Comment by silverFork
14 hours ago
How is this even possible in this day and age. It can be all automated, double and quad checked enroute ..
14 hours ago
How is this even possible in this day and age. It can be all automated, double and quad checked enroute ..
This route is the last of the Spanish high speed lines that still has an older train protection system. There has been a similar accident in 2002 in Germany where LZB was also used: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linienf%C3%B6rmige_Zugbeeinflu... . Now after 24 years you might think they had mitigating procedures in place...
The railroads in the USA were trying to push back and delay improvements to automated safety systems until the 2015 Amtrak 188 crash https://youtu.be/-mzaavmtT9M
Only was finally fully rolled out in I think 2020 5 years after the accident.
Delaying/avoiding spending money on safety seems to be common around the world.
2006 subway accident in Valencia had a similar context, they used the FAP system, cheaper than ATP, which would have prevented the accident.
It's the second time this year too. In Spain. Same company.
apparently even the same line
It’s the main line, and Toledo is near Madrid.
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It's been reported that the automated system had failed, so trains were being routed and instructed manually.
In Oslo, Norway, we have train signaling errors all the time it feels like. It leads to a lot of delays and things. But I think that when these systems are not working, it is better to slow down everything even going as far as to put some trains on hold for some time, to avoid human errors in manual instruction and routing leading to crashes and deaths.
"Signalfeil" (signal error) does not actually always mean that there is an error with the signaling! Happened to read up on this while stuck on a train due to signal error!
It is means that they have gotten a signal that there is an error somewhere, which might be the signaling system, but also loads of other things! [1]
The term is super confusing thought, should probably have been "error signal" instead
[1] https://www.banenor.no/nyheter-og-aktuelt/bane-nor-forklarer...
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But then you increase the risk of (suspected) sabotage disrupting the Dutch railway network. Which obviously is better than an deadly accident, but...
Isn't speed under verbal authorization limited to like 30-40 km/h?
This was my immediate thought -- this is such a tragic unforced error. It seems impossible for this to happen.
"In this day and age" means nothing when so many of these train systems are running on technology from the mid-1900s.
Spain didn't even have high-speed trains until the early 1990s so I don't think that's the case here.
The network started construction in the late 1980s so that's still 40 years ago. The 90s weren't as recent as we all think..
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As long as vision zero is considered more of a gross infringement on personal freedums than a laudable goal, making trains as safe as they are uniquely fit to become is not exactly a great way to allocate funds to maximize impact. Trains are already very safe. Even where they currently lack 4 layers of fail-safe systems operated at a level where that still permits reliable&punctual service. The same money on making them shine could be spent on improving car infrastructure (or even removing some car infrastructure!) for greater expected harm reduction.
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In Spain the train network was neglected so car and oil companies could earn tons of money since the 70's.
But Toledo-Madrid it's a special high speed network with thousands of daily users heading Madrid to work, which is just 1h away from Toledo.
Still, I will always be pro-train because they can mass deliver goods at much higher ratio than by truck.
"In Spain the train network was neglected so car and oil companies could earn tons of money since the 70's."
That's patently false, as Spain has the largest High-speed rail network in the world after China and it has seen constant expansion for the last 30 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Spain
Maintenance and expansion are two different things. Governments of the day tend to favour big announcements for shiny new things, while simultaneously deferring maintenance whenever they can to redirect money to various other priorities.
I think you have to talk about how this is measured. Their network is huge, but frequencies are low and the maintenance costs per KM of track are very high relative to ridership. If you just think about the metric of KM of high-speed track, it's true, Spain has a larger network than, for example, Japan. But Japan is sending high-speed trains down some of its lines every 3 and a half minutes! Nothing remotely like that is happening in Spain.
I'm from Spain, I know it well. Just check what happened with short-distance trains.
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