Train Cars to Get Safer Tables

Metrolink officials said Monday they intend to replace the tables on all commuter trains after two federal studies found that the furniture could cause serious or fatal injuries during major collisions.

The commuter-rail agency decided to replace the tables after the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the two deaths and some of the serious injuries during a 2002 Metrolink crash in Placentia likely occurred because the victims hit the edges of their tables.

In addition, a crash-test study completed in January by the Federal Railroad Administration concluded that passengers in seats with tables face “a high risk of life-threatening injury,” including “serious thoracic and abdominal injury.”

“We’ve been studying the issue since it emerged as a problem in the Placentia crash,” Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell said. “We’re hoping to improve the pliability of the tables so that they give a little.”

Each of the commuter rail system’s 155 passenger cars contains the tables, which passengers often use to support their laptop computers, play cards or eat.

Metrolink hopes to begin pulling out the tables in about six months and replace them with new models that allow more flexibility in the joints, utilizing a kind of “shock-absorber system,” Tyrrell said.

The existing tables are made of a resin wood particleboard composite. They are rigidly bolted to the floor and to the wall of the car, and do not budge. This lack of “give” in the joints, officials say, can make them dangerous to passengers in a crash.

The new tables, which are being designed by engineers, would likely be built in such a way as to blunt the force of the impact. One idea is to make the tables significantly thicker, assuming the extra mass would better absorb the impact.

The decision to replace the tables comes two weeks after Metrolink announced it was closing off the front of some of its cars in the wake of a January crash that involved two commuter trains. That accident killed 11 people and injured 180.

The seating ban applies to the first 11 seats in the front car of trains being pushed from behind by locomotives.

One of the two Metrolink trains that collided Jan. 26 in Glendale was being pushed by a locomotive. The other one was being pulled.

After the accident, some rail-safety experts said that trains pushed along the tracks are not as safe as those pulled by locomotives.

Metrolink officials said they had no evidence that the seats are any less safe than others on the trains but said they decided to take the action as a precaution until federal investigators complete their probe of the crash.

Tyrrell said it was too soon to tell whether the tables were a factor in the deaths and injuries in the Glendale crash.

Warren Flatau, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, said Metrolink is ahead of the pack in dealing with the issue of table safety. The agency is in the process of writing new regulations covering tables on commuter trains but doesn’t expect to complete them for 18 months, he said.

“While the tables we’re looking at here [are being considered] as a factor, the important thing to remember is that most people survived this horrible event,” Flatau said. “Any loss of life is unacceptable, but at the same time, we know that these events are much more survivable than your typical aviation or auto accident.”

The safety of the tables has become a key issue in several lawsuits filed by passengers injured in past Metrolink crashes.

Jennifer Kirkpatrick was sitting at the front table of a train that crashed in Burbank in 2003. Kirkpatrick, a lawyer at the time of the crash, was rendered a paraplegic and suffered severe head injuries, said her attorney, Thomas A. Kearney.

“There’s no question in my client’s mind that the table played a direct role in her spinal injury,” Kearney said. “I think it’s wonderful that they acknowledge the hazard, but it’s two accidents too late.”

Kirkpatrick’s case goes to trial in November.

Metrolink’s Tyrrell said the decision to replace the tables puts the agency in an “awkward position” in terms of such litigation.

But, she said, “we can’t be totally lawsuit-oriented. I think the public wants us to be out there exploring any avenue that’s available” to improve safety.

Roger Christensen, a board member of the Sacramento-based Train Riders Assn. of California, said the tables are a popular amenity with passengers who commute an average of 20 to 30 miles between counties.

“When people board those trains, the first things to go for are those tables,” Christensen said. The tables have “a social function, particularly in commuter rail. It’s a lure for them.”