Train wreck all too familiar
When a top Amtrak official described this week’s deadly derailment of a speeding train near Olympia, Wash., as a “wake-up call,” he was being generous to himself and his fellow rail officials. They and Congress had already decided to sleep through plenty of alarms.
While federal investigators are still sorting out the facts of the Washington disaster, it appears likely to be the kind that could have been prevented by positive train control, an automated safety system that can brake trains traveling at excessive speeds if their operators don’t respond to warnings. After a 2008 Southern California train wreck killed 25, Congress required the nation’s rail lines to install positive train control systems by 2015, but the deadline was extended at least into next year when railroads resisted. Monday’s derailment took place during the first regular service on new tracks where the system was expected to be implemented but was not yet functioning.
Bound from Seattle to Portland, the train was going 80 mph on a curve with a 30 mph speed limit when it left the tracks and careened onto Interstate 5, killing three passengers and injuring scores more. It was in those respects remarkably similar to a 2015 Amtrak derailment that killed eight in Philadelphia. That train was also exceeding the speed limit on a sharp curve by about 50 mph on tracks where positive train control had yet to be put in place.
The system also could have intervened in the 2008 Los Angeles wreck, which took place after the engineer of a commuter train ran a red light, leading to a head-on collision with a freight train.
A National Transportation Safety Board official alluded to the possibility that distraction was a factor in this week’s derailment. That was found to be the cause in Los Angeles, where the NTSB determined that the engineer was sending text messages on his cell phone when he missed the stop signal.
No such clear-cut negligence was found in the Philadelphia derailment, though investigators concluded that engineer Brandon Bostian had somehow lost track of his precise place on the route, perhaps because he was distracted by radio chatter about a nearby commuter train that had been hit by a rock. A judge dismissed criminal charges against Bostian in September, though prosecutors were in court this week arguing for their reinstatement.
The Philadelphia crash in particular showed the capacity for human error to have horrific consequences for rail passengers even in the absence of obvious dereliction — and therefore the utility of automatic safeguards. Two years later, however, positive train control is functional on only a quarter of the nation’s passenger rail routes. That Amtrak and Washington officials pressed a new route into service a few months ahead of positive train control, possibly to meet federal funding deadlines, is a particularly outrageous example of a reckless decision made while thoroughly awake to the risks.