In the Don Phillips column of the January 2010 issue of Trains, Mr. Phillips said that French and Canadian test crews at the Pueblo technology center told Mr. Phillips that they ridiculed the Acela by referring to it as le cochon, meaning “the pig.” The test crews considered the Acela to be laughably too heavy.
Mr. Phillips’ point was to highlight the part of the recent FRA plan that includes the implementation of PTC. From that information in the FRA plan, Mr. Phillips states his inference as,
“once passenger trains are better protected from collisions, they won’t need to be as heavy as battle tanks.”
And he goes on to elaborate how the European method of protecting passengers does not include making the trains as heavy as possible. So my question is, if the Europeans have found a better way to build trains, why don’t we do it that way in the U.S.?
Mr. Phillips’ comment that the additional safety provided by PTC will reduce the need for structural crash resist
Engineers at a major car company once set out to reduce the hazard posed by the “A” post on cars. That’s the one at the side of the windshield. The “B” post is between the doors (on a 4 door) and the “C” post is the one in the back corner.
By the time they got done making the “A” post ‘safe’ in case of a collision between a passengers head and the post, the padding interfered with the driver’s field of view. They gave up and went back to the original design, with minimal padding.
The point - We tend to build for worst case scenarios. We want the passenger car to be a cocoon in which the passengers will be as safe as possible in the case of a collision. It may also be because no manufacturer or railroad wants to have to answer in court the question, “So you could have made the car safer, but you chose not to do so?”
But Don Phillips did not say anything about giving up safety. He just said that if you install PTC, you will reduce the likelihood of crashes, so passenger cars will not need to be so heavy in order to withstand crashes.
It has been a few days since I read the column, but IIRC, the column stated that PTC would be the main factor making lighterweight trains safe.
However you hit on the one flaw keeping PTC from being the main contributor to safe lightweight passenger trains–grade crossings. Without fail proof grade crossings or total grade seperation, safe lightweight trains are not possible in the USA.
In the column, Phillips gave an example of a TGV derailing at 150mph resulting in only minor injuries. I know it is impossible on that line, but imagine if the same equipment going the same speed hit a car or semi at a grade crossing. More than likely very different results.
Even if there is total grade separation, is PTC honestly the fail-safe cure all? Haven’t we had a few collisions on transit systems and even Disney which operate with supposedly fail safe systems?
While there might be some exceptions, at least the newest European high speed passenger rail lines are built for that purpose only. To the best of my knowledge they operate no freight trains on those lines and there are no highway crossings at grade, so the possibity of collisions with heavier freight trains or motor vehicles are thus avoided.
On the one hand it is possible that the design of the cars to hang together if they come off the rails may reduce the risk of injuries and fatalities, on the other hand the lighter construction of the cars may not be as much protection for passengers if they derail and hit immovable line side structures. In the 1998 wreck of a German ICE high speed train resulted in very high injuries and fatalities when the rearward cars smashed into a bridge collapsing due to the impact from the derailing cars at the head of the train.
As noted in the other thread, there has been no testing to specifically determine if cars built to US standards would provide better protection in such circumstances. I don’t know if a human can survive a sudden stop from a speed of 120MPH or more no matter how the vehicle is structured.
Living all my life in the US and now retired in Italy gives me a different perspective on things. There is a lot of single track and dark territory in the US, plus a LOT of really heavy freight trains. This is a concern for the FRA, and rightly so. In Italy, almost everything is signaled double track and the freights are lighter and faster than in the US, meshing easily with the passenger trains. The only single track I’ve been on is the moribund Trieste - Opicina portion of the origanal Transalpina Railway that got cut off by both WW I and WW II. It is not used much, only for an occasional freight and STEAM excursions. There is also a short, 5 mile segment out of Udine on the line to Villach, Austria, plus lots of lightly used single track in Slovenia and Croatia.
The difference between the US and Europe, gentlemen, is in prevention, rather than crisis management. As with the “socialized” medicine I use here, prevention of disease is the rule, rather than treating ailments after the symptoms appear. The major force in railroads here is prevention of accidents, while in the US, cars are built to survive the inevitable wreck. It is just a matter of priorities. It’s called money – $$$$$
Airbags are the stupidest thing they ever mandated for automobiles. They are so safe that you have to keep children out of the front seats so the airbags won’t kill them when they deploy.
Another reason why we need some major upgrades(such as grade crossing safety) or else continue to have an antiquated system in the US:
In the United States, statistics show that approximately every two hours a railroad accident occurs in which a pedestrian or vehicle is struck by a train. In 2007, there were 13,067 railroad related accidents, according to the Federal Railroad Administration’s Office of Safety Analysis. These railroad accidents resulted in 851 deaths and 8,801 non-fatal injuries.
Old-style heavyweight steel cars are insufficient protection also, lest we forget:
April, 1946 – Naperville crash on the Burlington: the Advance Flyer, stopped in Naperville station to check the running gear, is rammed by the Exposition Flyer coming through on the same track at 80 mph (130 km/h). 47 killed, some 125 injured.
Yet I hear (and often respond to) more and more collision dispatches on the fire radio which result in no patient transport. Seatbelts have their downside as well (as one of my co-workers proclaims on his truck), yet they, too save lives. I can’t tell you how many vehicle roll-overs I’ve dealt with from which all of the occupants walk away with minor injuries at worst.
Now - before we get too far off-topic - back to your regularly scheduled thread.
Perhaps the answer (pricey as it will be) is stand-alone HSR, completely divorced from freight railroading. Low-speed service (79 mph) can serve as feeders, but the inter-city arteries probably need to be free of impendiments like freight and grade crossings.
This represents a wholesale paradigm shift from the direction some folks are trying to go, but probably is the best solution.
Exactly. I phrased my comment wrong. I meant that while accidents were much less common, being the one in charge of making the trains lighter (and less safe IN THE EVENT of a crash) is not a good place to be if/when something DOES happen is not a good place to find yourself! Sure, you made trains X times faster and more efficient, but does the media care? No, all they see is that you took away safety by making the cars lighter and more efficient.
I’m all in favor of making trains safer and less likely to crash so they don’t have to built “like battle tanks” to quote Don Phillips, but it’s going to take an exceptional politician to take the risks of making it happen.
If the derailed train doesn’t strike anything. It happened in Japan too, derailed during an earthquake and stopped safely by luck. But if the derailed train does sideswipe another train at that speed then what ? In Germany a train hit the bridge pilar after derailing at hi-speed. And in Germany freight trains do use the new hi-speed lines built for the ICE.
TGV trains have hit trucks at railway crossing at normal operating speeds too. European trains are not emune to train accidents.
The US has way too many level crossings and also operate at restricted speed with loaded passenger trains to comonly. This can cause delays and are wild cards for accidents. I think it will be tough to rule that US trains need not be so crash worthy.
Maybe the only real solution is new designated right of way with no conection to the rest of the rail network so that new rules can be made.
The Acela passenger cars ride on 4 axels so they can be removed from a “train set” for major service problems. In a crash, you are dependent on the coulpers to keep the cars from “jacknifing”. The TGV is a fixed “train set” with each car riding on a truck under the vestibule shared with the adjacent car. The cars tend to stay in a straight line during a crash.
The Acela shares its tracks with Commuter Trains, Boston at 80 mph, Metro North at 90 mph, and other lines south of New York. Will the Acela ever come in contact with a F40PH or a duble deck commuter coach? How about Terrorist Bomb as in Russia ? The Acela NEEDS to be crash worthy.
Add to this, in the United States, we do not fence our “Right-of-Ways”. The Lawyers are waiting.
The amount of crash worthiness that is built into a rail vehicle, or any vehicle for that matter, should be the function of a risk assessment. What is the probability the vehicle will be in a crash? And what are the potential consequences from a variety of crash scenarios?
The probability of terrorists flying fuel laden airplanes into the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon was minuscule. But the consequences were so devastating that a risk manager, had he or she assessed the risk of such an event, would not have considered the probability. The same concept should be applied to a risk assessment of high speed or conventional rail vehicles.
I vote for more safety rather than less, even if it raises the cost of the vehicle or causes it to run slower. I have a co-worker who was involved in a serious automobile accident. It put her in a wheelchair for the ramainder of her life. It got my attention about the importance of safety and the need to make vehicles as crash worthy as possible.
Moreover, I don’t care what the Europeans do. Their best practices may or may not be suitable for the United States. What is best for the USA is the key question. The founders of this country threw off the Brits because they did not want to be controlled by them or emulate them.
By the way, this topic has been explored under the Passenger Discussion below. So, let’s accept a couple precepts: 1) European and Asian rail systems are different from North American systems; 2) European and Asian rail system standards are different from North American systems; 3) North American railroad standards are “heavey” compared to the rest of the world.
Phillips…and others before…have said that foreign systems are built and operated to avoid accidents by seperation of types of traffic and technology like positive train control and even freight being of a lighter guage than in North America. North American railroading safety is approached by building heavier and tougher equipment which would protect occupants in such collisions or derailments. In a discussion with an Alstom VP several years ago he indicated that there is a lot of technology for dual power, speed, environmental emissions, fuel savings, etc. which cannot be used in North America because of the heavier equipment (loading guage I think is the term). How right is Phillips and the others? European and Asian rail is what it is and North American rail is what it is, the differences are apparent along with the philosophies of the social structures of each continent. Which is better is mere argument and conjecture.
That is true, but other European designs have semi-permanent connections to coaches that have two two axle trucks each. They also tend to stay in a straight line if they derail.