Delayed rail safety system on way here
Local trains must use innovation not yet in place for Washington derailment
An innovative safety system that some say could have prevented the deadly train derailment near Tacoma is on its way to more Bay Area railways as soon as next year.
Federal officials have confirmed that an Amtrak train was hurtling more than twice the speed limit when it derailed, crashing onto a highway below and killing at least three people.
If a federally-mandated system known as Positive Train Control had been in place, the accident might have been avoided.
The Altamont Corridor Express (ACE) plans to begin testing the system next summer. It is one of three Bay Area train operators, along with Caltrain and Amtrak, required to use train control. Amtrak did not respond to questions
about whether the system is being used locally. BART already uses a similar, but different, automatic train control system.
Caltrain said Tuesday that it expects to have a plan in place early next year to finish testing the system.
Automatic train control is designed to prevent trains from derailing due to unsafe speeds, colliding with other trains or injuring employees working by the tracks, said Narayana Sundaram, the director of engineering and commuter rail operations for the American Public Transportation Association.
The systems use radio towers and on-board GPS units to track the position, speed and length of each train. If a train is speeding into a curve or through a work zone, the system alerts the train operator. And, if the train operator fails to hit the brakes, the system slows the train or stops it automatically. Train control systems are designed to remove human error associated with speed-related crashes, train-to-train collisions or other accidents.
But, Amtrak’s president, Richard Anderson, told the Washington Post the system was not in use on the particular stretch of tracks where the Tacoma derailment occurred.
The railroad company operates Capitol Corridor, the San Joaquins and the Pacific Surfliner, three passenger train routes that cross through the Bay Area.
Congress mandated the new system in 2008, after a commuter train operator in Los Angeles ran a track signal light and struck a freight train, killing 25 people. Initially, railroads were required to implement the systems by 2015, but the complexity of the technology made it difficult for train operators to comply and the deadline was extended to 2018, Sundaram said. The technology literally didn’t exist before Congress required it, though Sundaram said there were automatic speed control systems and other elements of the Positive Train Control Congress required that had been in place for some years.
“Manufacturers had to design something that would meet the requirements and take into account the realities of the existing system as well,” he said.
Railroad companies had to build and install radio towers, new control rooms and signal equipment, he said. They had to secure the rights to the radio frequencies to transmit information from the signal equipment near the tracks to the trains. And, all the components needed to work regardless of whether the train is carting people or goods, is high-speed or slow, or uses diesel gas or electricity, Sundaram said.
While train control systems do prevent certain types of deadly disasters, they can’t tell when there’s an obstruction on the tracks, as was the case in March 2016, when an Altamont Corridor Express train derailed in Sunol. In that instance, a heavy downpour prompted a mudslide over the tracks, which ultimately caused the train to slip and tumble into a rain-swollen creek, said ACE spokesman Chris Kay. Nine of the roughly 200 passengers were injured.
Regardless, Kay said, ACE plans to begin testing of its system next summer once Union Pacific, which owns the tracks, installs certain equipment.
In the South Bay, Caltrain was preparing to have its train control system up and running by the end of 2017 before it abruptly fired its contractor, Parsons Transportation Group, in February. In dueling lawsuits, Caltrain and Parsons blamed each other for repeated delays in the project. The bulk of the work had already been completed, including installing wayside and onboard hardware, fiber optic cables and a new backup control center facility, said Caltrain spokeswoman Tasha Bartholomew. At this point, she said, only the testing is left.
There is no contractor in place, but Bartholomew said Caltrain staffers expect to present a plan sometime early next year to the agency’s governing board on how it will complete the project.