Probe begins in N.J. train crash
One dead, more than 100 injured
Federal investigators are assessing whether equipment failure, an incapacitated operator or other factors could have caused a packed commuter-rail train to barrel into Hoboken (New Jersey) Terminal and slam into the station in a Thursday morning rush-hour crash that killed one person and injured more than 100 others.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, R, said the operator of the train, who was hospitalized and later released, was cooperating with the investigation. He will be interviewed by National Transportation Safety Board officials in coming days.
Christie said the crash appeared to be accidental.
Officials declined to speculate on a cause, but one thing was clear: The train was traveling far too fast as it entered one of the busiest transportation terminals in the New York area, crashed onto the concrete platform, destroyed the metal canopy over the platform, and finally came to a rest when it crashed into the station building.
“When you see the destruction up close, the silver lining is that there’s only been one fatality,” said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D. “Because the destruction is significant. And the power of the train coming in is obviously devastating in its impact.”
Bella Dinh-Zarr, vice chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the speed limit on the track entering the station is 10 mph.
Dinh-Zarr, who is part of the NTSB team in Hoboken, said one question investigators will be examining is whether positive train control (PTC), a federally mandated technology designed to automatically apply emergency brakes to runaway trains, could have prevented the crash. The NTSB has advocated for the technology for 40 years, she said. Railroads were required to adopt PTC by last December, before Congress passed a law allowing railroads to delay installation for three to five years.
New Jersey Transit has not installed PTC on any of its trains, according to data maintained by the Federal Railroad Administration.
Safety experts said the crash also raised questions about how the train’s basic safety systems functioned.
New Jersey Transit said earlier this year that its entire network is equipped with an Automatic Train Control system. Such systems are meant to slow or stop a train in certain circumstances.
“People have to look and see exactly how New Jersey Transit has implemented that system on that track and how far it extends into the terminal,” said Steven Ditmeyer, a former Federal Railroad Administration official.
Such Automatic Train Control systems are a blunter, and less sophisticated tool than the newer PTC systems.
Ditmeyer noted, however, that it’s hard to know precisely how PTC would have worked in this case. “The Federal Railroad Administration rules on positive train control grant an exemption for terminals,” he said, though they are notoriously complicated environments.
The train had been traveling from Spring Valley, N.Y., to Hoboken Terminal, a bustling transit hub that serves four different passenger rail systems, along with a water ferry.
Passengers described the moments before impact, as they looked out their train’s window at around 8:45 a.m. and realized that the train which usually slows to a crawl as it enters the stations - hurdled through the railyard and into the terminal.
Accountant Jim Finan was sitting toward the rear of the first car when he realized the train was coming in much too fast. “We were getting to the platform, but we were still at full speed,” Finan, 42, said. “The train didn’t slow down at all.”
Then, Finan recalled, there came a loud “boom” as he felt the train hit the barrier, burst onto the platform, blasted through the support beams holding up the platform’s metal canopy and careened toward the station building.
“We were just bouncing as we went across the concourse,” he said. “The only thing that stopped the train is the fact that it slammed into the building.”
An average of 60,000 people travel through the station every day.
Alex Moaba of Millburn, N.J., was on a Hoboken-bound train that pulled into the terminal minutes after the crash, before emergency personnel had arrived. He said part of the ceiling was dangling - the first indication that something had gone wrong.
“We were just piecing together what had happened,” he said. “I thought to myself ‘maybe a display board had fallen.’ I looked a little closer and saw that a train was literally in the middle of the station, off the tracks.”
“It was kind of eerily quiet and calm,” he added.
Videos and photos taken by passengers from the moments after the collision showed a nightmarish scene: The platform covered in twisted metal and debris from the collapsed roof as station staff peered into the train and passengers and bystanders began yelling and shrieking, some of them trapped under the wreckage.
People were bleeding profusely from cuts to their head, Finan said, and one man seemed to be holding his severed thumb in place. Others had cuts on their hands. Finan pulled off the rubber around an emergency-exit window and another man pushed the window out.