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LIRR Misses Critical Juncture for Positive Train Control

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Last week, the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) confirmed interruptions in its ability to fully install positive train control (PTC) across its system by the end of the year. Newsday reported that the LIRR system, which is a unit of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) network, failed 16 out of 52 factory tests performed in early March using a computerized simulation of the new technology.

Although its PTC contractor continues to investigate the cause of the failures, MTA officials said they believe it stems from the complexity and density of the LIRR, which is the busiest commuter railroad in the country averaging more than 311,000 daily riders.

PTC is designed to eliminate human error by using four components: GPS satellite data, onboard locomotive equipment, the dispatching office and wayside interface units. The system communicates with the train’s onboard computer, allowing it to audibly warn the engineer and display its safe braking distance based on its speed, length, width and weight, as well as the grade and curvature of the track, according to railroad operator Metrolink.

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If the engineer does not respond to the warning, the onboard computer will activate the brakes and safely stop the train.

An approved PTC System must protect against:

  • Passing a stop signal.
  • Train-to-train collision.
  • Overspeed on curves and other civil restrictions.
  • Unauthorized incursions by a train into a work zone.

The installation began in January as part of a $1 billion safety upgrade, although it had been on the LIRR’s strategic plans for years. So far, substandard testing results are not instilling much confidence that PTC will be complete by the federal deadline of Dec. 31, 2018. If that deadline is missed agencies without properly-installed PTC may face fines of up to $25,000 per day, as enforced by the U.S. Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008.

MTA Board member Neal Zuckerman told Newsday he is less concerned about meeting a federal deadline than he is about “having a system that works for riders.”

“It is better to have this right than fast,” Zuckerman said. “A nonfunctioning system is not worthwhile. It’s a waste of money and time and ultimately will not serve the needs of the riders.”

The LIRR is not the only major transit system to be missing the mark. Risk Management Monitor reported on Amtrak’s struggle to meet the deadline in February and that by the end of 2017, only 8% of NJ Transit’s locomotives and none of its tracks were updated with PTC.

Efforts to upgrade train technology has been a nationwide priority. There have been a number of accidents in recent years. The most recent was a major derailment occurring on Dec. 18, 2017 when an Amtrak train derailed near Tacoma, Washington, killing three passengers and injuring about 100. That crash was the result of excessive speed in a steep curve, which experts suggested could have been prevented with PTC’s automatic braking technology. Amtrak Train No. 501, on its inaugural run, was traveling 80 miles per hour in an area limited to 30 miles per hour when it derailed on an overpass, sending the train’s 12 coaches and one of its two engines careening onto the highway below.

As previously reported in Risk Management, a similar derailment in Philadelphia in May 2015 that killed eight, was also blamed on excessive speed and could have been avoided if PTC had been in place.

After Congress passed the PTC Enforcement and Implementation Act of 2015 it also authorized the FAST Act, which allocated $199 million in PTC grant funding and specifically prioritized PTC installation projects for Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing funding. The Association of American Railroads estimates that freight railroads will spend $10.6 billion implementing PTC, with additional hundreds of millions each year to maintain.

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 The American Public Transportation Association has estimated that the commuter and passenger railroads will need to spend nearly $3.6 billion on PTC.

Train Disaster Calls for Safety Action

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Photo: eddtoro/Shutterstock.com

At 7:20 a.m., Dec. 1, four people died and more than 68 were injured, 11 critically, when a speeding passenger train headed for Grand Central Terminal derailed on a steep curve.

Brake failure was cited as a possible reason for the crash, but inspections determined that the brakes were in good condition. The train’s operator, who recently had been switched to an early shift, later said he may have dozed off, failing to apply the brakes in time to avoid the crash.

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The derailment is of special interest to me. The Hudson line is the one I take to work every day and is the same line that suspended service in July when 10 CSX garbage cars derailed near the same location, just north of the Spuyten Duyvil train station.

This week the Federal Railroad Administration cited the MTA’s safety record as “unacceptable.” The agency noted a series of other recent major accidents on the commuter railway: a two-train derailment May 17 in Bridgeport, Conn., where more than 70 people were injured, the death of a track worker in West Haven, Conn., who was struck by a commuter train, and the CSX train derailment, according to DNAinfo New York.

The Associated Press said that injuries from train accidents on Metro-North are higher this year than any of the past 10 years, with 123 people injured in train accidents through August. A 2012 report by the Government Accountability Office found human error to be the cause of almost one-third of train accidents from 2000 to 2009.

The question being asked is why a safety measure—an automated system that would stop a train that is out of control—was not in place, even though “positive train control” has been called for by the national safety board. In response to several fatal accidents and to combat human error, The Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 mandates that positive train control for passenger and freight trains be operational by Jan. 1, 2015. Because of the costs to install the technology, estimated between $6 billion and $22 billion, however, Congress is considering an extension of the deadline until late 2018.

The GAO report described positive train control as a system designed to prevent accidents caused by human factors, including train-to-train collisions and derailments that result from trains exceeding safe speeds. It is also designed to prevent incursions into work zones and movement of trains through switches left in the wrong position.

While its safety record leaves much to be desired, the MTA was fast to resurrect its contingency plans. On Monday, thousands of commuters were transported by bus from the Yonkers train station to a Manhattan-bound subway. I made the trip, which was seamless but understandably slow-going. It took me two-and-a-half hours to get to work.

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A standout were the first responders. They were fast to arrive on the scene, rescuing people from damaged cars and getting them to area hospitals. Responders and spokespeople were articulate, and did not speculate as to the cause of the crash. They were impressive.

As of yesterday service on the Hudson Line is fully restored.

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This is an amazing feat considering that the train cars had to be removed by cranes from a tight section of track flanked by the Hudson River and a steep rock embankment, all during an intense investigation. Sections of damaged track also had to be rebuilt.

Yesterday’s train ride was thankfully uneventful and today’s even more so, but there was a sad reminder of the disaster on both days, when the train came to a crawl as it approached the deadly curve at Spuyten Duyvil. Another reminder was several pieces of heavy equipment used for cleanup, still sitting near the tracks.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

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Last week I wrote about a train derailment on the line I take to work every day. It was the third derailment in only a few months for the MTA. It turns out that two sets of tracks were destroyed as the result of a derailment of 10 cars on a CSX train hauling garbage at night.

The MTA responded promptly and by the next morning had plans in place, using buses and a subway line to get people to work in Manhattan. That was a Friday, and by Monday garbage had been removed from the tracks and one track was replaced so that service could mostly be restored. The second track was back a few days later.

But a recent letter to the editor of our local newspaper gave the incident a new perspective. The reader pointed out that a CSX garbage train makes a trip four times each day to and from the Bronx, through Albany, to Virginia.

He stated, “The garbage is loaded next door to two gas-fired electric generating plants,” and pointed out that “every advanced country is converting garbage to gas for electric production – we are not.” Instead, we are hauling it to faraway locales to be placed in landfills.

Randy Leonard wrote in a column for The New York Times in September 2012 that strides have been made with a process called plasma arc gasification, developed by the U.S. Air Force. The gasification process was designed as an alternative to the open pit burns of garbage that some Iraq and Afghanistan veterans claim made them sick.

He noted that David Robau, an environmental scientist for the Air Force, “tours the country promoting a system that sounds too good to be true: It devours municipal garbage, recycles metals, blasts toxic contaminants and produces electricity and usable byproducts — all with drastic reductions in emissions.”

New York City and some waste companies are interested in the process, which is favored by some because it can destroy medical waste, asbestos, hydrocarbons and PCBs, he said.

Robau added that not all environmentalists are convinced, believing that complete disposal of waste will discourage recycling and development of renewable products. They also feel that gasification will still create toxic substances such as dioxins.

David Wolman reported in Wired Magazine, February 2012 that a huge garbage operation in Northern Oregon has included a plasma gasification facility. It is run by a startup company called S4 Energy Solutions – the first commercial plant in the U.S. to use the process to convert household garbage into gas products like hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The products can be burned as fuel or sold for other industrial applications.

So far gasification has not taken off, because the value of the product has yet to offset the energy required to power the high temperature furnaces needed to melt the trash. But I have faith (fingers crossed) that eventually solutions to many of the issues at hand will be found.

After all, garbage is cheap fuel. As open land gets scarce and water tables are threatened, we will realize that capping landfills is not a long-term solution. Fossil fuels will also become too expensive, making that cheap fuel look better and better. In fact, I predict that we will eventually be mining garbage out of our landfills.

It’s only a matter of time.