new signals on Manayunk/Norristown line

In other words, the new signals are a waste of money.....old and inferior was so deadly unsafe compared to the new federally mandated "pay-for-it-yourself" new and improved. The wonders of Congress...

bikentransit wrote:In other words, the new signals are a waste of money.....old and inferior was so deadly unsafe compared to the new federally mandated "pay-for-it-yourself" new and improved. The wonders of Congress...

IMHO, PTC was a knee-jerk reaction to the LA crash. PTC will be safer, but at what cost?

The discussion about the dollar value of a human life is always interesting. Especially in an election year.

562 along with PTC should make the system safer (no more of those pesky head on collisions like the one on the Warminster branch.) It always amazes me that human life is measured dollars and cents through that concept of cost benefit analysis.
Railroads in general were always reluctant to spend money on things like cab signals or speed control due to the bottom line and then you see a derailment somewhere in Texas or the Midwest where a train blows a stop signal and crashes into another one and whole crew is killed and the damage from a hazmat release in the hundreds of millions. After accidents like those, I always thought that safety systems must be cheaper instead of paying money for all of the damage, but I guess not.

amtrakhogger wrote:(no more of those pesky head on collisions like the one on the Warminster branch.)

Don't ya just hate when that happens?

For the record I don't mind either ATC or 562. It's the transit signals and PTC that are both unnecessary and unhelpful.

Clearfield wrote:

Jersey_Mike wrote:

Clearfield wrote:

glennk419 wrote:...and a railroad that still runs slower than it did fifty years ago with its' "ancient" signal system.

A safer railroad that still runs slower than it did fifty years ago with its' "ancient" signal system.

Um, how many people have been killed/injured in SEPTA accidents since 1983?

Check your math. fifty years ago was 1963 not 1983.

I believe Mike is alluding to the time when SEPTA took over operations from Conrail.

Clearfield wrote:IMHO, PTC was a knee-jerk reaction to the LA crash.

Totally agree. PTC is like your parents telling you not to rollerskate after hurting yourself on skates (true story from about 20 years ago...). It solves nothing.

Clearfield wrote: PTC will be safer, but at what cost?

I hesitate to agree with this. We've already had our first PTC crash and we were darn lucky nobody got hurt, the errant train left the track at speed and came within a few yards of striking MofW equipment. See the 2012 Amtrak Niles, MI, accident. That line was under PTC. A maintainer did something improper and a corridor train to Detroit took a siding despite a signal indication for the main. It left the track at speed and barely missed some equipment in the yard. PTC was posited by congress as a basically a human-proof safety blanket and it's already been shown that's not possible.

How are we going to have safer railroads? Enforce the rules, especially ones that ban texting on locomotives. Seriously, if texting while driving is as dangerous as drunk driving, why on earth did we ever think texting while driving a train was remotely cool? Second, keep training people properly. There's a reason you see the armed forces putting their people through daily training exercises despite the high degree of weapons automation.

Tadman wrote:
Totally agree. PTC is like your parents telling you not to rollerskate after hurting yourself on skates (true story from about 20 years ago...). It solves nothing.

The industry had decades to implement even crude measures that would have prevented Chatsworth (The blindingly simple German PZB system would have, the LIRR's ASC system would have made it at worst a 15mph bump).

They didn't.

Then, an accident happened in the wrong congressional district.

Well, play Russian Roulette, sometimes the gu goes off and you lose. Too bad, so sad.

Clearfield wrote: PTC will be safer, but at what cost?

I hesitate to agree with this.

[/quote]

I don't.

We've already had our first PTC crash and we were darn lucky nobody got hurt, the errant train left the track at speed and came within a few yards of striking MofW equipment. See the 2012 Amtrak Niles, MI, accident

See the NTSB report on it.

That line was under PTC. A maintainer did something improper and a corridor train to Detroit took a siding despite a signal indication for the main. It left the track at speed and barely missed some equipment in the yard. PTC was posited by congress as a basically a human-proof safety blanket and it's already been shown that's not possible.

You mean, when people mindlessly screw with safety equipment and disable it, bad things can happen?!? Say it ain't so!

Maybe the take-away on Niles is Amtrak should up their hiring standards for signal folks...

How are we going to have safer railroads? Enforce the rules, especially ones that ban texting on locomotives.

Yeah, because that's worked so well in the past. 25 people died because there's zero redundancy in the signalling system Metrolink had. The answer is to add redundancy, not cute little rules like "Don't text or you'll get into trouble!!!* (*But let's face it, you can't be fired for it)". It's asinine in this day and age that there's zero redundancy is RR signalling on a passenger line of any decent traffic level.

Second, keep training people properly. There's a reason you see the armed forces putting their people through daily training exercises despite the high degree of weapons automation.

And yet, a few years ago, a fighter pilot who couldn't control himself shot up a school in southern NJ. So much for 'higher standards'....

The answer is to add redundancy, not cute little rules like "Don't text or you'll get into trouble!!!*

How come every train in the US isn't equipped with a device that positively doesn't allow operation while under the influence of substances known to cause distraction or bad judgement, such as alcohol or drugs? With modern technology, the cab gets a crew listing uploaded by wifi, the crew thumbprint into the cab, and the train only moves after they blow into a tube.

But we don't do that, we have proper training and zero-tolerance enforcement, plus substance abuse counseling and treatment centers for those that are caught. We don't sweep that crap under the rug. And it works fairly well. There hasn't been a substance abuse-related Amtrak accident since Ricky Gates.

So why isn't texting or internet surfing from the cab treated with the same rules? Because PTC gets congressmen elected, that's why.

The fact that NTSB ruled Niles, MI, as a signal maintainer error is only germaine to the discussion to point out that the human factor will find a way around the redundancy eventually. It happened in Niles and people came close to being killed. It didn't happen just because a signal maintainer goofed, it happened because a signal maintainer goofed and we thought PTC was infallible, just like we thought the Titanic was unsinkable. The carelessness that comes with the false sense of security of infallibility is quite dangerous.

Lest this sound like the ramblings of a know-it-all buff, I hold a General Electric safety passport and I've been hired to give safety lectures at quite a few big companies such as BP.

Tadman wrote:Lest this sound like the ramblings of a know-it-all buff, I hold a General Electric safety passport and I've been hired to give safety lectures at quite a few big companies such as BP.

Yet you advocate a safety system is ok even though it has a single point of failure that's made of a human component that's inherently and unreliable?

i hate to bring a transit solution to the real railroad, but why wouldn't stop arms work? on the philadelphia el and subway, when a signal goes red a small arm goes up witch if struck by a passing train, hits a corresponding arm on the leading truck of the vehicle and immediately puts it in to emergency stop. seams a lot easier than a multi billion dollar fancy pants, space age tracking remote control system.

The problem with "trip arms" is that all your rolling stock has to be identical in construction, which works well on rapid-transit but not on railroads where a variety of equipment types may be in use.

I agree with Nasadowsk's earlier comments. The industry had many years to develop some form of PTC on its own and declined to do so in the name of dollars and cents and now are faced with the consequences of their bad decisions. Given those circumstances more Chatsworth type accidents were inevitable due to human error and this one broke the camel's back. So Congress did what the railroad industry should have done on their own years ago, but didn't. Let the railroads learn a lesson from this.

Tadman wrote:

The answer is to add redundancy, not cute little rules like "Don't text or you'll get into trouble!!!*

How come every train in the US isn't equipped with a device that positively doesn't allow operation while under the influence of substances known to cause distraction or bad judgement, such as alcohol or drugs? With modern technology, the cab gets a crew listing uploaded by wifi, the crew thumbprint into the cab, and the train only moves after they blow into a tube.

But we don't do that, we have proper training and zero-tolerance enforcement, plus substance abuse counseling and treatment centers for those that are caught. We don't sweep that crap under the rug. And it works fairly well. There hasn't been a substance abuse-related Amtrak accident since Ricky Gates.

So why isn't texting or internet surfing from the cab treated with the same rules? Because PTC gets congressmen elected, that's why.

The fact that NTSB ruled Niles, MI, as a signal maintainer error is only germaine to the discussion to point out that the human factor will find a way around the redundancy eventually. It happened in Niles and people came close to being killed. It didn't happen just because a signal maintainer goofed, it happened because a signal maintainer goofed and we thought PTC was infallible, just like we thought the Titanic was unsinkable. The carelessness that comes with the false sense of security of infallibility is quite dangerous.

Lest this sound like the ramblings of a know-it-all buff, I hold a General Electric safety passport and I've been hired to give safety lectures at quite a few big companies such as BP.

Ironically relevant reference.

Double hull that was later put onto olympic and britanic to prevent such a sinking actually ended up making them list -and therefore sink- much faster than titanic. Titanic sinking on the other hand was a chain of events that no one could, at the time, possibly really foresee. In fact, lifeboats were not really used to escape sinking ships, but to transfer passengers from a sinking ship to another ship nearby.

We can improperly double hull things and watch them sink, or we can pause a moment and realize that there are logical ways to do things that DO end up VASTLY improving things. PTC becoming disabled should have flashed all kinds of red flags all over the place so the train crew knew what to expect or do next, instead, nothing. I'll let the experts figure this one out, but we need to collectively stop acting like we got cranial-rectal syndrome.

getting pretty far off topic.

in conclusion, Norristown Line will soon be 562 cab-no-wayside... and PTC is controversial. /thread