Washington State Amtrak Derailment

Just saw this on Ch 2. 250 people on board and in a precarious situation. Let's hope all can be rescued.

From what I read this was the first time this train was run at an upgraded speed over supposedly renovated tracks(!)

OMG so insanely terrible.  Not good for train travel in US. 

galileo said:

Just saw this on Ch 2. 250 people on board and in a precarious situation. Let's hope all can be rescued.

CNN said earlier that the southbound train was carrying 77passengers and 7 crew members...

It's another indication of how incompetent we are at train travel. I'm listening to CNN right now and some guy is saying that they spent 180 million to re-engineer this track in order to gain 10 minutes on the trip. And the project was sold as a "high speed rail" project. Japan gets bullet trains, we get dangerous idiocy.

And this was apparently the inaugural journey on this section of track.

Someone's in big trouble, I think.

It will take some time to determine the cause and who is responsible.

Maybe not - it's apparently very clear that the train was traveling 80 miles an hour when the speed limit was 30. The responsibility will be between the conductor and whoever didn't flip the 'on' switch for the positive train control system that might have prevented it.

Tom_Reingold said:
It will take some time to determine the cause and who is responsible.

we'll, apparently, there was no PTC, so that person is safe. 

I've read/heard that they had the system but it not been "implemented" yet, whatever that means. One source said it "was not activated at the time of the derailment.", which implies it was there but wasn't turned on, for whatever reason.

We'll find out soon enough.

Steve said:

we'll, apparently, there was no PTC, so that person is safe. 

Congress extended the deadline for implementing PTC until 2018.

https://www.rrmediagroup.com/News/NewsDetails/NewsID/13689

So, in 2008, it was decided to implement this tech for safer management of train speeds and track conditions by the end of 2015. Then that was extended to end of this year, and then just last month extended again for another 3 years because they’ve ‘faced challenges implementing the system’. Sounds like pretty good risk management to me...sounds like something we’d do here....   

Edited for spelling

In every situation we encourage government to spend as little as possible.  If we are ever asked about paying more for something we vote no.  The PTC system could be working now if we had pushed for it, but we did not.  

(Which is why our federal govt is cutting back on critical services too, so the politicians get bigger pay, and their donors get tax increases)

The problem with the PTC, is that not all trains are identical, nor do all lines have identical equipment.  It is easy for Washington to issue a rule, but they are not the ones who have to make it work in the field.

Same issue with EZPass.  There are 4 different systems used in different parts of the country.  Trying to do a single management software is close to impossible.  

I don't think the two are comparable. If the Feds had taken the lead on EZ-Pass (which they could have done via their authority over the interstates) we could have easily had one national system for paying tolls. There's no complexity there at all.

I'm sure that PTC is more complicated. On the other hand, it's just a system that stops the train if it goes too fast, right? Doesn't exactly sound like rocket surgery in this day and age. The base system can be the same (the part that keeps track of speed), the only issue is hooking into an individual train's braking system.

Nope. I don't see excuses for not having it widespread by now, other than incompetence on someone's part.

It's been years that the system has been available, right?

The bottom line is that America sucks at trains. It's embarrassing.

I wonder, is PTC in place anywhere in the US? I don't know the answer to that.

tomcat said:

The problem with the PTC, is that not all trains are identical, nor do all lines have identical equipment.  It is easy for Washington to issue a rule, but they are not the ones who have to make it work in the field.

Same issue with EZPass.  There are 4 different systems used in different parts of the country.  Trying to do a single management software is close to impossible.  

Part of the reason that Congress extended the deadline, I suspect, is that the previous Administration had wanted it to in place by now. 

And apparently, there’s difficulty in getting proper communications along the complete length of all the tracks - there’s several things to be monitored for safety ranges, and tied to GPS maps somewhere central, etc. 

Then (of course) there’s the evergreen challenge of jargon - who would have guessed that so many branches of the same fields of engineering used the same initials for completely different terms??? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control Fascinating reading, and only the beginning of the story.

PTC, according to the NY times is in effect in the NE corridor from DC to Boston.

drummerboy says:  "Nope. I don't see excuses for not having it widespread by now, other than incompetence on someone's part."

And 35 years of being told that government is useless, all taxes are bad, and no public good is worth paying for?