Comment by bombcar
17 hours ago
This one is the kind of thing that's not supposed to be able to even happen (one train running into the back of another) if positive train control is implemented properly.
People rag on the USA refusing to allow higher speeds without PTC but their system is very simple and it works (it throws the train into emergency if it passes a red signal by physically knocking out the air).
Exactly, this can't happen. You need to put measures on this.
Both the maintenance issue and bad systems that lead to human error creating this crash need to be taken responsability by the public system and fix them.
Apparently they have the automated systems, but they were not working, so they were under human operating rules.
Which, in the USA at least, severely limits speed you're allowed to use (because once the only thing between you and gory death is a human, eventually that human makes a mistake).
They told the train to drive "as normal". This was a controller mistake as the procedure says they could only drive in visual/slow mode.
Same mistake was made with other train and the driver replied that that was not allowed, and the operator corrected accordingly. But the driver of the train that crashed didn't raise the issue.
As it looks now the controller made a mistake when taking over manual control of the segment after systems failure ("continue as normal" vs "continue slow"). The train driver probably should have also known they should not drive at normal speed without safeties in the segment, but I guess they trusted control had cleared previous trains.
Between 10-20 minutes control room did not realize a train was approaching an occupied section where the other train was holding on a red track signal.
Human error but signals serious deficiencies at protocol, oversight etc. In control room.
Yeah, and seems like the automated systems have been failing a lot recently. Or that they didnt correctly designed them for this case.
This means the health of those systems and mantinability by whoever was responsible hasn't been well done.
I agree with you, once the only thing and death is a human, nothing can be trusted, humans will make mistakes.
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Who does this? The US barely has PTC because freight companies continue to fight it tooth and nail. You only need to look at the Amtrak Cascades crash to see how subpar even modern rail infrastructure is in the US. Neither is PTC a panacea as anyone who is old enough to remember when Thales' craptastic train control system sent a Muni train the wrong way down the wrong tracks in San Francisco.
There are definitely groups of people who hate the limited speeds of Amtrak, especially in the southwest corridor (the trains Amtrak runs there are capable of "technically high-speed (120 mph)" but can't do it because the freights haven't paid for the rails to be upgraded.
Everyone wants PTC installed, nobody wants to pay for it. Amtrak wants the railroads to pay for it. The railroads don't care about it because they run 50 MPH or less freights, so they want the government to pay for it. The government has no funding and wants Amtrak to pay for it. Amtrak reminds the government that Amtrak is just the government with a bad wig on, and the cycle continues.
And California keeps trying to build a high-speed rail for infinity billion dollars when the cost to PTC the entire LOSSAN corridor is only $250-500 million (and many agencies have done parts of it themselves already).
The state of US rail is entirely due to nobody actually giving a shit and there not being a central authority powerful enough to force it thought (because nobody gives a shit). Kind of the story of the USA in general.