[ToC]

BNSF coal trains collide in Iowa

LUCAS, Iowa -- Two coal trains collided in southern Iowa Wednesday, sending two crew members to the hospital with minor injuries and forcing Amtrak to reroute trains.

The collision happened near the Lucas and Clarke county lines, about halfway between Osceola and Chariton.

One train rear-ended the other train. It was unclear whether the second train had been parked. Burlington Northern Santa Fe spokesman Steve Forsberg said three locomotives and one coal car were off the tracks.

Forsberg also said about 3,000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled.

Burlington Northern is still investigating the cause, Forsberg said.

He said the first train's conductor and engineer, whose names were not released, were treated and released from a Lucas County hospital.

No Amtrak train was involved, but the passenger line uses the tracks.

Amtrak spokesman Kevin Johnson said the route between Chicago and Omaha was affected Wednesday. The trains have to be rerouted on Union Pacific lines, eliminating stops between Creston, Iowa, and Naperville, Ill.

As traffic remains in gridlock, Floridians voted for train

ORLANDO, Fla. -- 2000 may have been the year when Florida's motorists -- trapped in an endless sea of vehicles on the state's highways -- ran out of patience.

Sick of being stuck in traffic and tired of higher prices associated with their commutes, voters passed a controversial measure in November requiring the state to build a highspeed rail network.

Amendment One passed with 53 percent approval and 2.9 million people backing it

It was then, on Election Day, that the issue shifted from whether a rail network across Florida could help with the state's traffic woes to how the rail network will be put into place. This is a question that will dominate all transportation talk for at least the next decade.

"It's clearly the big dog of this coming year," said Gary Brosch, director of the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida.

There can be no doubt Florida's traffic snarls need untangling. Study after study exposed the depths of the problem:

• Three Florida cities -- Orlando, West Palm Beach and Jacksonville -- are among the nation's top 10 for greatest relative growth in highway travel during the past five years. The Road Information Project also reported that traffic delays have risen an average of 82 percent in the state's major urban areas during the past decade.
• Florida has five of the seven most dangerous large metropolitan areas in the nation for pedestrians, due in large part to sprawling, car-oriented streets. The Surface Transportation Policy Project said 725 pedestrians died in 1997-98 on the streets of Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Miami-Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Jacksonville and West Palm Beach-Boca Raton.
• In 1999, 146 people were killed in crashes along Interstate 95, almost twice the number who died on the road in 1994, Florida Today reported.
• The Miami-Fort Lauderdale and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater regions are among the nation's most expensive regions for commuting and other local transportation, the Surface Transportation Policy Project said. Households in Miami-Fort Lauderdale spend an average of 19 cents out of every dollar on transportation, or $6,684 annually. In the Tampa region, households spend less on average for shelter each year -- $5,761 -- than they do on transportation -- $5,864.

"Throughout Florida's urbanized areas, people have reached the point of saying, 'You know, this is out of hand,"' Brosch said.

Enter Lakeland multimillionaire C.C. "Doc" Dockery.

Although Dockery's persistence -- and $2.7 million -- put the high-speed rail amendment on the ballot, he modestly credited the voters with approving bullet trains in Florida.

"Without the need for high-speed rail, the amendment never would've passed," he said.

Now that the rail network is coming, officials need to work out the details -- and there are plenty of those to be debated.

As its critics protested before the election, the amendment is vague and incomplete. There's no guidance where the trains should go in the state, besides a phrase saying the network will "link the five largest urban areas." And nothing is said about how it will be financed, with estimates ranging from $6 billion to $22 billion.

"It doesn't have a price-tag and it didn't come with a set of instructions like the train that you put together for your kids at Christmas," said House Speaker Tom Feeney, R-Oviedo.

"We gave a blueprint, if you will," Dockery said.

"You couldn't get a detailed 36-page amendment on the ballot. So what we did was provide a visionary framework through which the Legislature could work," he said. "After all, it is their responsibility to implement this."

Dockery, in a Dec. 15 meeting with Gov. Jeb Bush, took a step in further sketching out what Florida's rail system might look like. In a draft of a legislative bill, Dockery called for the creation of a Florida High Speed Rail Authority for development, financing and construction.

The authority would require the system's operator -- determined through a bid process -- to pay an upfront franchise fee and give part of gross revenues to the authority. Dockery said it's anticipated that the operator would be required to furnish the system's trains.

Jim Hargrett, a former state senator who twice chaired the Senate Transportation Committee, said a good step in financing a rail network would be to treat it similar to aviation.

"The public owns the airport, and the private sector owns the vehicles," said Hargrett, who left Tallahassee this year because of term limits.

Also, the bill asks for the first segment to connect the Tampa Bay area with Orlando, by way of Lakeland/Winter Haven.

Hargrett, a Democrat from Tampa, agreed with the choice of where the system should begin.

"Interstate 4 is full to capacity the day we finish widening it," he said. "And west-central Florida depends on tourists getting from Disney to the beaches. That's what drives the economy of west-central Florida. 1-4 is the economic lifeline."

Passage of the high-speed rail amendment wasn't the only development in Florida this year. In June, Bush signed into law a $6 billion, 10-year transportation package, touted as the largest in state history without a tax increase.

The plan, called "Mobility 2000," focuses primarily on surface transportation and improving and enlarging roads and highways. It also accelerates construction originally scheduled to begin in 15 to 20 years to start as soon as next year.

However, only a small portion of Mobility 2000 is slated for mass transit projects, including $12.5 million to improve Orlando International Airport's transit system.

Higher train speeds draw opposition

PUYALLUP, Wash. -- Local officials say they will do whatever they can to fight a Burlington Northern and Santa Fe proposal to double the train speed limit through town.

"We're not willing to just roll over and let it happen," City Council member Ken Martin said. "It's a safety factor. We're trying to hold on."

When railroad officials proposed higher speeds on the Burlington Northern main line through Kent, Auburn, Sumner and Puyallup last year, all except Sumner raised safety concerns with the state Utilities and Transportation Commission.

The 45 to 50 trains that now pass through town are restricted to 30 mph to 40 mph. Railroad officials want to hike the limits to 60 mph for freight trains and 79 mph for passenger trains.

The Federal Railroad Administration has found signal and track improvements adequate for the higher speeds, but the state panel may order lower speeds for special safety reasons.

The commission has allowed higher train speeds through Kent, Auburn and Sumner. A ruling on Puyallup is pending, but the panel's rail safety division has found no proof that higher train speeds would increase the likelihood of derailments.

City Council member Kathy Turner said she had never seen her constituents so united on any issue.

Doug Harbaugh, owner of Puyallup Antique Mall, said higher train speeds would intensify the vibrations beneath his building 20 feet from the tracks.

"The building is 100 years old," Harbaugh said. "Freights really beat buildings up. I have cracks in my building I didn't have before."

Local officials have hired a lawyer specializing in such issues and are negotiating directly with the railroad. Burlington Northern spokesman Gus Melonas said he hopes the issue can be resolved soon.

If the negotiations fail and the state panel rules in favor of the railroad, a court battle may be considered, town officials said.

S.D. capital seeking train bypass

PIERRE, S.D. -- As the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad works to revitalize its railroad system, city officials and Chamber of Commerce representatives in Pierre have rallied behind an effort to create a bypass around the town.

Critics argue expansion would hurt railway communities such as Pierre and Brookings with increased rail traffic. Others point to environmental impacts varying from the disturbance of culturally significant sites to concerns about coal dust.

Although the bypass effort has gained local support, some people have attacked DM&E's project as a whole, and some believe a bypass is unnecessary.

Reaching a consensus may be impossible because every argument has at least two angles. A case in point would be the residents of a similar town in Nebraska.

Scottsbluff, Neb., is split down the middle by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad. In early November, a derailment caused the evacuation of parts of the town because of a hazardous spill.

Even in the wake of such an event, not all of the several residents surveyed for this story agreed that living in a train town with considerable rail traffic is an undue hardship.

"From our perspective, people here occasionally run into a train and there's an inconvenience factor there, certainly -- which is something that you just learn to live with, I guess," said Scottsbluff City Manager Rick Kuckkahn.

More than 30 trains pass through Scottsbluff each day. That number is more than five times the current rail traffic experienced in Pierre and about equal to the maximum amount of rail traffic projected with the DM&E expansion.

I don't think, at least from my perception, it's to the point of annoyance," Kuckkahn said.

Greg Fullen, a police lieutenant in Scottsbluff, has a different perception.

"These are coal trains, predominantly, and they're anywhere from 100 to 130 cars in length," Fullen said. "The delay is anywhere from five to seven minutes where they block a crossing.

"Obviously you have traffic backup and the congestion at those intersections. It's really an inconvenient type thing and it causes a bit of a problem," he said.

Traffic congestion has been cited as a concern of Pierre residents in the advent of DM&E's upgrade. The ability of emergency service and law enforcement vehicles to reach their destinations in a timely manner has also been suggested.

Fullen said the delay is not easy to deal with for emergency vehicles. However, Scottsbluff has fire stations on either side of the tracks like Pierre and dispatchers keep track of train traffic to direct emergency services most efficiently.

Train-related deaths have occurred in Scottsbluff, including pedestrians, motorists and suicides. After a young boy was killed in 1998, a railway safety committee was formed.

Eric Guard works for Union Pacific, which passes through the neighboring community of Gering. Guard said many residents are concerned with derailments because of the recent accident. However, he said relatively few derailments occur in the area.

The big problem is the noise, he said. Guard lives about 100 yards from the tracks and cannot get used to the sound of the horns blowing at crossings even though he blows the same horns as a conductor for UP.

According to Guard, DM&E uses older trains with an older horn system. He said the expansion likely will mean newer engines with louder horns.

"They're going to have to have these brand-new locomotives, and they have electronic horns that are just mind-boggling," Guard said. "You definitely will see it.

"The horns you've got now, the engineer is actually regulating with an air valve," he said of DM&E trains. "You could live with that. The new style ... it will just pierce your ears."

Fullen, who serves on the safety committee formed after the 1998 fatal accident, said the noise is a bothersome part of life in Scottsbluff for those who live near the tracks.

"That is a significant problem," Fullen said. "If you live along those tracks, you simply cannot talk to anybody and make yourself heard."

City Councilman Gordon Rock is another member of the railway safety committee, which presented a list of recommendations to the local government to mitigate safety problems. He said noise was the secondary reason for forming the committee.

He said Gering has introduced an experimental automated horn system at crossings that directs the blast at oncoming traffic only and decreases the noise impact.

"The problem is the liability factor," Rock said. "There's a federal study involved in those crossing horns, and the federal agency hasn't made a determination as to their safety."

Kuckkahn said noise and train vibrations could be a problem for Pierre residents or businesses near the tracks if DM&E starts passing more and newer trains through town.

But Kuckkahn said it is not easy to get a railroad to agree to a city's requests. Railroads answer to the federal government, which gave them the right to exist indefinitely a long time ago.

"If you look at history, trains and train tracks are a lot of the reasons cities are where they are, as with rivers," Kuckkahn said. "At one point they were liked a lot. Now they're just running through for convenience to get coal or freight somewhere else, and we live with some of those liabilities."

One consensus was reached by all the Scottsbluff residents surveyed: Pierre should push for a bypass but not count on one being built.

Two men die after Metra train hits car

CHICAGO, Ill. -- Two men were killed Tuesday night when their car was struck by a Metra train at a South Side crossing.

Metra spokesman Frank Malone said the car went around the crossing gates at the intersection of 112th and Marshfield and was hit by the commuter train. Warning lights were flashing, witnesses said.

The accident occurred on the Metra Rock Island line, Malone said. The train left the La Salle Street station downtown at 6:15 p.m., heading to Joliet. The crash occurred about 20 minutes later.

Malone said no one was injured on the train.

About 8 p.m., 300 passengers from the train boarded another train and continued to Joliet.

Malone said all the gates and the warning lights at the crossing were working properly.

Padded walls may be installed in school buses

EVANSVILLE, Ind. -- The federal government could as early as next year require padded interior walls for new school buses in an effort to reduce injuries and deaths in rollovers like the November crash that killed a 5-year-old Kentucky boy.

Safety officials say the walls may also improve passenger safety in side-impact collisions, though installing seat belts probably won't be considered.

The victim in the Nov. 30 crash in Christian County, Tyler Powers, was ejected from the vehicle. State police said that probably wouldn't have happened if the kindergartner had been wearing a seat belt.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is conducting research on padded interior sidewalls on school buses as part of a two-year study of new ways to protect passengers in crashes.

"I would think ... the most significant improvement you could have on (school) bus safety would be bringing sidewalls into some kind of compliance with requirements for head protection," said Charles Hott, the federal government's chief safety engineer for crash standards in school bus designs.

Bus design standards require padding in seats to minimize head injuries in an accident.

School bus operators were taking a wait-and-see stance on the possibility of padded sidewalls.

"At this point, it is pure speculation," said Mike Martin, executive director of the National Association for Pupil Transportation, a nonprofit group that represents private- and public sector school bus operators. "But if, in fact, adding some kind of padding around the seating compartment beyond what is currently there would make passengers safer, we would be all for it."

Most of the nation's 440,000 school buses have high padded seats that are spaced tightly together to protect passengers from the impacts of front and rear collisions.

But what is called "compartmentalization" does little to shield passengers when a bus is hit in its side or when it rolls over, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a September 1999 special report on bus crashes.

"Because many of the passengers injured in ... recent accidents were believed to have been thrown out of their compartments during the accidents and thus were unprotected, the Board believes that other means of occupant protection should be examined."

In an average year, there are 26,000 accidents involving school buses, but only 2,000 of those involve injuries. Total annual injuries in school bus accidents come to about 8,500, but most -- about 7,300 -- are minor, Hott said.

Over the past 10 years, an average of nine people died each year in school bus crashes, a number that Hott said is inflated by a few multiple-death crashes.

Hott said the school bus is one of the safest forms of transportation.

"Statistically, school buses are the safest vehicle we have on the highway," Hott said. "It is also the most regulated vehicle we have on the highway."

Lost man found after train hits empty car

SAVANNAH, Ga. -- A prayer and a hunch.

Both helped Savannah police Cpl. William Schaffer find a Statesboro man with Alzheimer's disease who spent five hours lost in west Savannah early Wednesday.

Emory Garrick's car had stalled on train tracks at the Godley Road crossing near Port Wentworth.

The 80-year-old got out before an Amtrak train crushed the car about 12:30 a.m., pushing it nearly 1,000 yards down the tracks.

"If he had been in there, he would be long gone," said Cpl. Torrance Garvin of the Savannah police traffic unit.

When Schaffer saw Garrick's demolished car, which other officers found, the Precinct 1 officer did something he often does. He prayed.

"I said a prayer that if he was out there, let me find him," he said.

Chances are the Amtrak engineer and its 200 passengers had a similar wish as they headed north. The train stopped but resumed its journey after the vehicle was found to be unoccupied.

Hitting a vehicle is a horrifying experience, said Amtrak engineer Ronald Johns, of Jacksonville, Fla., whose trains have struck trucks and automobiles. "You know that it's all over for whoever is inside the vehicle."

Perhaps all those prayers worked, Schaffer said.

After a massive search involving numerous law enforcement agencies and a Georgia State Highway Patrol helicopter, Schaffer found Garrick by simply listening to his gut and what he called 'God's small voice.'

Garrick had called his family earlier, saying his car broke down on some tracks but he didn't know where.

During the search, Savannah police communications specialist Patrick Malone talked to Garrick via cell phone. Malone could hear a train in the background.

That clue, and a hunch, made Schaffer walk north about two miles just west of Interstate 95.

Some 500 yards west of the crossing at Meinhard Road about 5 a.m., there was Garrick coatless, in shirt with suspenders, missing one shoe. 

"Initially, I had a gut feeling that he would be north," Schaffer said. "As I got closer to him, I heard something. He called out. I think all he could say was 'Hey.'

Garrick was cold, confused and couldn't walk after making the two-mile trek from where his car broke down. Schaffer radioed that he had found him and carried Garrick until officers met them.

He was reunited with his family and Wednesday night was in fair condition at Memorial Health University Medical Center.

"He basically told me he wasn't feeling well," Schaffer said. "I was just glad to find him, that he was still OK."

"One thing I didn't want to do was to find another body. I was just glad to hear him call out to me."

Driver in crash with train hadn't notified railroad

TACOMA, Wash. -- A driver moving a mobile home when it was struck by an unscheduled train Saturday night never told the railroad he would be moving the house across the tracks, a railroad spokesman said Tuesday.

Gus Melonas, a spokesman for Burlington Northern Santa Fe, said it was the driver's responsibility to notify the railroad, which would have stopped any trains until the house cleared the tracks.

It was unclear whether the driver, Jeffrey Douglas Pounder, 45, of Auburn, would have been informed that he should notify the railroad or check for unscheduled trains. A police deputy in a car was escorting the rig but was at the next intersection and did not see the collision, police spokesman Ed Troyer said.

Pounder was cited for driving under the influence. His blood-alcohol content was 0.04, well below the limit for normal drivers, but the state has a zero-tolerance policy for commercial operators.

The Portland-bound special Amtrak train was carrying 90 Seahawks fans home from Saturday's game.

When the train hit, Antony Payne, 25, of Auburn, who was standing on the house's roof, was thrown into the air. He slid into a gully, landed in a grassy field and walked away with only a scratch and bruise near his right eye.

A second man on the roof, David Higman of Seattle, slid through the debris to the ground, unhurt.

The house was demolished. The train engine was taken out of service. Most of the 90 Seahawks fans were bused to Portland.

Pacer International concludes acquisition of Rail Van

WALNUT CREEK, Cal, Pacer International, a leading non-asset-based third-party logistics company, said it concluded its acquisition of Rail Van, Inc., an Ohio-based logistics provider.

With combined pro forma revenues of $1.8 billion in 1999 and $1.4 billion for the first nine months of 2000, the combined company becomes one of North America's largest providers of intermodal marketing, truck brokerage and other freight transportation and logistics services.

"The acquisition of Rail Van will enable Pacer to provide a full portfolio of services to support the needs of manufacturers, distributors and retailers," said Donald C. Orris, Pacer's chairman and chief executive officer. "It also expands our logistics, intermodal marketing and truck brokerage businesses; upgrades systems capabilities; improves equipment control and availability; and expands our access to volumes for our North America stacktrain system."

He noted that the senior management teams of both Pacer and Rail Van will remain with the larger, combined organization.

Pacer International, a leading non-asset based North American third-party logistics company, offers a broad array of logistics and other services to facilitate the movement of freight from origin to destination. Its services include wholesale stacktrain services, retail trucking services, intermodal marketing, freight consolidation and handling, international freight-forwarding, and supply-chain management services. Pacer International is headquartered in Walnut Creek, California.