Metrolink Operation Led to Crash

The tragic Metrolink accident in Pacoima Nov. 25 resulted in a lot of finger-pointing. Somehow the operation of the Metrolink train system seems to have escaped blame.

Except when a train is being made up in a switching yard, it is traditional in any train system to have a locomotive pulling a string of cars behind it.

In this accident a locomotive was pushing three cars down the track at 77 m.p.h. When the truck driver first observed the train, he quite clearly felt the train was retreating into the distance, not approaching at a rate of 112 feet per second. Even from a quarter-mile away, that truck driver was just 10 seconds from eternity.

As a shortcut to profits, Metrolink decided not to put the locomotive at the head of the train at the end of the run.

If it had been an 18-wheeler loaded with 80,000 pounds of steel instead of that empty dump truck, a lot of passengers would have been killed in that forward car.

Instead of all the attention being directed at an unguarded crossing and the truck driver being at fault, it is time to stop this nonsense of pushing a train 112 feet per second for the sake of profits.

HARRY PACE

North Hollywood