Chatsworth, Three Years Later

Sunday is the 10th anniversary of 9/11, but Monday, 9/12, is an even more significant date for the railroad industry. Three years ago Monday, an engineer named Robert Sanchez ran three signals and ran through a trailing-point switch lined against him, collided with a UP local freight, and killed 25 people in addition to himself.

I'm just back from a visit to Los Angeles to talk with Metrolink about their ongoing installation of PTC. I was just re-reading a 2008 thread full of speculation about what happened at Chatsworth. Well, the NTSB report came out last year, and now we know. The engineer was texting his railfan buddies, and wasn't paying attention.

There has been a lot of commentary about the cost of PTC. It's noteworthy that the current Metrolink budget for its PTC installation is $201.6 million, almost exactly the same as the $200 million liability cap on serious accidents. Chatsworth hit the $200 million cap, meaning that *one accident* of that level of seriousness would pay for PTC installation -- which would prevent any such "human factors" accidents in the future.

Metrolink is about 25% into the installation process. Wayside Interface Units are being installed on the San Gabriel Sub (which will be the test track), and three hi-rails are being equipped with PTC equipment for tests. Validation of the GPS mapping of the Metrolink system is underway. We were shown prototype PTC equipment installations on a Rotem cab car and an F59. Metrolink expects to have a working PTC by mid-2013. They're doing a great job. Hopefully PTC (along with in-cab cameras, a ban on cell phone use, and better hiring and monitoring practices for locomotive engineers) will prevent future Chatsworths.

Excellent to see that action is being taken to prevent future accidents. Hopefully the railroads don't decide to upgrade all their train to full ATC, thus downgrading the role of engineers and possibly eliminating conductors.

eaglestar wrote:Excellent to see that action is being taken to prevent future accidents. Hopefully the railroads don't decide to upgrade all their train to full ATC, thus downgrading the role of engineers and possibly eliminating conductors.

seriously?? if the net result is increased safety and decreased loss of life for everyone…who cares?

Of course, safety is always the primary focus. However, increased use of technology can lead to other malfunctions (take a look at the computer failures suffered by ATC rapid transit systems, BART, etc.) which led thousands of people to be trapped underground.
While installation of PTC is a very good step to be taken against human error (including texting), the fact remains that no matter how "smart" computers get, their reasoning ability can never match that of live human operators. True, while humans make mistakes on occasion, it is not reasonable to think that computers will automatically eliminate all accidents. In the end, it will end up complicating matters.

In other words, I believe PTC will serve its purpose in a fine fashion, but graduating to a fully automated operating system will lead to computer failures, freight and passenger delays, lay off of thousands of jobs, all for slightly increased safety, if any.

Just my 2 cents.

eaglestar wrote:Of course, safety is always the primary focus. However, increased use of technology can lead to other malfunctions (take a look at the computer failures suffered by ATC rapid transit systems, BART, etc.) which led thousands of people to be trapped underground.
While installation of PTC is a very good step to be taken against human error (including texting), the fact remains that no matter how "smart" computers get, their reasoning ability can never match that of live human operators. True, while humans make mistakes on occasion, it is not reasonable to think that computers will automatically eliminate all accidents. In the end, it will end up complicating matters.

In other words, I believe PTC will serve its purpose in a fine fashion, but graduating to a fully automated operating system will lead to computer failures, freight and passenger delays, lay off of thousands of jobs, all for slightly increased safety, if any.

Just my 2 cents.

you might not like it, but the reality is that the future is more and more automation. i'm sure many decades ago people claimed the same of assembly line workers.

self-driving cars are going to be safer. so are self-driving trains. the question is one of when, not if. and everyone would be better off if we embrace these changes instead of fighting against them, or pretending that we (as humans) are somehow "superior" — we're not, and it's about time we realize it.

lensovet wrote:you might not like it, but the reality is that the future is more and more automation.

I'm not sure that everyone would agree with you, such as the BART operator who stepped on the platform at a stop, only to have his train leave the station without him, as well as passengers and crew involved in an incident involving the only other fully automatic railway line in America, the DC Metro. There, a fully automated train rammed another on the Red Line. Doubtless, you would get those who would disagree there as well. Couple those unpleasant thoughts with the fact that worldwide quality control of manufactured items has been steadily declining for the past fifty years or so, and I think that you might see the writing on the wall.

I think what most passengers want, including Congressmen, is what guarantees can rail operators give that would eliminate another Chatsworth? Amtrak took similar steps on the Northeast Corridor after Chase. It's what worked before, it can work again. Doing nothing to correct and fix these scenarios of inattentive engineers is unacceptable.

Look at the advances in measures/precautions taken at rail crossings over the years.
No warning signs at all
Cross bucks
Horns on trains
Round caution sign hundreds of feet away
Blinking lights and bells
Gates
Lighted gates
More lights hanging above road
Quad Gates
I'm trying to suggest there"s been an ever increasing amount of measures being taken. Doing nothing has never been acceptable.

For my money, the future holds a combination of automation without the elimination of a human. Computers will make operations simpler and more efficient, but a computer can't do what humans can do, such as anticipate from a wide variety of actions. It reminds me of the famous hero motorman on the Atlantic Avenue Elevated at the time of the 1919 molasses flood who saw the elevated structure ahead of him slightly undulating. He went into emergency, realizing that the structure was not sound, stopped, and reversed his train to safety. That portion of the structure that he had seen undulating, then gave way from forces put upon it by the molasses tidal wave, that the train would have derailed certainly as it reached that area and would have plummeted to the street killing all aboard. A computer would have never done that.

3rdrail wrote:For my money, the future holds a combination of automation without the elimination of a human. Computers will make operations simpler and more efficient, but a computer can't do what humans can do, such as anticipate from a wide variety of actions. It reminds me of the famous hero motorman on the Atlantic Avenue Elevated at the time of the 1919 molasses flood who saw the elevated structure ahead of him slightly undulating. He went into emergency, realizing that the structure was not sound, stopped, and reversed his train to safety. That portion of the structure that he had seen undulating, then gave way from forces put upon it by the molasses tidal wave, that the train would have derailed certainly as it reached that area and would have plummeted to the street killing all aboard. A computer would have never done that.

this isn't the place to get into that argument, but for every case of "human ingenuity", there are countless others of human carelessness. think about how many drunk drivers kill others on the road every day. human ingenuity indeed. the accidents you mentioned, with BART and DCM, are single cases. in how many years of operation? sorry but human operators can't compete.
regardless, i'll see you in 20 years

3rdrail wrote:For my money, the future holds a combination of automation without the elimination of a human

Look at the DLR in London. Completely automated, but the trains still have "guards". They're trained to operate the emergency stop button and the radio, but are largely there to help passengers and provide some security.

I wouldn't be surprised if human *drivers* are eliminated, but the job of the conductor is likely to remain.

That's all very well for an all-passenger, uniform-consist operation, but I'm wondering whether you can program a system to accommodate the virtually infinite number of variables involved in freight-train handling, such as train length, train weight, and weight distribution witihin the train. Think of a train over a mile long, with the first part going uphill, the middle part downhill, and the rear part going uphill, some cars loaded, some empty, and the proportions changing every time the train advances a car length. An engineer has to do a lot of that by feel, and I don't know whether you can program a computer to feel with that degree of sensitivity. Based on comments in other forums, a possible result would be the dumbing down of the whole operation to a uniform speed of 30 mph or so, just to be on the safe side, leading to an unacceptable loss of productivity.

Each cop on the road has a $50 breathalyzer. I'm sure they've been more than paid for by the DUI fines the foolish are compelled to pay (a guy I know paid $4000). According to wiki, arrests have gone down by about 500,000 per year since we got tough on DUI in the 80's.

Now, do we need to force PTC on the railroads? Or do we enforce a no-texting / no cellphone reg, just as local police departments are starting to do with drivers? After all, there's millions of cars on the road driven by people that range from caring/smart to mean/dumb/broke. There are only a few thousand locomotive engineers, and I bet 99% of them are conscientious enough to follow a serious rule like this one (or lose their job when sighted by a manager).

That has already taken place on Boston's MBTA. After a recent Green Line accident attributed to the operators inattention due to texting, MBTA operators were fired on sight if they even possessed a cell phone while working (I believe that it's now a suspension with charges being brought forth). The MBTA has also acted on passenger initiated information, many in the form of video, regarding terminations and other disciplinary measures for violations such as sleeping, texting, etc.

HOPEFULLY prevent is the key phrase. However, we all know that there are still going to be accidents and disasters after PTC is rolled out.

HOPEFULLY PTC won't allow a significant dumbing down of the craft of engineer. Of course, some engineers are going to use it as a clutch and not a tool and "forget" the "real" rules. This happens with cab signals. Engineers run with cab signals (where equipped) and when there is a failure, they simply do not know what to do because they don't remember the rules and how to apply them. They have reduced the job in their mind down to a Pavlov type reaction of BEEP BEEP BEEP = slow down to the speed its telling me. No "BEEP BEEP BEEP" and they might not realize they need to slow down. Don't even realize there is a problem (signal change) to begin with.

HOPEFULLY when there are PTC system failures (and there will be, nothing is perfect), and the "clutch" taken away, some engineers will "remember" what to do and remember how to recognize a stop signal and use their own judgement to be able to stop the train in time.... If not, the type of crash that PTC is trying to prevent, its going to cause (through a temporary failure of the equipment)

With regard to the cell phone rules - I can reduce those dozens of rules and hundreds of lines of for lack of a better word "Bullpoop" into one simple to understand line. NO TALKING ON CELL PHONE OR TEXTING WHILE THE TRAIN YOU ARE ENGINEER OF, IS MOVING" Instead of the literally hundreds of lines of nonsense and restrictions which make the rule one of the most complicated rules that exists in railroading right now. Imagine having those kind of restrictions and requirements placed on people driving their cars and using cell phones...sheesh

Should be an interesting next couple of years....especially with the commuter/passenger Hours of Service changes coming up.

I see a lot of people confusing ATC with ATO
ATC or Automatic train control is speed overlay on cab signal, it does not operate the train.
Automatic Train Operation is what is used on some rapid transit operations like BART.