I got up very early this morning (April 9, 2019), very early for me now that I'm retired. As a matter of fact, the last time I got up this early since being retired, my plane was landing in Paris.
I used to get up this early all the time (and go to bed later most of the time) when I was working, but those happy days are over. Other happy days have taken their place.
Landing in Paris isn't what got me up early this morning. The granddaughters got me up early this morning as my wife and I were taking care of them while their parents were away at the same time at different locations for different businesses.
The older granddaughter gets up before six so she can get to school by eight, and the younger one follows her sister shortly after.
Before we go any further, yes their parents trust me with their care. And before you run off to make an emergency call to child welfare services, let me tell you this: When in the course of business, I'm asked for my safety credentials, more often than not I tell my interlocutor that I'm listed as the alternate safety contact at my granddaughters' schools.
If that doesn't seal the deal, the deal isn't worth pursuing.
Anyway, after the getting up, fixing them something that approximates breakfast (vanilla yogurt and potato chips), gently reminding one then two of the time, the need to get dressed, take their lunches, and after accompanying the younger to her school, there is the getting back home where The New York Times awaits me, sections A,B,C, D, on the front steps. I try to get to it before one or more of the dogs in the neighborhood do.
Which I did today. And today, in section B I found this article, "How to Stop a Deadly Little Problem--Buses and trains should install seatbelts and fix windows, a safety agency says."
Quoting the NTSB, the article reports:
"Protecting passengers and crews from injury requires keeping rail car windows intact and maintaining their structural integrity during an accident, and includes occupant restraints systems such as seatbelts to mitigate the severity of passenger injuries."
The article then goes on to state:
The Federal Railroad Administration's office of safety analysis says 21 passengers and employees were killed in Amtrak and commuter train accidents in 2017 and 2018. While the number of bus and rail fatalities is relatively small, thousands of people were injured in recent years on Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit and other commuter trains as well as on Greyhound and other interstate bus companies, according to federal regulators.
Scary, no? But before we even sort through the data to find out how scary scary is, we have to come to grips with the fundamental facts of commuter rail service.
Fact 1: There is no guarantee of a seat. Seats are not reserved. Loading is restricted only by the space available in the car, not the number of seats. We stand people up. Everyday. We even stand people up intentionally, on occasion. I don't know when, or even if, the NYT reporter or the experts he cites last rode a LIRR, NJT, Metra, Metro-North train, but I have yet to ride any of those services in a peak period when commuters didn't stand for at least part of the journey.
Fact 2: Satisfying ridership demand during peak periods depends on shortened turn around of equipment, the rapid unloading of and reloading of equipment. This allows commuter operations to virtually "bulk up" fleet size for peak operations without actually increasing the fleet size to the degree that it overwhelms terminal capacity.
Fact 3: Rapid unloading and reloading is essential in terminals to allow multiple arrival and departures of trains utilizing a defined and limited number of tracks. The velocity of track turnover drives terminal operations. While schedules are written to allow 20 minutes for the transition from arrival/unload to reload/departure, circumstances frequently reduce the turnaround time by more than half. Personally, I was a master at the "three minute turn," as ugly as it was, and it was ugly.
Fact 4: Unlike a plane or a bus, the passenger area of the train is not a seamless, open, "whole." Passenger areas are separated into cars of 100 seats or more. Demanding, and enforcing, that passengers be seated with seat belts fastened before departure would effectively end the ability of railroads to meet peak service period demand. Each car would require two employees simply to check that passengers had fastened their seat belts, and repeat that check at every intermediate station. Dwell times at stations would make a mockery of efficient train operations.
Fact 5: To mandate by regulation that passenger railroads install seat belts is to mandate that passenger seats with defective seat belts be removed from service, thereby reducing the possible ridership and ensuring continuous conflict between train crews and commuters. To reduce that conflict, railroads will have no choice but to remove the entire car from service, reducing seating even more.
These are critical facts when advocating or even contemplating a regulatory requirement for seat belt installation. The regulation would fundamentally prevent railroads from providing the service, and regulation cannot so burden an operation unless the operation itself is irredeemably unsafe. Anyone who spends any time reviewing safety data from the FRA's Office of Safety Analysis knows railroading is anything but irredeemably unsafe.
The serious danger to passenger safety in commuter operations comes from impact accidents, and/or derailments. While overspeed derailments, and train-to-train collisions get the headlines (and the pronouncements from senators, safety experts, and newspaper reporters) train-to-train collisions, and derailments have declined. Passenger train accidents not at grade crossings fell 25 percent between 2008 and 2017. In the same period, collisions declined 77 percent, and derailments declined 40 percent. The frequency of passenger train accidents per million passenger train miles also declined significantly.
What did not decline? The rate of highway-rail grade crossing accidents. That increased from 2.520 per million passenger train miles in 2008 to 2.745 per million passenger train miles in 2017. The percentage of passenger injuries sustained in grade crossing accidents varies from 25 percent percent in 2008 to a high of 90 percent 2012. The low was reached in 2017, 13 percent.
Which brings me to my point-- that regulating railroads by requiring seat belts doesn't address the root cause of the problem, and you and I know how important addressing the root cause is to the creation of a truly safe system. The root cause is that highway-rail grade crossings are not sufficiently "hardened" against unauthorized incursion, against violation of the protection function by the highway traffic. To address the root cause, our experts, and the reporters who report on their expertise, need to address this unsafe practice and advocate that the many and united states of these United States improve the integrity of grade-crossing protection. I doubt you'll be reading about that in the papers.
David Schanoes
April 9, 2019
Yes, I read you. The answer is negative. --Ripley, Alien
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