing commuters onto buses. Oxnard is an affluent coastal city of some 200,000 about 45 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

In 2008, a crowded Metrolink commuter train plowed into a Union Pacific locomotive in Chatsworth, California, killing 25 people and injuring 135 in an accident officials blamed on the commuter train engineer’s failure to stop at a red light.

In 2005 a Metrolink train struck a sport utility vehicle parked on the tracks in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, killing 11 people and injuring 180.

(Reporting by Michael Fleeman in Oxnard, Laila Kearney, Barbara Goldberg and James Dalgleish in New York, Rory Carroll in San Francisco, Eric Johnson in Seattle and Eric Kelsey and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Bill Trott and James Dalgleish)