![maxresdefault[1].jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cef8ab_8d4e0ddce355463e8edabd7c8937b6f6~mv2_d_2500_1406_s_2.jpg/v1/fill/w_124,h_70,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/maxresdefault%5B1%5D.jpg)
On Tuesday, May 12, 2015, Amtrak Train 188 derailed in Philadelphia, PA, resulting in multiple deaths and serious injuries to passengers and crew. It now appears, based on reliable science and investigation, that the train was speeding in excess of 100 MPH into a left-hand curve restricted to 50 MPH, when it left the tracks. The unreliable information and reporting that has occurred since should make me hopping mad.
I am a long-time rail fan, an amateur rail historian, and a student of railroading. Not that such a statement qualifies me to be much more than a pundit when it comes to railroading. I've never been a part of the ranks of dedicated operating people who make America's railroads go, and I've never had the misfortune to be in a train wreck. What formal training I do have with regards to railroads is some decades of experience as an insurance accident investigator specializing in transportation insurance. (Now retired) In other words, I get there after the accident, see the aftermath, and--to make a long story short--put two and two together until four comes up. Oddly enough, with respect to wrecks like Amtrak 188, the wreck will likely ultimately be determined to be human caused. That is just a statistical fact. The next most likely cause is equipment failure. Whether this is track or train failure, I'm talking about a failure of a mechanically engineered component of the wheel-rail interaction.
Next in the hierarchy would be signal failure. This is uncommon and unlikely. Railroading long ago learned how to design fail safe signals which, if obeyed by fail unsafe people, always give the correct result. I'm not saying signals do not fail, just that it is not the likely cause. And, finally, in the 21st century, there is the remote statistical possibility that an electronic or computer component can fail and cause a wreck. I don't know of any examples of where this has happened.
So why should I be hopping mad? The answer is this: A good ninety percent of the media are opining that Positive Train Control (PTC) would have prevented the Amtrak 188 wreck. They go on to make this a political issue, because conservative politics restricts Amtrak funding, and sides with "big business", in this case the flush-with-cash freight railroads. Not one in the general news media--you know, those guys all of us listen to on TV and over the Internet--has taken the trouble to learn what PTC is and what it does. It's sufficient for them to know that Congress mandated it to go into place (after another wreck) by the end of 2015 and has been considering extending that deadline, presumably because the railroads are whining that it costs too much. Spare me from the "if it saves even one life" argument! Please!
American railroads have had some form of automatic train stop since 1901. That's over a century, folks! But not all railroads have been so equipped, necessity and cost having been the prime determinants from the get go. So some politician or news person saw this horrendous wreck in California where the engineer/driver was on his call phone and missed a signal, and the pol or news person said to self, "Wouldn't it be great if the train stopped automatically when the signal was disobeyed?" Well, that's automatic train stop. Not a new technology. Then, of course, in the hands of politicians and the media, it got out of hand.
Somebody went to the railroads and asked if they could develop a system to prevent every conceivable kind of wreck. The railroads in general said that would be a great thing, and they were always looking for new technology that could increase safety. In fact, some said they had been working on something like that for a while. The politicians and the bureaucrats went nuts with ecstasy. Why, they could mandate this stuff and be seen as the great public servants that they are! So they asked, what if we mandated this by, say, 2012? The railroads, looking to their bottom line, already knowing they would have to pony up more R & D cash to make it happen, said, "What's in it for us." (Dirty secret: The real motivation for railroads to do anything is to carry more (freight, passengers, etc.) at less cost. The real motivation for PTC was to be able to run more trains over the same track on closer headways and at higher overall speeds.) So the railroads decided PTC mandates were okay so long as they got this benefit in return. They made a deal with the devil (government) for this to happen by a certain date (most recently 12-31-15).
Enter reality: PTC needs to know where all trains are at all times. Because trains are different weights carrying different loads at different speeds, PTC needs to know this as well. It needs to know the potential stopping distance for every train. It must have data on permitted track speed, as well as any variations (say slow orders due to track repairs). Somebody, I think the railroads, decided to rely on GPS for positioning, mostly because positioning by ground based systems would require too much wire or too much bandwidth. Eventually bandwidth became an issue because the FCC hadn't been consulted in advance and is having trouble keeping up with the demand for new frequencies by moving old ones around. And then there's the morass of government regulations that are getting stumbled over every time somebody needs to dig a hole, put up an antenna, or string a wire for PTC. And it all had to be overlayed over existing signals, installed in existing locomotives. It never was as simple as just putting a computer on every train and running a program! Never!
The railroads have thus far spent billions (with a B)! And still this system, mandated by Congress to use technology that didn't exist and in some cases still doesn't, still won't prevent all crashes! Let me say that again. IT WON'T PREVENT ALL CRASHES! Grade crossing accidents, for instance, can't be anticipated by PTC; not unless every car and truck on the road is equipped with a GPS that is telling the PTC system when it is going to cross a track; or making the car/truck stop before doing so. (PTC for your car, anyone?) PTC won't prevent a train from derailing due to a track or mechanical defect. PTC won't prevent a train from hitting a predestrian. PTC will not stop a track washout due to bad weather. It wouldn't have stopped the wind from blowing a stack train off the bridge in New Orleans, or a landslide from wiping a train off the tracks. It's only going to prevent in no particular order: Head ons, rear ends, overspeed derailments, wrong track accidents, and some but not all accidents due to operator inattention, distraction, or disablement.
It's too soon to tell whether the 188 wreck could have been prevented by PTC. But that won't prevent the media and politicians from saying it could, and blaming it on a conservative or on the intransigence of big business whenever and wherever possible.
For another point of view, read: http://www.wsj.com/articles/were-halfway-to-radically-safer-railroads-1431990332
©2015 - C. A. Turek - mistertrains@gmail.com
