UTU News Digest - Friday, December 10, 1999

UTU Daily News Digest

Information of interest to operating railroad and transportation employees

Friday, December 10, 1999

CALIFORNIA: Engineer in train crash faults light

LOS ANGELES -- The engineer of the Metrolink train that rammed a freight train in Fullerton last month told police he received a warning signal to slow down three miles before the crash but not a signal indicating a train was in his path, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Engineer Harvey Wong, an employee of Amtrak, said it "caught him off guard" when he spotted a 38-car freight train on the same track the morning of Nov. 18.

The eastbound Metrolink train hit the westbound Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train just north of Commonwealth Avenue and Brookhurst Road.

Nineteen commuters aboard the Metrolink train sustained minor injuries. The collision sent three boxcars tumbling off an embankment, setting one ablaze, and derailed the commuter train's locomotive.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

The Fullerton Police Department on Wednesday released its report on the incident, which included the first interview of Wong just after the collision.

The Metrolink engineer told investigator Bill Regan that three miles before the crash site, he passed a track signal light that was yellow over green--a warning to slow down to 50 mph to prepare to switch tracks.

Wong said the next signal light, near the site of the crash, was red over red--ordering him to stop.

At the same instant, Wong said, he spotted the freight train, which was in the process of switching off the Metrolink's track. Wong said he immediately hit the emergency brakes but clipped the end of the freight train.

Jim Southworth, the NTSB's lead inspector in the case, said the investigation's initial findings do not indicate that a mechanical or signal failure was a factor in the collision.

Crash investigators are reviewing data collected from the signal lights and from the data recorders on the trains to determine what track signals were given before the collision.

Southworth said they are also double-checking for a possible signal malfunction and trying to determine if the rising sun may have affected the Metrolink engineer's ability to see the signal.

A local rail union official assisting the NTSB inquiry said that if Wong's account is accurate, he would not be at fault.

The track signal three miles from the crash site should have been a single yellow light, warning the Metrolink engineer to be prepared to stop at the next signal, said Richard J. Weigle, an Amtrak engineer and secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Local 20.

"We don't know what happened yet, or if the signal system failed," Weigle said. "That's what we're trying to figure out."

Both Amtrak and Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway engineers said that stretch of track in Fullerton is known to have weak signal lights, making it difficult for them to see warnings about possible traffic ahead.

However, no defects were found in the signal system when it was inspected by state railway safety workers earlier this year.

Wong remains on paid administrative leave. He could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

TEXAS: Burlington Northern board OKs buyback of added 30 million shares

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. (BNI) plans to buy back an additional 30 million shares.

In a press release Thursday, Burlington Northern, a railroad company, said it has repurchased about 90% of the 30 million shares under the program authorized in July 1998.

Burlington Northern has about 468 million average shares outstanding.

OHIO: CSX comes up with plan to reduce blocked roads

WELLINGTON - CSX Transportation established no-parking zones for its trains yesterday at 15 road crossings from Berea to Willard, but fire and ambulance officials in southern Lorain County said more needs to be done, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported.

CSX said the policy is a first for the company. It came in response to community concerns that trains too often were blocking busy roads. Six of its approximately 34 crossings in Lorain County were chosen.

Under the company's new rules, trains will stop and block the selected intersections only because of emergencies or mechanical problems. Operators are to uncouple cars to reopen crossings during lengthy stops.

Routine stops because of a backlog of rail traffic would be restricted to other areas.

Bob Walker, chief of the Wellington Fire District covering five townships and Wellington, said that since most blocked crossings in Wellington were caused by trains with mechanical problems, the new policy would have little effect.

Train traffic has doubled this year since CSX's purchase of the former Conrail track, and Walker said the only real solution was to build an overpass or an underpass.

The CSX announcement came as state and local officials continue to raise concerns, especially over possible safety problems posed when fire, ambulance and police officials are blocked by trains.

Gov. Bob Taft on Friday surveyed problem areas by helicopter.

ILLINOIS: Bus vs. train debate at conference for suburban rapid transit

CHICAGO -- Like one-armed juggling with two balls in the air, deciding whether bus or rail is the better form of public transit to ease congestion on northwest suburban roadways is proving a tricky process, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Northwest suburban mayors are rooting for rail, convinced that commuters prefer the comfort and cachet of trains to blue-collar-image buses. But federal transportation officials and the projects they're pushing all aim at expanding bus transportation.

In fact, on Thursday, transit specialists from across the country and Canada will join an all-day conference on Bus Rapid Transit, an attempt to emulate the efficiency of rail by having buses run in dedicated lanes, allowing them to pre-empt traffic signals and speeding up the boarding process.

Five northwest suburbs, the Regional Transportation Authority and the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority are sponsoring a study to address the need to get more city residents to jobs in the northwest suburbs and more northwest suburban residents to O'Hare International Airport and Chicago.

But several months have passed since the original deadline lapsed for consultants working on the $450,000 study to narrow a list of eight rail and bus transit options down to a manageable two or three, or even four.

Most northwest suburban mayors participating in the study clearly favor rail for the corridor.

"We're not convinced people will get out of their cars to ride buses. They will get out of their cars to ride trains. It has been proved very clearly that light rail, heavy rail does that," said Mayor Al Larson of Schaumburg, a leading advocate for some kind of rail extension to Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates from the CTA's Blue Line station in Rosemont, near O'Hare.

William Barlow, city manager of Rolling Meadows, is critical of the creature comforts on buses, preferring trains, with their wider, cushioned, seats, fold-down computer tables, electrical outlets and smoother, faster ride.

"On a train there is a lot more opportunity to engage in personal activities, to utilize productive time, versus (on a bus) having to hold your breath and squeeze into a space that doesn't allow you to open a newspaper up without elbowing your neighbor," Barlow said.

The RTA, the lead agency on the study, hopes to have a smaller set of transit options for its other sponsors on Jan. 14. A bus and a rail option are expected, but that will be the first step in a long process toward resolution.

Meanwhile, a full-court press by the federal government and academia is under way to promote buses, particularly bus rapid transit, which they tout as a cheaper, more flexible form of public transit than rail.

"The Federal Transit Administration would like regions to undertake an analysis of alternatives, instead of just the knee-jerk reaction of rail," said Joseph DiJohn, director of the Metropolitan Transportation Support Initiative at UIC, an organizer of the conference. DiJohn is a former director of Pace, the suburban bus service.

Aside from the practical factors driving the choice between trains and buses--cost, demand, right-of-way availability--the image factor of the bus has pigeon-holed it as the poor cousin of public transportation.

"This is something we're concerned about," said Amy Coggins, spokeswoman for the American Public Transit Association, which is planning a "public image" campaign to examine that question and try to change people's perceptions about buses.

Federal Transit Administration officials are promoting bus rapid transit because, they say, there is not enough transit funding available to build all the rail systems being proposed around the country. The agency has given grants to 10 cities to explore the feasibility of building bus rapid transit systems.

Chicago, while not among them, is one of seven other cities that have shown interest in bus rapid transit. The CTA has a modified form of the system running on Western Avenue, and another is planned to link Michigan Avenue hotels with McCormick Place.

The federal transit agency is anxious to see a premier bus rapid transit system built, because there is no system in the country that can be pointed to as having all of its advantages.

If the agency has to point to one BRT system as exemplary, it would be Pittsburgh's, where the buses run on paved-over railroad track beds. There are no intersections and the express buses average about 45 m.p.h., said Richard Feder, director of transit planning for the Allegheny County Port Authority. City buses typically average about 12 m.p.h.

In an example more similar to the situation in the Northwest Corridor, a bus rapid transit system is being planned for a corridor in the Washington, D.C., area, that would run from Tyson's Corner, Va., to Dulles Airport, about 20 miles along Dulles Expressway.

Peter Benjamin, assistant general manager for finance and program development for the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority, said the ridership is there for rail, but in the meantime a less costly BRT service could be built over the same proposed right-of-way.

The stations that will be built for the bus rapid transit system essentially will be "reduced versions" of rail stations, he said, awaiting the day when track can be laid to extend Metro out to Dulles.

But will commuters use the buses?

"That's what a lot of people are looking at right now: Can buses really do it?" Benjamin said. "I don't think anyone can say no."

WASHINGTON: Traffic volume edges up in November

WASHINGTON -- A continuing surge in intermodal traffic produced a small traffic gain in November for U.S. carriers, whose volume had lagged behind year-earlier totals for several months, the Journal of Commerce reported.

For the four weeks ended Nov. 27, total carloads increased by 14,500 or 0.9%. For the first 11 months of the year, carload volume declined by more than 141,000 cars, or 0.7%.

November was a stellar month for intermodal, with containers jumping 8% as the annual surge in imports peaked. Some analysts believe the peak lasted longer this year because companies stocked up on excess products ahead of possible Y2K computer problems in the New Year.

Container volume increased 7.1% in the first 11 months.

Domestic intermodal traffic, reflected in trailer-on-flatcar business, continued a long decline. For the month, trailer loadings were down 2.6%, while the year-to-date decline was 1.5%.

Overall, railroad traffic increased 4.3% for the month.

The biggest carload loss was coal, which fell by more than 14,000 carloads, or 2.4%, for the month. Most of that decline was in the East, where Norfolk Southern Corp. and CSX

Transportation Inc. continue to struggle with their acquisition and division of Conrail. NS and CSX handled some 25,000 fewer cars of coal last month than the three Eastern carriers did in November 1998.

While some of the lost coal traffic is believed to have moved by barge -- and some didn't move at all as utility inventories were allowed to shrink -- the weak export coal market is believed to account for the bulk of the traffic drop.

NS actually handled 22,000 more cars of coal this November, compared with a 3,500 car overall decline at CSXT. That suggests that NS may be winning the battle for Conrail customers.

The biggest carload gain was in chemicals, which increased more than 15,000 cars, or 8.5%, from November 1998, when Union Pacific Railroad was in the midst of a service crisis.

Shipments of chemicals to paper plants also remained strong.

Elsewhere, "It looks like grain is starting to level off after having been a fairly significant piece of the pie," said James Higgins, a rail analyst at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corp.

November grain loadings were 1.2% higher than a year earlier. Higgins pointed out that the harvest is completed and that exports are not very strong. "Grain has moved because of supply-push, not demand-pull," he said.

Motor vehicles and equipment, which are up 78.6% for the year-to-date, declined 0.1% in November. The numbers again are skewed because General Motors Corp. last fall was producing cars as fast it could in an effort to recover from a crippling strike at the beginning of the model year.

Western railroads demonstrated that they have the capacity to handle significant traffic increases. Burlington Northern Santa Fe handled nearly 14,000 more cars, or 3.8%, in November, while UP was up nearly 33,000 carloads, or 8.1%, as it continued its recovery from the 1997-98 service collapse. BNSF intermodal volume increased 9.5%, and UP had a 7.5% gain.

Metallic ores and metals showed a 3.1% gain over November 1998. For the first 11 months of 1999, the category is down 8.2%, the largest decline of any commodity group.

"The strength in metals primarily reflects a rebound in the domestic steel industry as imports have fallen back slightly," James Valentine, a rail analyst at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, said in a recent note to clients.

CALIFORNIA: Flawed risk perceptions are leading human factor in railroad grade crossing crashes

LOS ANGELES -- Metrolink advises Southern Californians to use caution while driving during this winter season as most highway-rail crossing incidents occur during the months of December, January and February, the company said in a press release.

Recent railroad grade-crossing tragedies highlight the need for continued efforts to end the loss of life at intersections. The number of railroad crossing collision fatalities increased last year in California. Winter months remain the time when Southland motorists are most likely to be involved in these incidents.

Metrolink safety officials note that the stresses of the winter season and inclement weather can distract a driver from practicing common safety measures at railroad crossing intersections. The situation is complicated by the public's flawed perception of their risk of being injured or killed at railroad crossings. Unfortunately, this inattention can result in needless tragedy.

California statistics indicate that 32 collisions resulted in fatalities in 1998, ten more than in 1997. However, Metrolink's fatality incidents have declined over the last year. Metrolink has recorded one fatality this calendar year. Metrolink recorded a total of 13 fatalities in 1998 and 16 in 1997.

"We can help eliminate highway-rail collisions if we remember a few simple safety precautions and to always expect a train," David Solow, Metrolink 's Chief Executive Officer said. "Any fatality is one too many." The challenge is to change the Southern California mindset to always expect a train.

Metrolink employees work every day to eliminate deaths and injuries at crossings. Research reveals that the public does not see trains as especially dangerous or life threatening. The majority of younger respondents had never even been on a train.

The report indicated that if warning signals are flashing and no train is clearly in sight, drivers assume it has left the scene or is still far in the distance -- some people estimated trains to be 20 miles away.

"We want Southlanders to know that they should 'Always Expect a Train' at the crossing. In fact, in the US, approximately every 115 minutes a train collides with a person or a vehicle," Solow said. "A motorist is 40 times more likely to die in a collision with a train than in a collision with another motor vehicle because of the speed and power of the train compared with the vehicle -- there is no contest. The personal car fares as well in a contest with a locomotive as a soda can does when placed beneath the wheel of a car -- very little remains but a sliver of aluminum."

The ultimate goal of Metrolink, through a partnership with the rail safety organization Operation Lifesaver Inc., is to eliminate highway-rail.

For rail safety tips visit the Metrolink Web site at www.metrolinktrains.com or the Operation Lifesaver Web site at www.oli.org.

Hungary: Rail unions call for strike over 14% wage demand

BUDAPEST -- Hungary's three railway unions have called for a strike if no agreement is reached with state-owned railway company MAV Rt. on next year's wage rise, a MAV official told Dow Jones Newswires Friday.

"The unions demand a nominal wage rise of 14%, but MAV can only offer a rise of 8.5%," said the official.

The government aims to keep nominal wage growth at 8.25% next year in order to meet its annual average inflation target of between 6% and 7%.

National Bank of Hungary Governor Gyorgy Suranyi said repeatedly earlier that for the target to be met, nominal wage increases shouldn't be more than 8% to 9% next year.

"The last time the three unions called for such a concerted strike was in 1995," the MAV official added.

The unions plan to hold a nine-hour nationwide strike on Dec. 20 from 0200 GMT until 1100 GMT if no compromise is reached during the talks with MAV's management.

The strike would cause a serious revenue loss for MAV both in passenger and freight transportation.