UTU News Digest - Monday, March 22, 1999

UTU Daily News Digest

Information of interest to operating railroad and transportation employees

Monday, March 22, 1999

NTSB still trying to determine if truck driver at fault

BOURBONNAIS, Ill. -- As an investigation into the cause of a fatal train crash here wraps up, the National Transportation Safety Board is still trying to determine if a truck driver caused the accident by trying to drive around railroad gates.

Investigators said three witnesses to the crash have given potentially conflicting statements about whether the truck was on the tracks before warning signals and crossing gates activated.

"We have not been able to completely reconcile the statements that are possibly conflicting," said NTSB spokesman Jamie Finch.

Eleven passengers were killed and more than 100 were injured when Amtrak’s City of New Orleans train crashed into the steel-laden truck here last week.

Investigators are also trying to determine if it was the crash itself, or the subsequent fire, that caused the deaths of the eleven passengers.

"For most of the fatalities, it was the crash," said Phil Frame, another NTSB spokesman. "I don’t think the fire directly was responsible as far as I know."

Meanwhile, residents of this small town gathered yesterday for a memorial service to in honor of the victims.

"In the friendly village of Bourbonnais, people that they may never have even met loved them, are praying for them and are bearing with them in our hearts their sorrow and their loss," said the Rev. Dan Boone of the College Church of the Nazarene

Kansas City Southern launches $25-million expansion at Dallas facility

EAST DALLAS -- The Missouri-based Kansas City Southern Railway Co., whose tracks help form the most direct route from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Coast, is investing $25 million to expand its Metroplex rail yards.

Dick Holdaway, an assistant vice president for KCS, said the move is intended to help the railroad handle an expected 50% increase in its traffic through Dallas-Fort Worth. He said the company is also spending $7 million to expand its intermodal rail facility in East Dallas and $18 million at its 250-acre rail yard in Wylie.

KCS, the seventh-largest railroad in the United States, also has long-term plans in place for a 250-acre business park in Wylie. The park will be adjacent to the company’s switching yard and designed specifically for its big customers, like manufacturers and other major shippers.

"We’ve always viewed the Dallas-Fort Worth area as a very prime piece for KCS," said Holdaway.

Metroplex mega-developer Ross Perot Jr. originally intended to participate in the business park, but since has bowed out, Holdaway said.

Besides its status as a major U.S. destination for inbound goods, the Metroplex is also a north-south and east-west gateway within the United States, Holdaway said.

That’s useful for KCS, which is owned by publicly held Kansas City Southern Industries.

The company has recorded dramatic growth in recent years through alliances and acquisition of other railroads. In 1998, KCS had revenue of $551.6 million.

With rail interests in Mexico and Canada, the company is becoming an increasingly important player in the trade shipped between Canada and Mexico as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Indeed, KCS is often called the Nafta Railway.

Construction at both Metroplex yards should be completed by Oct. 1, Holdaway said. At that time, KCS will start interchanging loads with Norfolk Southern Corp., a railroad that operates track throughout the northeast United States.

The two companies will exchange trains at KCS’ yard in Meridian, Miss. Those trains will then run to Shreveport, La., and into the Metroplex.

At the railroad's "classification" yard in Wylie, box cars carrying lumber, plastic pellets and other raw commodities are shipped on to other locations. Intermodal cars -- flat beds bearing ocean-going containers and semi-tractor-trailers full of consumer goods -- are shipped to East Dallas.

Assembly speaker backs LA-to-Pasadena light-rail line

LOS ANGELES -- Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, a longtime supporter of the Bus Riders Union, announced last week that he is breaking with the group and will support construction of a light rail line between downtown Los Angeles and nearby Pasadena.

At a meeting of business and government officials, Villaraigosa said that Los Angeles needs "a first-class bus system with a first-class rail system to feed it."

Villaraigosa said the Pasadena rail line is a worthwhile investment that promises good ridership and an alternative to the congested Pasadena Freeway. "That’s a corridor that is just looking for some relief," he said. "I think the Blue Line will be great in terms of that. I do support it."

The Los Angeles Democrat and potential mayoral candidate supported legislation to create the Pasadena Metro Blue Line Construction Authority to build the 13.7-mile rail line rather than the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. "I wasn’t confident the MTA was going to spend the money wisely. So, we said let’s create an authority that will."

The Pasadena agency last week approved a precariously balanced $683.7-million budget to complete construction from Union Station through Chinatown, Lincoln Heights, Highland Park, South Pasadena and Pasadena.

But the Bus Riders Union has vowed to stop the transfer of $280 million in state transportation funds and $89 million from the MTA to the project. The California Transportation Commission will be presented with the Pasadena line’s financial plan at a meeting March 29 in Sacramento.

"I don’t believe that the vast majority of that money, if any of it, is money that could otherwise go to buses," Villaraigosa said. "But I am very committed to putting some buses on the street."

Leaders of the Bus Riders Union argue that improvements to the MTA’s bus system must come before any new rail lines are built, particularly after a recent ruling that the transit agency failed to comply with court-ordered reductions in overcrowding on its buses. "We contend that Pasadena cannot go forward," said Martin Hernandez, an organizer for the Bus Riders Union. "We have a court order that just came down that buses need to be funded first."

Donald T. Bliss, a court-appointed special master, recently ordered the MTA to buy 532 new clean-fueled buses and hire more drivers and mechanics. The buses are in addition to 2,095 new vehicles MTA has pledged to buy over the next five years.

Villaraigosa said he is working with state and federal authorities to assist MTA in meeting requirements of a consent decree the agency signed with bus rider advocates.

Amtrak to use computers to identify passengers

Later this year, Amtrak conductors will be using hand-held computers to identify passengers on its high-speed Northeast Corridor trains, the company said.

Federal safety investigators last week criticized the company for failure to accurately record the number and names of passengers following a deadly train crash in the city of Bourbonnais, Ill.

Amtrak is studying laptop computers that would collect information from ticket agents and combine it with on-train ticket purchases. The system would also track passengers leaving a train and other related data.

At each stop, the data would be forwarded to Amtrak’s national operations center in Wilmington, Del., through a satellite system.

Amtrak spokesman John Wolf said the system will allow train crews to keep up-to-the-minute records on how many passengers are on board its trains.

Unlike requirements for airlines, there is no federal mandate that rail lines keep track of passengers.

Federal regulators acknowledge that keeping an accurate manifest for a train is very difficult because passengers are regularly getting on and off, buying tickets aboard the train or purchasing tickets for more than one person. There is no requirement that names be provided except on reservation-only trains or cars.

Innovations stop motorists at rail crossings

WASHINGTON -- In Connecticut, road sensors are being tested that detect when a car is caught on railroad tracks and signal a train engineer more than a mile away to apply the brake. If the engineer fails to act, the device would automatically stop the locomotive.

In Illinois, giant nets are being dropped in front of drivers when a train approaches.

And in Los Angeles, a push is under way to install signs to combat "second train phenomenon" -- a problem caused by motorists who pull around lowered gates after a train passes, unaware that a train may be coming in the opposite direction.

These and other efforts by government officials aim to stop people who refuse to stop themselves at railroad crossings -- even in the face of red-flashing lights, clanging bells, 94-decibel horns and TV ads depicting trains crushing cars like tin cans. The issue drew renewed attention in the wake of Monday night's fatal train wreck in Bourbonnais, Ill., in which Amtrak's City of New Orleans crashed into a tractor-trailer truck.

Truck driver John Stokes, 58, told investigators after the deadly accident that he did not see the flashing lights or the oncoming locomotive until he had already entered the intersection, officials said. But the train’s engineer, who was badly injured in the wreck, insisted the gates were already down when the truck entered the crossing.

One of the most promising highway-rail crossing safety measures under study, federal officials said, is a high-tech system installed last year in West Mystic, Conn.

The system includes sensors in the ground that warn the locomotive engineer -- a green light turns to yellow -- when a car is caught on the tracks. If the engineer fails to act within eight seconds, the train automatically brakes.

"It is producing the results we want," said the project manager, Stephen R. Szegedy of the Connecticut Department of Transportation, who parked his Audi on the tracks during a test last summer and watched a train stop 500 feet away. But the project has yet to be put to a real life-and-death test.

One possible barrier to expanding the system to other crossings is the $500,000-plus cost. Additionally, experts note that the system will not save a motorist trapped in the crossing when a train is only a half a mile or so away.

The Connecticut system includes so-called quad gates -- four gates instead of the usual two to make it more difficult for motorists to pull around the blockades. In this case, the additional gates block off the crossing entirely.

In Illinois, nets made out of steel cable and measuring roughly 3 feet high and 25 feet wide have been installed at three crossings between Chicago and St. Louis. The nets, held up by towers, are lowered onto the street as a train approaches.

One drawback - recently demonstrated when a truck slammed into one of the nets -- is that they can be costly to repair. Officials are still assessing the damage, but it costs $400,000 to install nets on each side of a crossing.

The nets, however, appear more promising than another federally funded rail safety project tested in Virginia -- a 6-foot-high barrier that popped up from an underground vault to block off the tracks.

The so-called friendly mobile barrier did not live up to its billing, officials say. "The barrier proved to be too stiff" to vehicles that ran into them, said a government safety expert. "It definitely stopped the vehicles but totaled them in the process."

Los Angeles’ Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates 175 trains a day through 104 grade crossings on its Blue Line -- plans to install signs to warn motorists to look both ways for trains. The signs will feature a train, and arrows that light up in the direction from which it is coming.

One other solution, safety officials say, is strictly low tech.

In North Carolina, officials have built curbs and medians up to a foot high to prevent drivers from pulling off the road or into the opposing lane to get around lowered gates.

While some drivers try to climb the raised curbs and medians, rail safety officials also installed 3-foot-high poles on the sides of the road to further deter drivers.