APRIL 16, 2015
A single Metrolink train bears down on Fullerton after nightfall.
Its passengers: dozens of 155-pound sandbags.
The train is among several testing a new wireless technology that promises safer travel in Southern California and across the country. On this night, the sandbags, each stationed where a commuter’s foot would rest, are meant to simulate a load of passengers.
The technology, in the simplest terms, takes control and stops trains when engineers make mistakes, such as ignoring warning signals. Congress mandated the new safety system, called positive train control, or PTC, after a deadly train collision in Chatsworth in 2008 killed 25 people and injured more than 100. Investigators discovered the engineer was texting while on duty.
“It would have definitely prevented an incident like Chatsworth,” Metrolink spokesman Jeff Lustgarten said. One of Metrolink’s trains was involved in the deadly collision.
In 2002, two people were killed and 270 injured in Placentia when a Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train ran a red signal light and crashed into a stopped Metrolink train. More recently, a train engineer in Spain appears to have been talking on the phone while speeding in a train crash that killed 79 passengers and crew.
Metrolink has spent more than four years and $216 million installing PTC in the 169 trains it operates. Testing on the Orange County line, which started this week, is expected to last three to four weeks.
STARTING IN SUMMER
Orange County lines will likely begin running with PTC by this summer. Other Metrolink lines, like those in Ventura County and the Antelope Valley, are expected to begin operating the new system later this month.
In all, freight and commuter rail companies are spending upward of $10 billion on PTC. Congress is requiring all U.S. train operators to install PTC by the end of the year, although pending legislation could extend that deadline.
But when it comes to rail safety, experts agree that technology can only do so much.
Sitting in a Metrolink train simulator in Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, Jay Ellis pulls back on a throttle. A computer screen to his left shows the train’s speed: 45 mph. That’s too fast, according to a series of real-time calculations made by an array of communications units in the train and along the tracks. They take into account the train’s speed, weight and length and the track’s conditions.
This is PTC at work. Metrolink train engineers are using the simulator to learn the new system.
Ellis points to a flashing yellow warning.
“So if I don’t stop, it’s telling me it will take over in 27 seconds,” says the field operations manager for Metrolink.
In this track maintenance simulation, the computer has calculated to the second when the train must stop to avoid the damaged tracks. PTC, Ellis explains, is meant to prevent engineer errors. Between 2003 and 2012, human error accounted for 38 percent of train accidents, according to Federal Railroad Administration data.
If an engineer operating a PTC-equipped train fails to heed a warning, the system takes over and can shut down the train in time to avert a collision. The engineer’s supervisor is notified, and an investigation ensues.
But these safeguards, experts warn, won’t end all train-related deaths.
The Federal Railroad Administration estimates that 95 percent of train-related deaths are caused by individuals or vehicles on tracks – put there by accident or on purpose. PTC can’t adjust for that.
Just a few months ago, video footage captured a fitness instructor running between Burbank train tracks moments before he was hit and killed by a Metrolink train. Investigators were told the man, Greg Plitt, was filming a sports-drink advertisement without authorization. The train conductor and engineer sounded the horn multiple times to warn Plitt, authorities said, but couldn’t stop in time.
SAFETY IMPROVING
Overall, rail travel safety has steadily improved since the 1980s. The nationwide rail accident rate dropped 50 percent between 2004 and 2012, according to FRA officials and their data. In California, the state Public Utilities Commission reported that the number of train accidents fell from 625 in 2008 to 486 in 2012.
“We tend to focus on very rare, but very horrific incidents like the Chatsworth crash,” said Albert Churella, an associate professor at Southern Polytechnic State University and author of several books on the railroad industry. “In reality, the majority of fatalities would not be prevented by PTC.”
In the freight industry, the latest statistics show that human errors account for just 4 percent of freight train accidents, an official said. One of the most horrific freight accidents in recent memory, a fiery oil-tanker train explosion that killed 47 people in a remote Canadian town in 2013, was due in part to human error and brake failure, a Canadian transit report concluded.
Churella is concerned that the technology’s steep price tag will translate into higher fares, forcing some commuters back into their cars.
Lustgarten, the Metrolink spokesman, said passengers won’t foot the bill. Instead, the money is coming largely from state bond funds earmarked for transportation projects.
Commuters, however, could see more time between trains, Lustgarten explained, because the details for each leg of travel must loaded into the system before the train can depart. He said Metrolink has already begun building in more time between trips.
Emerging sensor technologies may eventually cut down on vehicle and pedestrian train accidents.
“We’re not there yet,” Lustgarten said. Even with the latest advances, trains remain in the hands of humans.
The train is among several testing a new wireless technology that promises safer travel in Southern California and across the country. On this night, the sandbags, each stationed where a commuter’s foot would rest, are meant to simulate a load of passengers.
The technology, in the simplest terms, takes control and stops trains when engineers make mistakes, such as ignoring warning signals. Congress mandated the new safety system, called positive train control, or PTC, after a deadly train collision in Chatsworth in 2008 killed 25 people and injured more than 100. Investigators discovered the engineer was texting while on duty.
“It would have definitely prevented an incident like Chatsworth,” Metrolink spokesman Jeff Lustgarten said. One of Metrolink’s trains was involved in the deadly collision.
In 2002, two people were killed and 270 injured in Placentia when a Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train ran a red signal light and crashed into a stopped Metrolink train. More recently, a train engineer in Spain appears to have been talking on the phone while speeding in a train crash that killed 79 passengers and crew.
Metrolink has spent more than four years and $216 million installing PTC in the 169 trains it operates. Testing on the Orange County line, which started this week, is expected to last three to four weeks.
STARTING IN SUMMER
Orange County lines will likely begin running with PTC by this summer. Other Metrolink lines, like those in Ventura County and the Antelope Valley, are expected to begin operating the new system later this month.
In all, freight and commuter rail companies are spending upward of $10 billion on PTC. Congress is requiring all U.S. train operators to install PTC by the end of the year, although pending legislation could extend that deadline.
But when it comes to rail safety, experts agree that technology can only do so much.
Sitting in a Metrolink train simulator in Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, Jay Ellis pulls back on a throttle. A computer screen to his left shows the train’s speed: 45 mph. That’s too fast, according to a series of real-time calculations made by an array of communications units in the train and along the tracks. They take into account the train’s speed, weight and length and the track’s conditions.
This is PTC at work. Metrolink train engineers are using the simulator to learn the new system.
Ellis points to a flashing yellow warning.
“So if I don’t stop, it’s telling me it will take over in 27 seconds,” says the field operations manager for Metrolink.
In this track maintenance simulation, the computer has calculated to the second when the train must stop to avoid the damaged tracks. PTC, Ellis explains, is meant to prevent engineer errors. Between 2003 and 2012, human error accounted for 38 percent of train accidents, according to Federal Railroad Administration data.
If an engineer operating a PTC-equipped train fails to heed a warning, the system takes over and can shut down the train in time to avert a collision. The engineer’s supervisor is notified, and an investigation ensues.
But these safeguards, experts warn, won’t end all train-related deaths.
The Federal Railroad Administration estimates that 95 percent of train-related deaths are caused by individuals or vehicles on tracks – put there by accident or on purpose. PTC can’t adjust for that.
Just a few months ago, video footage captured a fitness instructor running between Burbank train tracks moments before he was hit and killed by a Metrolink train. Investigators were told the man, Greg Plitt, was filming a sports-drink advertisement without authorization. The train conductor and engineer sounded the horn multiple times to warn Plitt, authorities said, but couldn’t stop in time.
SAFETY IMPROVING
Overall, rail travel safety has steadily improved since the 1980s. The nationwide rail accident rate dropped 50 percent between 2004 and 2012, according to FRA officials and their data. In California, the state Public Utilities Commission reported that the number of train accidents fell from 625 in 2008 to 486 in 2012.
“We tend to focus on very rare, but very horrific incidents like the Chatsworth crash,” said Albert Churella, an associate professor at Southern Polytechnic State University and author of several books on the railroad industry. “In reality, the majority of fatalities would not be prevented by PTC.”
In the freight industry, the latest statistics show that human errors account for just 4 percent of freight train accidents, an official said. One of the most horrific freight accidents in recent memory, a fiery oil-tanker train explosion that killed 47 people in a remote Canadian town in 2013, was due in part to human error and brake failure, a Canadian transit report concluded.
Churella is concerned that the technology’s steep price tag will translate into higher fares, forcing some commuters back into their cars.
Lustgarten, the Metrolink spokesman, said passengers won’t foot the bill. Instead, the money is coming largely from state bond funds earmarked for transportation projects.
Commuters, however, could see more time between trains, Lustgarten explained, because the details for each leg of travel must loaded into the system before the train can depart. He said Metrolink has already begun building in more time between trips.
Emerging sensor technologies may eventually cut down on vehicle and pedestrian train accidents.
“We’re not there yet,” Lustgarten said. Even with the latest advances, trains remain in the hands of humans.
Source: http://www.ocregister.com