Train’s Lineup May Have Added to Risk

The configuration of southbound Metrolink train 100, which had a locomotive pushing passenger cars from the rear rather pulling them from the front, may have contributed to the severity of Wednesday’s deadly derailment, according to transportation safety experts.

Trains pushed along the tracks generally have lighter, less sturdy passenger cars in front, which experts say have a greater chance of sustaining damage during a collision and are more likely to derail. The configuration also puts more people closer to the point of impact, placing a carful of passengers rather than an engine with the train’s crew at the front.

The train that slammed into a Jeep Cherokee outside the Glendale station Wednesday was being pushed by a 140-ton locomotive and was led by a modified passenger car, known as a cab car, that weighed 56 tons.

“There is no question you are safer when the engine is pulling the train,” said Loren Joplin, who worked as an accident and safety official for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co. in the 1970s. “For years, I have thought that using engines to push trains was going to end in a disaster. Had there been a locomotive on the front end, this would not have happened in Glendale.”

Timothy L. Smith, who chairs the California legislative board of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said union officials had been concerned about cab car safety for years.

Smith said the union had lodged formal written complaints about the issue with Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration, but nothing was done.

Not everyone, however, agrees that the placement of the train’s engine is a significant safety issue.

Whether a locomotive is in the front or the rear of a train makes little difference in a crash, said George Elsmore, program manager at the California Public Utilities Commission’s rail safety division.

Passenger cabs are reinforced to help withstand crashes, and both cabs and locomotives are outfitted with bumper-like devices meant to push cars and debris from the path of a train, “like a snow plow,” he said.

Warren Flatau, a spokesman for Federal Railroad Administration, said “the evidence is not conclusive” on whether locomotives positioned in the rear are less safe than ones pulling from the front. But, he said, “there are clearly situations where, with on-track obstructions, a heavier locomotive might” be safer.

Although few studies have addressed the issue of train configuration, the Federal Railroad Administration conducted research in 1996 on what would happen if a train headed by a cab car were involved in a head-on collision with a train pulled by a locomotive. Researchers found that if the trains were going faster than 30 miles per hour, there would be substantial damage to the cab car, with “severe injury or fatality of the vehicle occupants.”

The researchers also concluded that other types of accidents involving cab cars could have serious consequences.

“The concern with this type of train configuration is that the occupants of the relatively exposed cab car ... are vulnerable to serious injury or fatality in the event of a collision with either a road vehicle at a grade crossing or with another train,” the Federal Railroad Administration said.

The practice of pushing trains has been around since at least the 1950s and is viewed by many transportation experts as the best way to run a commuter rail system, from a logistical and practical standpoint.

In such configurations, an engineer operates the train from controls in front of the cab car, where passengers also sit. The practice helps lines move trains more quickly and efficiently.

It is also less expensive because train operators don’t have to buy additional locomotives or build turnarounds to move engines from one end of the train to the other.

In the Metrolink system, only Union Station is equipped with a turnaround system that allows train officials to move a locomotive from back to front, and the process is unwieldy and time-consuming, officials said.

Metrolink officials were unable to provide data Wednesday comparing crashes of trains being pulled with ones that occurred when trains were being pushed, but another accident along the same stretch of rail in January 2000 provided a contrast with Wednesday’s collision.

In that case, a Metrolink train with the engine in front crashed into a tractor-trailer stranded on the tracks. The train did not derail and the crew walked away with only minor injuries.

Metrolink chief executive officer David Solow said Wednesday that the two accidents weren’t necessarily comparable. In 2000, he said, the tractor-trailer was a long, horizontal mass across the track at the road intersection, but the SUV involved Wednesday was much smaller and may have been lodged on the rails.

“Most of the time, when we hit a car in a grade crossing, we win. The train has so much more weight, it either squashes the car or pushes it to the side,” Solow said.

He said it was too soon to tell whether the train’s configuration was a factor in the severity of Wednesday’s crash.

“We don’t know how the locomotive would have reacted. It could have been better; it could have been worse,” Solow said. “We just don’t know.”

Transportation consultant Tom Rubin, former chief financial officer of the county’s transit agency, said the configuration of the train was an important factor in the number of deaths and injuries in crashes like the one Wednesday.

“If you are going to hit something, you want to hit it with a locomotive. It just makes sense,” Rubin said, explaining that the engine, with its greater weight, was able to act almost as a bulldozer, clearing the track of objects in its path. He is among experts who said they would never sit in the lead car of a commuter train being pushed. “The chance of collision is small, but if a collision does happen, where you are located is exceedingly important,” Rubin said. “If you can take a safety step and it does not cost anything, why not?”

After the derailment, state and federal investigators flocked to the scene to reconstruct what happened. Police said Juan Manuel Alvarez drove onto the tracks in an aborted suicide attempt. Investigators worked throughout the day, combing the wreckage for clues.

One of the factors investigators are expected to examine is the rear placement of the locomotive.

Aside from the question of whether passenger cars should be placed at the front of trains, Wednesday’s calamity also drew attention to a long-standing problem with rail travel: the inherent risk created by train tracks intersecting with public roads.

After years of accidents that occurred when impatient drivers tried to dash over the rails or when people intent on suicide drove or walked onto the tracks deliberately, commuter rail operators have begun trying to block off crossings or build overpasses or underpasses.

During the last 10 years, railroads and transportation agencies nationwide have eliminated 41,000 road-track intersections and added lights, gates and signals to 4,000 others. As a result, accidents at crossings have been decreasing steadily.

But it costs up to $40 million to build a bridge over a rail line so that cars can’t drive on the tracks, and funds are scarce. This year, for example, the federal government has allocated just $15 million to build this type of crossing in California, said Richard Clark, head of the Rail Operations and Safety Branch of the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates rail travel in the state.

With thousands of miles of above-ground track, California has among the highest number of crossings in the nation.

The state is fifth in the nation for accidents at railroad crossings, with 577 incidents and 161 deaths over the last five years, according to the Federal Railway Administration.

Accidents caused by trespassers -- those who cross the tracks somewhere other than at a crossing -- are highest in California, with 486 severely injured or killed since 2001. Ten percent of those incidents occurred in Los Angeles County.

Railroads say they have had little success simply blocking off the crossings, because local residents want to be able to cross the tracks conveniently. But some commuter train operators have begun using sophisticated gate and signal systems to keep people away from the trains.

For example, at spots where the MTA Gold Line meets city streets in South Pasadena, special gates have been installed that block access to the intersection, said Vijay Khawani, the MTA’s director of rail operations safety. They are intended to prevent cars and pedestrians from sneaking around the gates and dashing across the street in the path of an oncoming train.

But even the best systems cannot stop someone who is determined to enter the tracks from doing so, Khawani and others said. Someone who is bent on suicide could enter the crossing area long before the gates are closed, and either sit on the tracks or drive down the line to wait. “We’ve had individuals who hide in the bushes or behind the warning devices and the gates,” Khawani said. “And then at the opportune moment when the train is a few feet away from them, they dive in front of the train.”

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Cause and effects

The trains that collided Wednesday were among 124 Metrolink trains that serve 47 stations. Service for the Ventura County and Antelope Valley lines has been disrupted.

How commutes will be affected

Shuttle buses will provide limited commuter service today and Friday on the Metrolink lines cut by the accident. Regular commuter rail service probably won’t resume until next week. Service between downtown Los Angeles and Ventura County and between Los Angeles and the Antelope Valley will be sharply reduced today and Friday. Service schedules for this weekend and early next week are expected to be announced today. See www.metrolinktrains.com.

Schedules for today and Friday:

* Southbound trains 102, 104 and 106 and northbound trains 113, 115 and 119 will continue to run between Los Angeles and Ventura County.

* Passengers boarding northbound trains at Union Station will switch to buses in Glendale and switch back to trains in Burbank to complete their journeys. The process will reverse for southbound trains.

* Trains 100, 101, 105, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 116, 117 and 118 have been canceled.

Southbound trains 202, 204, 206, 208, 212, 216 and 222 and northbound trains 201, 207, 211, 215, 217, 219 and 223 between Los Angeles and Lancaster will continue to run, using the Glendale/Burbank shuttle buses.

* Trains 200, 203, 205, 209, 210, 213, 214, 218, 220 and 221 have been canceled, as have trains in the 900 series between downtown Los Angeles and Bob Hope Airport.

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Comparison of selected commuter rail systems

City / Average weekday traffic (in thousands)

Chicago / 286.6

New York / 248.8

Boston/ 135.5

Philadelphia / 96.1

Los Angeles / 38.4

San Francisco / 27.4

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Sources: Metrolink, American Public Transportation Assn., Times reports

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Contributors

Contributing to the Times coverage of the train crash were Times staff writers Tonya Alanez, Mark Arax, Sharon Bernstein, Jia-Rui Chong, Rich Connell, Amanda Covarrubias, Cara Mia DiMassa, Susana Enriquez, Richard Fausset, Jason Felch, Scott Glover, Matea Gold, Carla Hall, Christine Hanley, Erika Hayasaki, Daniel Hernandez, Peter Y. Hong, Steve Hymon, J. Michael Kennedy, Greg Krikorian, Matt Lait, Mitchell Landsberg, Natasha Lee, Jill Leovy, Caitlin Liu, Robert J. Lopez, Eric Malnic, Patrick McGreevy, Seema Mehta, Zeke Minaya, Maloy Moore, Monte Morin, Charles Ornstein, James Peltz, David Pierson, Bob Pool, Paul Pringle, Sam Quinones, Cecilia Rasmussen, Louis Sahagun, Nicholas Shields, Jocelyn Y. Stewart, Kurt Streeter, Wendy Thermos, Veronica Torrejon, Rebecca Trounson, Andrew Wang, Dan Weikel, Erica Williams, Janet Wilson, Richard Winton, Nancy Wride and Claudia Zequeira as well as Hoy staff writer Andrea Carrion.