acela: in need of a diet

in a 1997 report to Congress laying out the blue print for American HSGT the FRA made the assumption that HSR trainsets would run 1.1 ton/seat (chapter 4page 7)http://www.fra.dot.gov/downloads/RRDev/cfs0997ch4.pdf

Acela came in at 1.9 ton/seat http://www.trainweb.org/tgvpages/acela.html

TGV Duplex is .7 ton/seat http://www.trainweb.org/tgvpages/acela.html

and ICE 3 is just under 1 ton/seat http://www.railfaneurope.net/ice/ice3.html

yet the new crashworthiness rules had been published in 1996.......how did the FRA get it so wrong? did they not understand how much weight their rulemaking would impose on Acela?

I suspect the FRA understood just fine. Just like the ICC understood when they came out with their 79-mph rule in 1950.

icgsteve wrote: how did the FRA get it so wrong? did they not understand how much weight their rulemaking would impose on Acela?

To paraphrase Lilly Tomlin's famous line about the phone company: "They don't care; they don't have to, they're the FRA."

The FRA is a typical Federal bureaucracy that basically answers to no one and has little concern about how its regulations drive up the cost to taxpayers. I've long been frustrated by how Amtrak and especially transit authorities don't challenge its dictates when they're going to be forced to incur unnecessary costs, as in the case of FRA regulations that effectively prevented Amtrak from buying off-the-shelf European equipment for the Acela service.

There is no railroader in US that wants less involvement or for FRA to lighten up on safety rules, for every rule in the CFR there are a few railroaders burried somewhere.
If you want European standards move to Europe, your in the United States and Euro toys just are to light for US big toy market.

Those weight per seat figures aren't much use without also knowing the seat density. Sure, you can lower the weight per seat on Acela but would that make it a better train?

DutchRailnut wrote:There is no railroader in US that wants less involvement or for FRA to lighten up on safety rules, for every rule in the CFR there are a few railroaders burried somewhere.
If you want European standards move to Europe, your in the United States and Euro toys just are to light for US big toy market.

the justification for the fra being so out of whack with the rest of the world is our bad grade crossing problem and our heavy freight trains, however that can be done away with on the nec an if say California ever build its hsr system. at that point the fra justifies its standards by saying "well, you just need to understand that American has a history of different standards then the rest of the world. it came about because the aar regulated passenger operations and they transferred their mindset on freight operations to passenger operations, and at this point it is the way we have always done passenger operations...it is the American way. we can't adopt world wide standards on hsr even if we have dedicated hsr row with no grade crossings because that is not the American way.

excuse me I say, but regulation is based upon need, not tradition. te rest of the world does not agree with the FRA, it is time for a debate in Congress about whether it is time to take action against this obtuse federal agency that is supposed to regulate HSR but which insists on instead going out of its way to make sure that America never gets HSR by making it needlessly expensive. it is often pointed out how the fra rules drives up the cost of transets, but the real cost is in fuel and maintenance. I have not seen any studies, if there are none we need to get a study done, but I suspect that fra standards drive up the cost of HSR operation by multiples not just percentages. they need to be made to justify their actions. I AM so sick of public agencies getting away with an BS they want to by saying "we just want to keep Americans safe".

heavier is not necessarily safer . A study here showed some lighter Automobiles were safer than thier heavier counterparts .
They need to look at passenger safety , not train safety . Its not much use having a carriage intact if all the passengers inside are splattered against the wall . I'm sure a lightwieght carriage could be designed to be just as , if not safer from that perspective as a heavy one . the money could also be spent on better signalling / safety systems , so that a crash becomes very unlikely .

Ah, more FRA-bashing! I just want to ask everybody a question: did any of you see the photos of the ICE derailment in Eschede, Germany? The cafe car of that nice, lightweight train was 18 inches wide. No bodies in there -- just a sort of people slurry. Anyone like to take a ride?

So there's a reason for FRA's caution. Trains are a LOT bigger and heavier here than in Germany. Nobody wants to see a version of Eschede occur here.

FRA has in the past concentrated on prescriptive regulation. That may be changing to performance-based regulation, if legal fears don't derail the process. Prescriptive regulation is safer, legally speaking. You just do what the rules say. And remember, we have to keep the US trial lawyers well-fed and happy.

David Benton wrote:heavier is not necessarily safer . A study here showed some lighter Automobiles were safer than thier heavier counterparts .
They need to look at passenger safety , not train safety . Its not much use having a carriage intact if all the passengers inside are splattered against the wall . I'm sure a lightwieght carriage could be designed to be just as , if not safer from that perspective as a heavy one . the money could also be spent on better signalling / safety systems , so that a crash becomes very unlikely .

exactly...it makes no difference what the crush weight of the tin can is, if the human body is propelled against it at 200mph the human is dead.

After the ICE wheel failure accident were over 100 died the FRA said "see, see, the German accident avoidance system could never protect against that, look at how their cars came apart. that would never happen in America because of our crush weight standards" well, who give a #%&@ what the train looks like after an accident, it is the people that we care about. it could very well be that tin cans coming apart saved bodies from impacting said tin can, in any case the humans are going to be most saFe if their is no accident so maybe we should try for that.

do we design airplanes so that that will be able to survive a runway accident or be survivable if they should plummet to the ground? no, we design and regulate so the the airplaneS can carry out their function, hopefully in an economical manor, and then we do our best to make sure that they don't have accidents.

what the obtuse FRA has never understood, after all of the worlds operators have pointed it out, is that HSR vehicles are more like airplanes than trains when it comes to safety and surviviablity issues. HSR needs to be regulated as such.

NellieBly wrote:
So there's a reason for FRA's caution. Trains are a LOT bigger and heavier here than in Germany. .

nobody is disputing the differences in the American rail network from the rest of the world, that America is special in combining super heavy freights with passengers, and for never having mitigated the grade crossing problem. The issue on the table is the FRA current unwillingness to commit to a new global consensus standards should America build dedicated HSR ROW's with out grade crossings.

I for one amnot bashing the FRA, I am pointing out that their regulations do not fit the environment, the facts, or logic.

David Benton wrote:heavier is not necessarily safer .

Your correct but safer does translate into heavier as the material to make things safer are not always suitable for railroad operations.
Nobody wants to ride in a Yugo in a Peterbilt world.
The FRA and AAR agreed to California's demand for lighter trains, as long as they can comply with the strenght requirements of everyday railroading or 800 000 lbs crush loading of car frames, and their design must include corner post.
As far as saying that NEC has no need for strenght requirements lets just say that every diesel weigh's more than twice the weight of a European diesel, every freigh car including MofW is twice the weight of any european freight car.
Crossing you say, BS I say, the strenght is requied for collisions sideswipes at derailments in multi-track territory etc.
Yes signal systems must be dramaticly improved, nowere in Europe are passengers still transported in dark territory, In Europe 90% of all branch lines do have cab signal, the European railways are working on a Cab signal system based on 7th generation (ERTMS II )technology.
Where are we ??? most cab signal in use is first generation 1950's technology with a simple overlay of 1998 technology(ACSES).

DutchRailnut wrote:

David Benton wrote:heavier is not necessarily safer .

The FRA and AAR agreed to California's demand for lighter trains, as long as they can comply with the strenght requirements of everyday railroading or 800 000 lbs crush loading of car frames, and their design must include corner post.

the point is that this standard is unjustified in dedicated HSR ROW systems.

There is no dedicated HSR territory in USA, and any railroad built with federal money needs to provide acces by freight carriers so local industries can be served.
So dedicated HSR systems are a pipedream.

But really, could a dedicated HSR system ever be built in the NEC? It would prevent trains from traveling west/south of the the NEC without people transferring?

DutchRailnut wrote:There is no dedicated HSR territory in USA, and any railroad built with federal money needs to provide acces by freight carriers so local industries can be served.
So dedicated HSR systems are a pipedream.

WRONG

Compatibility with
Other Rail Services
The Authority has assumed that the dual track or
guideway is dedicated exclusively to high-speed and
compatible rail services. Presently, high-speed trains
capable of speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour
cannot share track or guideway with conventional rail
operations, including the current generation of passenger
equipment operated by Amtrak and regional
rail authorities, as well as the freight equipment
currently operated by the freight railroads. Where
high-speed and conventional rail operations must
share a right-of-way, the incompatible services
must be separated horizontally or vertically

http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/plan/pdf/Plan_1.pdf