Western Railroad Discussion > PTC

Just saw tonight’s episode called “60 minutes” on CBS TV. One segment showed several horrible Amtrak crashes on rails that hadn’t been updated with PTC.  This brings up my question: Were the rails from Los Angeles to Seattle upgraded? My wife & I were planning to take Amtrak in a couple of months to Seattle but this is not a risk for us.....  Anybody having this info would be welcomed!

John Koschwanez
Oceanside, CA
[url=aardvarkind@gmail.com]aardvarky[/url]

Check the Internet...

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

I don't believe the entire route of the Coast Starlight has been upgraded with PTC nor will it in a couple of months.  But I personally believe you shouldn't let that stop you from enjoying your trip.  Nothing in life is guaranteed and plenty of things can happen even with PTC in place.  From a statistical standpoint it is extremely unlikely to happen.  Also statistically speaking, you have a much higher chance of be involved in an accident on the road going to or from the train station than on the train itself.  Life is full of risks and doing anything (or nothing) can result in something tragic happening, so don't worry that something rare will happen.

Sorry, I mostly quit watching 60 minutes after their Audi 5000 segment.  I am old myself but was amazed that they had all these Neanderthal's doing the segments.  Lara Logan was a reprieve.  I did watch Andy Rooney who was entertaining as CBS had this habit of running football late, running 60 minutes into the Amazing Race time slot.  Maybe they got people under 60 now, I don't know.  Reminds me of the local diners and I think in 10 years all their customers will be dead. 

Anyway the answer you will probably get is your danger of driving to the station or standing on the corner waiting for Uber to pick you up is far greater.  Anyway I would not change my behavior based on 60 minutes anymore than watching ET.

Bob Jordan



 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/19 20:24 by robj.

I have not watch 60 Minutes in 10 or 15 years...nothing but "yellow journalism" in my opinion!

Posted from Android

Marty Harrison
Knob Noster, MO

Trains ran for almost 200 years without PTC,  and all of a sudden they are unsafe without it. 

Fact is, IMHO, that the RR's are trying to run the RR's with far les ppl than 50 years ago, which leads to more errors, etc.

So now we are spending billions on a "failsafe" system, that really isnt failsafe 100% anyway, rather than spend money on ppl.

I have nothing against having the PTC system, but i would never refuse to ride a train cause it wasnt installed.

If u want to avoid unsafe transportation, never drive anywhere.  Every year 24,000 , Thats TWENTY FOUR THOUSAND people in this country, get in a car to go somewhere, and never make it to their destination, cause they were KILLED in a traffic accident along the way.   And yet, its apparently still acceptable.
Where's Leslie Stahl now?

So, CSX's signals are out of service and would have otherwise prevented the accident, yes? Apparently 60 Minutes Producers did not get this. The accident really had little to do with PTC, more with CSX.

robj Wrote:
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> Anyway the answer you will probably get is your
> danger of driving to the station or standing on
> the corner waiting for Uber to pick you up is far
> greater.  Anyway I would not change my behavior
> based on 60 minutes anymore than watching ET.

Here you go. Pick one:

TAW

---

So according to that chart:

Motorcycle - 1 death per every 4.3 million miles traveled
Railroad - 1 death per every 7.3 million miles traveled
Light truck -  1 death per every 82.1 million miles traveled
Automobile - 1 death per every 173.4 million miles traveled
Heavy truck - 1 death per every 258.9 million miles traveled
Bus - 1 death per every 363.6 million miles traveled

If the numbers are accurate as presented:

If you want to be safest, ride a bus or buy a Peterbilt
If you want to be riskiest, buy a motorcycle or ride the train

 

TAW what year was that chart?

There were several things on that 60 minutes report that were 'true', but the presentation was more than a little bit shaded.

1)  The Cayce accident was a direct result of installing PTC and having to turn the signals 'off' to do it.   The cause was an improperly set switch with no signal indication, while PTC would have prevented it, installing PTC is technically what caused it.  Read the STB report.   They had Sumwalt there, he wrote it, did they edit that out?

2)  With all due respect to TAW, the Washington accident was as much caused by the federal funding epiration deadline for the project as Amtrak.   The entire thing, including crew training, was rushed to meet the funding window for the grant.   Without an extension granted, this directly led to a lot of shortcuts to get it 'in service' by a specific date, with some tragic results.    WIthout that pressure, PTC would have been installed, and crews properly trained.   IHMO.  

3)  The 'regulatory delays' don't even begin to cover the mess between the FCC and the EPA over getting the radio towers installed.  Got through it, but there's really good reason for the delays that happened when you can't dig a hole without a certified tribe archeologist on a reservation, and an environmental analysis looking for stuff in the hole.  That's well documented on the FCC and PTC websites. 

4)  Look at the FRA progress chart on PTC as of the 4th Quarter 2018.   Did they do that before they elevated the story to a crisis?   There's a whole lot of progress, but some of the weakest implementation status isn't on the for-profit railroads, it's on the commuter agencies that simply have no funding to do it.    The only part where I wanted to throw something at CBS and Stahl was the statement by Sumwalt that the system installation costs BILLIONS and Stahl reacted "So?" .    So, there's no money to pay for it on commuter lines.   You work in New York, and Washington, and we're looking at MULTIPLE lack of infrastructure investment issues on transit, not just PTC.    It's a real credit to the for-profits that it's made it as far as it has given the resources available and the industry is surviving despite it.

I would have liked so see 60 minutes do this maybe 3-4 years ago when the insanity of some of these issues is what led to the extensions, which now they are demonizing the FRA for.   You can pick a lot of villians here, but the room gets pretty full pretty fast, not quite so easy to single out a single entity like the FRA, or the railroads, or the regulatory agencies that also get painted into a corner by what they are told to do.   We have met the enemy, and they are us.

I really respect the NTSB and their methods, and they've been pushing PTC for years.   Their investigatory methods are about as good as they get.   But that takes time that doesn't fit easily into a news cycle, and not enough people actually read the darn final reports to see what REALLY happened, and respect the fact that nearly all of the awful accidents that have happened have a very complex set of circumstances rather than a single point of failure that can be resolved by a technical or regulatory 'fix'.

hogheaded Wrote:
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> So, CSX's signals are out of service and would
> have otherwise prevented the accident, yes?

Absolutely YES!

> Apparently 60 Minutes Producers did not get this.
> The accident really had little to do with PTC,
> more with CSX.

Not only that, the Engineer gave a different story in the interview with CBS than what he gave "on the record" to the NTSB. Imagine that.

darkcloud Wrote:
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> So according to that chart:
Apples don't equal oranges.

Per PASSENGER mile might be a better comparison. Per vehicle mile compared to per train mile is not a good comparison. The number of people per vehicle isn't factored in.

I'd like to know the details of the seven derailments in the past 10 years at the location where the Amtrak went throught the misaligned switch. Is that number accurate or something the neighbor "felt" had happened?
There was a lot more noise than facts than I prefer to see.

I can understand the engineer being angry that he got fired for something his conductor didn't do. But there were a lot of facts left out of his story. And the NSTB has been pushing for PTC for a long time. No one interviewed is going to make friends with people they need to work with by doing such interviews. The NTSB can make recomendations but has no authority to enforce changes. Congress and the FRA are responsible for writing and enforcing the laws. The railroads are fully compliant with federal law.

I want PTC ... but such a biased presentation doesn't help.

CPRR Wrote:
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> TAW what year was that chart?

I got it from the latest that Bureau of Transportation Statistics has available, I think it was 2016.

TAW

darkcloud Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So according to that chart:
...
> If the numbers are accurate as presented:
>
> If you want to be safest, ride a bus or buy a
> Peterbilt
> If you want to be riskiest, buy a motorcycle or
> ride the train
>

Unfortunately, the way data is compiled by BTS, it is hard to get a simple comparison. Trains and buses have a lot more riders per vehicle miles than trucks and motorcycles. Railroad, truck, and bus include employees. On a railroad or a truck, the employee incidents outnumber the passenger incidents.

The motorcycle Peterbuilt comparison shows a valid point. Bus and truck involve licensed professional drivers. Motorcycle and auto involve amateur drivers who are licensed, but you can just about buy that kind of license at Walgreens.

TAW

randgust Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> 2)  With all due respect to TAW, the Washington
> accident was as much caused by the federal funding
> epiration deadline for the project as Amtrak.  
> The entire thing, including crew training, was
> rushed to meet the funding window for the
> grant.   Without an extension granted, this
> directly led to a lot of shortcuts to get it 'in
> service' by a specific date, with some tragic
> results.    WIthout that pressure, PTC would
> have been installed, and crews properly
> trained.   IHMO.  

That was a factor, and actually as far as I am concerned, only a contributing factor.

Only five months earlier, another Cascades engineer Failing to Look Out the Window got by a red one and over a derail at the Chambers Creek bridge, on a route that has been in daily use for a little over 100 years. Even with PTC, the train that derailed could have been rear ended at 19 mph or run into another train at 19 mph or derailed on a bridge at 19 mph, etc.

Yes, the funding deadline contributed to the lack of PTC (but the foremost cause for lack of PTC was FRA requiring a system that had not been invented yet and assigning an arbitrary deadline for implementaiton) and the rushed training, but what does one say about missing the two mile advance warning sign or the signal aligned directly over the center of the track for the last 3500 feet before the curve? (The signal engineer put it there oriented in that direction and relation to the track for that purpose.) How about the recording of the engineer telling the conductor in the cab on a familiarization trip that he wasn't sure where he was at Tukwila and can get lost around Kalama? How about TWO guys in the cab missing what an experienced rail should have caught even if it was the first trip over the line?

It isn't as simple as rushed to completion.

TAW

Having worked in the radio communications field for many years, since my early  20's to my late 60's, 68, often times the delay is not with the FCC for radio tower but with environmental agencies that require environmental impact studies for towers over a specific height and/or in an sensitive environmental area.
Case in point, working for a utility company near San Antonio wanted a 300-foot tower for voice radio communications for safety of their workers.  It was on THEIR substation property, but yet it took almost 4 months to clear the environmental studies, especially from the native American, indian nations.  Of course several wanted to be paid to do the studies and it cost the electric utility an additional $15,000 for all of the studies.
Safety of human life be damned, that was not a factor, how it looked, if it was built in a sensitive area was much more important.
As one person said, 'why don't they use their cell phones for communications'.  Hard to do when you need to talk to 30-50 workers at the same time.
Safety of human life is far more important than doing these expensive studies.
Pat
WA5VRO
South Austin, TX