Vehicle collision in North Wilmington (1/21/2022)

Really interesting, three notifications came across my cell phone last night: NECN & WCVB stated "human error involved". WHDH was the only one with an accurate headline about the gate not being down.

Not sure what you mean? The reason the gate wasn't down was because of human error.

The (Comcast-Universal-NBC) NECN and (Hearst) WCVB headlines were almost identical and misleading which I find interesting. Human error implies the train crew or the engineer did something wrong. You have to open the article to find out that it was most likely the signal maintainer. Human error will always happen, not much you can do about it, but the signals not working is really frightening.

Trinnau, I had thought that too after I posted. I suppose most would read a "contractor" and think it was a third-party company doing the work as opposed to the contractor the MBTA hired to do the actual work/maintenance.

Point of clarity, every crossing has 3 circuits. There are approach circuits on either end and an island circuit ON the crossing. This is how the gates go up as soon as a train is CLEAR of the crossing but don't stay down for the length that triggers activation in the opposite direction. What happens when a crossing is disabled is that only the island circuit is active so that crossing signals are not activated until the crossing is actually occupied. What happened in North Wilmington is almost identical to what happened to Metra here.

All very sad and unfortunate. I wonder if the crossing technicians weren’t expecting a southbound train at that time, and screwed up because of it. The Haverhill line has been running a revised schedule since 1/10 that sent the 218 down the Western route, with no stop at N Wilmington, rather than its usual run down the wildcat.

Kinda makes me wonder when they'll start linking crossing protection bungalows to PTC...

Our thoughts should certainly go to the family of the victim, but the Keolis signal maintainer who allegedly made this error has to bear this burden forever. Hopefully some support for him from his union, he will surely need some .

The T published an update on the crossing involved in this crash: https://www.mbta.com/news/2022-02-22/mb ... d-crossing

Nothing specific about the incident itself, but it has some info on procedures they've updated since then