Per the Associated Press:
"Spurred by the recent train crash that killed 25 people in Los Angeles, the House passed sweeping rail safety legislation Wednesday requiring more rest for workers and technology that can stop a train in its tracks if it's headed for collision.
At least one of the measures could have made a difference in the Sept. 12 head-on collision between a freight train and a commuter train — the nation's deadliest rail crash since 1993.
Lawmakers scurried to reach agreement on the safety bill in the wake of the disaster, which happened when a Southern California Metrolink commuter train failed to stop at a red light and ended up on the same track as an oncoming freight.
"I'm heartened that we're considering this bill now and I hope it's offering some small degree of comfort to the families that are suffering after the recent Metrolink disaster in California," said Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., before the House passed the legislation by voice vote.
It now goes to the Senate, where prospects for passage are uncertain in the dwindling legislative hours before Congress adjourns for the election at the end of this week.
Investigators are looking at engineer fatigue as a possible factor in the Metrolink crash, and the Federal Railroad Administration says that so-called positive train control technology would have prevented the crash.
The technology can engage the brakes if a train misses a signal or gets off-track. The bill requires it to be installed by 2015 on all rail lines that carry passengers and on freight lines that carry hazardous materials.
That date may be too soon for the railroad industry, which says it supports positive train control but opposed a congressionally mandated timeline, but not soon enough for some lawmakers eager to move quickly on safety in the wake of the L.A. crash.
The package wraps in legislation reauthorizing Amtrak for five years and providing $13 billion for the carrier. Some of that money would go to matching grants to help states set up or expand rail service.
The Amtrak portion of the legislation also establishes a program for private companies to bid to develop high-speed rail corridors on the East Coast, a private sector component pushed by Republicans who have been wary of what they've seen as ever-growing subsidies to Amtrak.
Amtrak's previous authorization expired in 2002. The carrier's supporters say a new authorization will allow Amtrak to make long-range plans and take advantage of what they say is a growing appetite for passenger rail."
Do you smell something rotten here, as usual?
Once again, the politicians are playing with our lives by stuffing pork into the equation, and the railroads are balking at following safety rules to save lives! Washington starts off telling you they want to make the rails safer, then loads in a bunch of crap spending that bloats the bill so it's enormous and overspending would occur. The Amtrak addition is only part of it; they want to fund 1.5 billion to Washington Metro Transit as well in the same bill. No wonder it's not passing the senate as of today, Friday September 26. At least one Senator, Coburn, has the guts to stand up against the pork and says no to many of the additions. Mr. Coburn states the taxpayers shouldn't be subsidizing food and beverage service aboard Amtrak and there should be performance metrics for Amtrak to meet which has never been required. Plus local authorities and passengers should fund local transit systems. Good for you, Senator Coburn! Although you'll be criticized for standing in the way of safety, I see you as a pork barrel killer and you're the man!
Finally, California wants us to pass a huge 9.9 billion dollar bond to build a high speed rail line that will travel at 200 miles per hour between San Francisco and Los Angeles to start and then, just maybe, some other areas in the future. Not with my money! The total cost will allegedly be around 30 billion with 1/3 from the feds and 1/3 from private funds, but you know how that eventually goes. This state can't run anything right and to think they should run a high speed rail line is asinine to say the least. Imagine a head -on crash or a derail at 200? And the bureaucracy and maintenance costs not to mention the construction overruns? Right...vote for this and you're slitting your wrists and throat all at once with a rusty razor! We already have a High-Speed Rail Authority costing taxpayers a bunch without even having a high speed rail line. Now ain't that sweet political bureaucrap? I'll bet the people would be very unhappy about having a Police Authority with no Police Departments or Highway Authority with no roads... Just a case of being fleeced once again.
In short, 25 people died and a bunch of politicians jumped on the bandwagon to either shine in some light of purported change, or in one case, to actually try and do good. I seldom say anything good about Diane Feinstein, but I believe she actually tried to do the right thing here in the bill's original inception. However, once the political system got hold of it, they fly papered it with so much pork that it's just a vestige of its former safety bill. And once the railroads get through lobbying and balking, 2015 won't even see the results completed. More bodies will have to lie on the tracks and under smoldering train wrecks before another round of politics moves this forward very far. Sad but true.
Showing posts with label Metrolink. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Metrolink. Show all posts
Friday, September 26, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Jumping on the Train Bandwagon
Since I wrote my September 14 blog on Positive Train Control and the tragedy in Los Angeles, I see everyone has jumped on the same bandwagon. Local and national news media, even the mayor of Los Angeles wants to know why the Metrolink trains don't have fail safe devices.
The answer? Read my last blog! The government, for the most part, lets them run rampant with little regulation. They regulate based on body count, rather than on sound safety principles. If there are enough dead bodies and injuries, a little momentum is created and that lasts until the furor dies down and can be swept under the rug.
Think it only happens on the railroads? Think again!
The airline industry is regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and you'll find that after something happens, they start sending out notices requiring inspection and correction to airlines. However, some of the corrections do not have to be met for years! Thus, you could very well be flying on an aircraft that is unsafe, and has not been inspected or repaired, although the FAA knows it's very possible it's a ticking time bomb.
Here's a story on a 737 jet where a protruding bolt caused an explosion upon landing, and the FAA gave airlines flying similar aircraft 24 days to examine their planes. After four more planes were found with similar issues, they shortened the inspection time to 10 days. WTF? Why not ground all that series planes until safety inspections were completed? Because, in another case of the tail wagging the dog, the cost and inconvenience to the airlines would be too great. So, instead, let you fly on a potential time bomb and see what happens.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Boeing_737_inspection_deadline_shortened_after_four_jets_found_with_similar_fault_to_China_Airlines_plane
That's playing Russian Roulette with your life, folks! And you don't even get to hold the gun!
Bottom line is that the government doesn't hold the big boys to the same tight restrictions and rules as they do you. You're more likely to be cited and fined for a safety violation in your automobile that might kill or injure you, than a railroad or airline that will kill or injure hundreds!
The answer? Read my last blog! The government, for the most part, lets them run rampant with little regulation. They regulate based on body count, rather than on sound safety principles. If there are enough dead bodies and injuries, a little momentum is created and that lasts until the furor dies down and can be swept under the rug.
Think it only happens on the railroads? Think again!
The airline industry is regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and you'll find that after something happens, they start sending out notices requiring inspection and correction to airlines. However, some of the corrections do not have to be met for years! Thus, you could very well be flying on an aircraft that is unsafe, and has not been inspected or repaired, although the FAA knows it's very possible it's a ticking time bomb.
Here's a story on a 737 jet where a protruding bolt caused an explosion upon landing, and the FAA gave airlines flying similar aircraft 24 days to examine their planes. After four more planes were found with similar issues, they shortened the inspection time to 10 days. WTF? Why not ground all that series planes until safety inspections were completed? Because, in another case of the tail wagging the dog, the cost and inconvenience to the airlines would be too great. So, instead, let you fly on a potential time bomb and see what happens.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Boeing_737_inspection_deadline_shortened_after_four_jets_found_with_similar_fault_to_China_Airlines_plane
That's playing Russian Roulette with your life, folks! And you don't even get to hold the gun!
Bottom line is that the government doesn't hold the big boys to the same tight restrictions and rules as they do you. You're more likely to be cited and fined for a safety violation in your automobile that might kill or injure you, than a railroad or airline that will kill or injure hundreds!
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Lack of (Train) Control
It is with sadness that I write this blog, due to the 25 dead and the 135 injured as a result of the head-on collision of the Metrolink commuter train and the Union Pacific freight train near Los Angeles on Friday afternoon. My heart, sympathy and most of all, prayers, go out to all those who lost loved ones, and to the injured, wishing them a speedy recovery.
But, regardless of fault in this terrible collision, there is another feeling inside of me. OUTRAGE! What the hell happened here? Why was there no controls to prevent this? We won't know for awhile who or what was truly at fault here; early reports say it was the Metrolink engineer who failed to stop at a red signal. Regardless if that remains the outcome, more questions need to be answered.
I don't claim to be a rail expert, although I've travelled all over the country to work with rail districts, and I do know something about controls on trains. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has had a push on for years for PTC or Positive Train Control systems for railroads in the US. But it, like so many other things, is left to the whims of the railroads, so little gets done until a tragedy occurs. Just like after the last California commuter train - freight train head-on crash in 2002, there was a hue and cry to get something done again. I'd bet we'll hear the Feds moan about this, yet the railroads won't do much, if anything. It's almost like they're unregulated.
For example, there are a number of systems which work similarly. They are all a supervisory system that alerts the operator of a train if he fails to follow the required speeds or signals. First a light goes on along with a horn or other signal and then, if the operator still fails to do what is required, such as decrease speed or stop, the train goes into emergency braking, and all power to the locomotive is shut down. Engineers hate this since in most cases, the power has to be restored by a supervisor, and their a** gets written up at a minimum, or worse.
Want to read more about how the Federal Government has been protecting you on the rails? Here you go:
http://www.ntsb.gov/recs/mostwanted/positive_train.htm
So, I ask why the Metrolink train, on such a busy corridor, had nothing similar to PTC or ETMS or other control in place? From what I have heard, some commuter trains do, many do not. I believe the Coaster in San Diego, which shares the tracks with Union Pacific freights, the same as the Metrolink, has ETMS or a similar system. Why not Metrolink? Would the sounding of the alarms have prevented the tragedy of Friday afternoon, and turned what is now termed the second most deadly railroad crash in modern American history, into just an inconvenient delay, and a big ass chewing for someone? Probably. Too late to speculate now.
Ride the train. Save gas. Who wants to ride the train when one mistake, if that's what it was, can send you right into a freight train that takes a mile to stop on a good day? Granted, these accidents are few and far between, but there is no backup plan? No copilot, which would be the automatic train control? Sure, make the light rail vehicles have all these controls, a dead-man control so if the driver of that vehicle becomes incapacitated the light rail vehicle will stop. Even SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems on some, monitored from a central location, to assure smooth traffic flow and that there are always multiple safety systems in place.
But apparently, our nations commuter rails don't place the same emphasis on safety.
I have only one more observation to make. Those commuter trains are push-pull meaning the locomotive could have been behind the cars instead of in front when then collision occurred. Had that been the configuration on Friday, September 12, the toll would have made it the deadliest train collision in our history, as the head car would have hit the Union Pacific locomotive head-on and the Metrolink locomotive would have continued to crush the cars between it and the UP locomotive. I'd estimate maybe 100 deaths or more in that scenario; just a guess but maybe for those who think things could not have been worse, a guardian angel was in Chatsworth that afternoon after all...
But, regardless of fault in this terrible collision, there is another feeling inside of me. OUTRAGE! What the hell happened here? Why was there no controls to prevent this? We won't know for awhile who or what was truly at fault here; early reports say it was the Metrolink engineer who failed to stop at a red signal. Regardless if that remains the outcome, more questions need to be answered.
I don't claim to be a rail expert, although I've travelled all over the country to work with rail districts, and I do know something about controls on trains. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has had a push on for years for PTC or Positive Train Control systems for railroads in the US. But it, like so many other things, is left to the whims of the railroads, so little gets done until a tragedy occurs. Just like after the last California commuter train - freight train head-on crash in 2002, there was a hue and cry to get something done again. I'd bet we'll hear the Feds moan about this, yet the railroads won't do much, if anything. It's almost like they're unregulated.
For example, there are a number of systems which work similarly. They are all a supervisory system that alerts the operator of a train if he fails to follow the required speeds or signals. First a light goes on along with a horn or other signal and then, if the operator still fails to do what is required, such as decrease speed or stop, the train goes into emergency braking, and all power to the locomotive is shut down. Engineers hate this since in most cases, the power has to be restored by a supervisor, and their a** gets written up at a minimum, or worse.
Want to read more about how the Federal Government has been protecting you on the rails? Here you go:
http://www.ntsb.gov/recs/mostwanted/positive_train.htm
So, I ask why the Metrolink train, on such a busy corridor, had nothing similar to PTC or ETMS or other control in place? From what I have heard, some commuter trains do, many do not. I believe the Coaster in San Diego, which shares the tracks with Union Pacific freights, the same as the Metrolink, has ETMS or a similar system. Why not Metrolink? Would the sounding of the alarms have prevented the tragedy of Friday afternoon, and turned what is now termed the second most deadly railroad crash in modern American history, into just an inconvenient delay, and a big ass chewing for someone? Probably. Too late to speculate now.
Ride the train. Save gas. Who wants to ride the train when one mistake, if that's what it was, can send you right into a freight train that takes a mile to stop on a good day? Granted, these accidents are few and far between, but there is no backup plan? No copilot, which would be the automatic train control? Sure, make the light rail vehicles have all these controls, a dead-man control so if the driver of that vehicle becomes incapacitated the light rail vehicle will stop. Even SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems on some, monitored from a central location, to assure smooth traffic flow and that there are always multiple safety systems in place.
But apparently, our nations commuter rails don't place the same emphasis on safety.
I have only one more observation to make. Those commuter trains are push-pull meaning the locomotive could have been behind the cars instead of in front when then collision occurred. Had that been the configuration on Friday, September 12, the toll would have made it the deadliest train collision in our history, as the head car would have hit the Union Pacific locomotive head-on and the Metrolink locomotive would have continued to crush the cars between it and the UP locomotive. I'd estimate maybe 100 deaths or more in that scenario; just a guess but maybe for those who think things could not have been worse, a guardian angel was in Chatsworth that afternoon after all...
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