A lot to say about Metrolink disasters

Posted September 15, 2008

Sadly, the topic addressed in Tuesday's editorial "Make the tracks safer" is one the editorial board has been forced to address three times in the past seven years. Before last week's Metrolink crash in Chatsworth, which claimed more than two-dozen lives, a rush-hour collision in 2005 between several trains and a personal automobile on the Glendale-Los Angeles municipal border killed 11 people. In a 2002 accident that eerily resembles last week's tragedy, a Metrolink train travelling through Placentia collided with a freight hauler on the same track, killing two people. The following observation from an editorial reacting to that incident resonates now: "The April 23 head-on collision between a freight train and a Metrolink commuter train that left two passengers dead underscored another unfortunate fact of railroad life in the county. Existing corridors force freight and passenger trains to share tracks."

Below are Times editorials that reacted to each Metrolink accident. Some, including the 2002 editorial and one several months after to 2005 crash, offer advice to policymakers who are addressing rail safety. Another editorial offers praise to rescue workers.

First, the editorial following the 2002 accident in Orange County:

May 5, 2002
Rail Issues Lack Easy Fixes

Some South County residents want to derail a proposal that would send high-speed trains barreling through the heart of San Clemente. The fatal Metrolink commuter train crash April 23 in Placentia is fueling a new sense of urgency for a plan that would move increasingly busy railroad tracks running through the city into a trench below street level.

The growing chorus of railroad blues might sound like a bad case of NIMBY in a county that just grounded an airport proposal. The noisy parade of passenger and freight trains rolling through the county is growing longer, though, and talk of 200-mph passenger trains racing between San Diego and San Francisco is moving into the realm of serious public policy debate.

Existing railroad tracks were laid decades before suburban sprawl blanketed the county, so there is no easy way to give frazzled commuters a ticket out of freeway gridlock, or accommodate freight traffic that carries goods to and from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Solutions that will eliminate bottlenecks along tracks are costly and will emerge in bits and pieces. The proposed four-mile trench through Placentia, for example, would keep automobiles and pedestrians out of harm's way by eliminating 11 dangerous grade crossings. The plan is worth implementing as funds become available; Placentia residents are assaulted by the blaring horns of more than 70 daily Metrolink, Amtrak and Burlington-Northern Santa Fe trains.

The trench is a real-world solution patterned after the $2.4-billion, 20-mile Alameda Corridor that eliminated traffic jams and noise in municipalities bisected by busy tracks linking the port with freight yards in Los Angeles.

The April 23 head-on collision between a freight train and a Metrolink commuter train that left two passengers dead underscored another unfortunate fact of railroad life in the county. Existing corridors force freight and passenger trains to share tracks. Those bottlenecks threaten to stall discussion of innovative proposals, including the California High-Speed Rail Authority's envisioned fleet of high-speed passenger trains.

One key bottleneck is in San Clemente, where northbound and southbound trains share a single set of tracks perched beneath delicate coastal bluffs. Stand at the foot of the municipal pier and it's clear that the extremely narrow railroad right of way that barely accommodates one set of tracks wasn't built to handle high-speed trains.

Safety is an issue in San Clemente, where seven people have died during the past decade while trying to walk across railroad tracks. On a recent morning, a middle-aged couple ignored the flashing red lights and crossing gates as they scrambled safely across the tracks and toward the pier. Seconds later, a northbound Amtrak Surfliner drowned out the rhythmic pounding of the surf.

The rail authority is considering two possible solutions in San Clemente. Unfortunately, neither is an easy or good one. The first would create a pair of high-speed tracks that would run along the existing seaside corridor. The second is a mammoth, five-mile railway tunnel that would run under Interstate 5.

The environmental cost of anchoring two sets of high-speed tracks near the fragile bluffs would be unacceptable. It's difficult to imagine the rail authority finding hundreds of millions of dollars necessary to finance a massive tunnel.

The rail authority's charge to move Californians into the future is laudable in a state where transportation alternatives are a necessity. However, the problems of Placentia and San Clemente show that it won't be easy to move passengers and freight in a manner that coexists with nature and civilization.

The following 2005 editorial praised rescue workers who responded to the Glendale Metrolink disaster:

January 27, 2005
A Response of Grit and Grace

The emergency response to Wednesday's commuter train wreck on the border of Glendale and Los Angeles was everything the region could have hoped for. All those earlier rehearsals, some in preparation for possible terrorist attacks, paid off.

Hundreds of firefighters, police officers, sheriff's deputies and paramedics from jurisdictions across the county raced to rescue trapped passengers and get them to hospitals. At least 11 people died in the crash and about 180 were injured, but things that could have gone wrong -- confusion over who was in charge, missed radio connections -- didn't. A command center resembling a small city rose with astonishing swiftness in a Costco parking lot, its orderliness in stark contrast to the derailed and jackknifed trains on the vast lot's edge.

Costco workers were the very first responders to the predawn tragedy on their doorstep. They rushed out in the dark and rain, toward flaming, smoking rubble. The passengers themselves remained calm in the midst of chaos, helping each other. Residents countywide can take credit for passing a 2002 measure that increased property taxes to keep trauma centers open and able to handle the influx of injured.

Californians are tested veterans of devastating earthquakes, fires and mudslides. Wednesday's man-made catastrophe may be even harder to comprehend. With one train car tossed on its side like a discarded toy and others crushed like cans of Coke, the wreckage looked like the work of a suicide bomber.

In fact, police say, it resulted from the act of a 25-year-old man, now in custody, apparently bent on suicide. He appears to have driven his Jeep Cherokee around barriers and onto the tracks, then changed his mind. He jumped out, leaving the SUV to be struck by one Metrolink train, which derailed into another coming from the opposite direction on another track.

It will be up to psychologists to discern what forces were acting on the SUV driver, and to the courts to determine what to do with him. Federal transportation safety experts will study the crash to see if barriers were adequate and whether the configuration of the Metrolink train -- the heavier locomotive was in the rear rather than the front -- contributed to the derailment. In the meantime, Californians can take some comfort in knowing that the response to this most inexplicable tragedy was carried out with grit and grace.

The following 2006 editorial discouraged state legislators from passing a bill in response to the 2005 Metrolink crash:

June 27, 2006
Way off track

ON JAN. 26, 2005, AN APPARENTLY SUICIDAL motorist parked his SUV across train tracks near Glendale, causing a horrific accident that killed 11 passengers and injured 180 others. Today, a state Senate committee is scheduled to consider a bill that its sponsors say could help avert such tragedies in the future. The committee should reject it.

A special committee on rail safety headed by Assembly Majority Leader Dario Frommer (D-Glendale) has considered the results of studies performed in the wake of the disaster and crafted a bill now before the Senate Committee on Transportation and Housing. The bill would force rail lines to close off the first 10 rows of the lead cars in so-called push trains, in which the train is pushed from behind by a locomotive rather than pulled, and end push-mode operations entirely in 2010.

The bill might soothe the grieving with a feeling that all those deaths had at least resulted in a law that would save lives in the future. More likely, however, is that the measure would be costly and result in reductions in rail service without necessarily improving safety.

A study by the Federal Railroad Administration found that push mode doesn't result in more derailments than pull mode. Supporters of a ban say the study considered only the likelihood of derailment, not the extent of injuries. Data do show more deaths in crashes involving trains in push mode, but there have been too few incidents to reach firm conclusions. A final version of the report released Monday contained computer modeling of the Glendale crash and concluded that it would have been just as deadly with a locomotive in front.

Rail operators estimate that it would cost more than $200 million to buy enough locomotives to put them at both ends of California's commuter trains, which could be necessary if push mode were banned. Other options could cost even more. For example, railroads could build "wye" tracks, which are configured like the letter Y and allow trains to reverse direction by performing something like a three-point turn. But a Metrolink spokeswoman says it would take a parcel of land the size of Dodger Stadium for a single wye, and Metrolink alone would need 21 of them. Even if the land were available, which it isn't, it would be prohibitively expensive.

The state is obliged to pay the mandated costs of its legislation, but that's a tricky proposition. It is notoriously difficult to get the Legislature to reimburse agencies and municipalities for the cost of complying with its laws. If rail services like Metrolink have to pay the cost, it may mean reductions in service.

Further, design improvements may be about to render the issue moot. Metrolink has ordered 87 new cars, scheduled to arrive by 2010, that are said to be far superior to current models, incorporating new safety features such as energy-absorbing technology and better seating configurations. If the safety difference between push and pull trains is murky now, it will get even murkier when these cars come online.

If the bill would produce measurable improvements in safety, it would be worth the price. There is no evidence that it would. To head off future crashes, the Legislature should focus on things that could actually make a difference, such as more barriers to keep cars off the tracks and more grade separations where roads and tracks meet. But the state's transportation system should not be hobbled because of one man's apparent attempt to commit suicide.