NTSB Final Report on the 2015 Metrolink Oxnard Collision Omits Elements of "Probable Cause"

From the National Transportation Safety Board - Highway Accident Brief (Final Report), dated December 15, 2016:

“On Tuesday, February 24, 2015, in the predawn hours, Metrolink commuter train No. 102, operated by Amtrak, was en route from Oxnard, in Ventura County, California, to Los Angeles. As the train approached the South Rice Avenue grade crossing (near Oxnard) about 5:44 a.m., it collided with a 2005 Ford F450 service truck towing a two-axle utility trailer.”

Probable Cause (According to the NTSB):

“The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the Oxnard, California, crash was the truck driver mistakenly turning onto the railroad right-of-way due to acute fatigue and unfamiliarity with the area.

The NTSB does not assign fault or blame for an accident or incident (probable cause only); rather, as specified by NTSB regulation, accident/incident investigations are fact-finding proceedings with no formal issues and no adverse parties… and are not conducted for the purpose of determining the rights or liabilities of any person.”

Having studied the Oxnard Metrolink collision of February 24, 2015 since its occurrence, I felt that the conclusions of NTSB Final Report omitted key facts. After analysis and reconstruction of the events leading up to the Metrolink Oxnard, my conclusions regarding the probable causes of the accident are as follows:

1. An inattentive and sleep-deprived utility truck driver turned his rig on to the tracks, leading to the collision.
2. Prior to the collision, the train crew did not recognize "fouling" of the tracks in sufficient time to stop the train.
3. Train Number 102 contained one older coach that did not incorporate current crash energy management (CEM) systems, leading to catastrophic failure of both its couplers.
4. The highway grade crossing had experienced twenty-one prior accidents, including one in which a driver had turned on to the tracks, resulting in a train collision.

Beginning in April 2015, I published a series of blog articles that directly addressed or touched upon the February 24, 2015 Oxnard Metrolink collision. In chronological order, they are:

1.  Metrolink Oxnard Train Collision Report - April 29, 2015
2.  Deadly Crude Oil Trains Coming Soon - April 30, 2015
3.  Metrolink Train Crash, A Personal Story - June 30, 2015
4.  5th & Rice - A Deadly Railroad Crossing - July 23, 2015
5.  The Glenn Steele Memorial Overpass - July 24, 2015
6.  Metrolink to Spend $338 Million - September 2, 2015
7.  Metrolink Anti-Derailment Blade Failure - September 6, 2015
8.  BNSF Locomotives on Metrolink Trains - October 1, 2015
9.  "Google Pop Car" - Rail Safety Plan - November 18, 2015
10. Ventura County Rail Deaths Scandal - December 4, 2015
11. Agencies Ignore Rail Safety Issues - March 16, 2016
12. Metrolink Ignores Mismatched Brakes - March 25, 2016
13. Ventura County, CA - Rail Safety 2016 - April 11, 2016
14. Ventura County - Deadly Rail Collision - May 2, 2016
15. It's Time to Audit Metrolink Operations - May 15, 2016
16. Metrolink - Meager Track Maintenance - July 6, 2016

To supplement the sixteen articles listed above, I also created a website at, www.5thandRice.com. It compiles several of the articles listed above. The intent of the website is to highlight the dangers at the intersection and grade crossing at Fifth Street and Rice Avenue, Oxnard, California. That is where the deadly 2015 Metrolink collision took place.

How did I arrive at my own findings of probable cause?

First, I reviewed all official NTSB documents, including the 163 support documents released on August 29, 2016. Since the NTSB Final Report found that the utility truck driver embodied all probable causes of the Oxnard accident, I bypassed that evidence. Beyond the issues with the driver, Jose Sanchez Ramirez, I searched for other factors contributing to the actual collision.

“My Final Report” uses the NTSB Final Report as its basis. First, I stripped out most of the information regarding the driver. Then, I filled in the blanks in the NTSB Final Report, inserting relevant text from other NTSB documents. My personal notes and comments are in red typeface. My intent was to create a narrative, using only public records as my source. In reorganizing the evidence, I begin with Precrash Events, and then move on to Crash and Postcrash Events. They are as follows:

1. Truck Driver Activities (abbreviated)
2. Train Crew Activities (including student engineer interview)
3. Video Transcript (a second-by-second recreation of the collision)
4. Train Wreckage (including documentation regarding the mismatched train set)
5. Railroad and Roadway Infrastructure (including postcrash infrastructure deterioration since the 2015 collision)

Since “My Final Report” draws from resources with widely varying formats, please accept my apologies for any formatting issues. If you read the full narrative, it becomes obvious that probable cause includes more than a utility truck driver making a wrong turn in the darkness. In order to determine “probable cause”, we must evaluate other factors. In order to understand how and why this avoidable accident happened, we need to evaluate the utility truck driver, train crew actions, the mismatched train set and existing conditions at the highway grade crossing.

Email James McGillis

By James McGillis at 05:12 PM | Railroad Safety | Comments (0) | Link

Metrolink Refuses to Admit Failure of Rotem Anti-Derailment Blade - 2015

 

Metrolink Refuses to Admit Failure of Rotem Anti-Derailment Blade

Recently, both Ventura County Star and L.A. Times articles reported on Metrolink’s unexpected decision to place newly leased Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) freight engines at the head-end of all Metrolink trains. Both articles omit important safety related information. In the Star article, Moorpark City Councilman Keith Millhouse, a member of the railroad's board of directors said, “… since we don’t know what role, if any, the cab cars played, we won’t speculate on it. The only way to run the railroad and take away a potential risk, if any, until we know the answer, is to put locomotives up front.”

In February 2015, a Metrolink passenger train with a Hyundai-Rotem cab car in front derailed after hitting a Ford F-450 utility truck and trailer. Predawn, that rig became high-centered on to the tracks near the 5th St. and Rice Ave. grade crossing outside of Oxnard. After the collision, Metrolink officials were quick to declare that the state-of-the-art cars with energy absorbing crush zones, heavier construction and anti-derailing features appeared to reduce deaths and injuries in the accident.

The direct quote, at that time was: "We can safely say that the technology worked," Metrolink spokesman Jeff Lustgarten told reporters. "It minimized the impact of what (could have been) a very serious collision. It would have been much worse without it." Now, almost six months after the deadly Oxnard collision, Metrolink spokesman Jeff Lustgarten, or is it now Scott Johnson should retract those erroneous and self-serving statements. It was a "very serious collision". As a result, Sr. Engineer Glenn Steele died. There were twenty-seven injured, including some with life-changing consequences. What could be worse; if everybody died?

In the recent L.A. Times article, Keith Millhouse said, “This is an interim measure until the plow can be evaluated and beefed up if necessary. This is going to be costly for the railroad, but you can't put a price on safety.” Further, the article read, “Millhouse stressed that the temporary restrictions on the Rotem vehicles relate specifically to how the plow performed in the crash, not the larger debate over the safety of cab cars”.

With the Hyundai-Rotem anti-derailment plow, there is no “performance” issue. It is a clear-cut case of structural failure. As demonstrated by news photos taken soon after the collision, the plow, which was formerly attached to Hyundai-Rotem cab car No. 645 is nowhere in sight. As the most important piece of forensic evidence from that deadly collision, what happened to that anti-derailment plow? Is it in the custody of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)? Did contractors who cleaned up the crash site discard it along with other assorted debris? If no one saved that blade, how can Metrolink or the NTSB determine the circumstances of its detachment from the cab car?

To add insult to injury, Metrolink announced just days ago, that it will purchase up to forty-nine state-of-the-art Electro-Motive Tier 4 locomotives. The new locomotives will be replacements for its aging, unreliable and admittedly un-maintained fleet of 1990’s diesel locomotives. With not so much as a prototype of the new Electro-Motive Tier 4 locomotive available for inspection or testing, an artist’s rendering is all that we have to go on.

In the 2015 Oxnard collision, when it impinged upon a Ford F-450 utility truck and trailer, the lightweight Hyundai-Rotem anti-derailment plow experienced a catastrophic failure. Already, Electro-Motive is touting their new Tier 4 locomotive as the lightest weight (280,000 lb.) locomotive available on the market today. If lighter is better, why is Metrolink leasing up to fifty-eight of the heaviest BNSF locomotives available to head up its commuter trains? Without a prototype to test, how do we know if the anti-derailment plow installed on Metrolink’s new Tier 4 locomotives will pass the “F-450 Truck & Trailer Crash Test”?

The Electro-Motive website shows a futuristic picture of a cab-forward locomotive “design” with an anti-derailment plow attached. With its slightly bulbous nose, it looks like a bullet train from one of Governor Gerry Brown’s high-speed rail dreams. If not for the thirty-plus grade crossings on the Metrolink Ventura County Line alone, this lightweight locomotive might be a good idea.

Until necessary grade-crossing safety improvements are completed, I will expect the "heavy iron" of a BNSF freight locomotive up front on my next Metrolink Ventura County Line ride. In block letters, Metrolink should emblazon each BNSF locomotive with the words, "BNSF MEANS TONNAGE". Still we will have the uninformed or unsuspecting, such as Mr. Jose Sanchez Ramirez who's F-450 debacle led to all of this controversy. Most local commuters will slow to a stop when they see the Great BNSF Behemoth approaching their grade crossing. Suicide is still a potential factor, but with BNSF tonnage up front, most Metrolink commuters involved in a collision will probably survive and prosper, even after such an encounter.

For decades, airlines have told us what aircraft will service our flight. So too should Metrolink tell us, what is the consort of any given train. If there is a cab car up front or an obsolete, Bombardier bi-level coach anywhere in the mix, I will not board or ride that train. It is simply too dangerous.

Safety related information released by Metrolink, or its parent organization, the Southern California Regional Rail Authority (SCRRA) is so rare and nuanced, that it fosters conspiracy theories within me. Helping to cheer me up, a source close to the Metrolink investigation recently told me, “I believe the NTSB has the plow and there is no conspiracy to steal it or to foil the investigation. Metrolink will not give details, but I believe that the NTSB informed the railroad about the failure. It is amazing that they are replacing the Rotem cab cars with engines, using an ‘emergency provision’ related to safety. More to come.”

Being closed-mouthed and tight-lipped, SCRRA and Metrolink do little to create or enhance a positive image for passenger rail service in Southern California. It is time for someone or some organization to break through the “cloak of invisibility” that the SCRRA has thrown over its own proceedings. In violation of the California Open Meeting Law (Brown Act), the meeting in which the SCRRA board decided to lease the fifty-eight freight locomotives was closed to both the press and the public. The public has the right to know details regarding the lease of fifty-eight BNSF locomotives, as well as the cost, including who will be footing that bill.

Are the two interlocking passenger rail agencies (SCRRA & Metrolink) serious about competing in the Southern California commuter marketplace? If so, they should reformulate the SCRRA board to include railroad operating and safety experts, not more politicians and political appointees. Until they do, you can expect Metrolink’s operational and legal costs to skyrocket, while ridership continues its long, slow decline. SCRRA and Metrolink, it is time for transparency and reform.

Email James McGillis

By James McGillis at 11:29 PM | | Comments (0) | Link

Substandard Safety Prevails at the Fifth and Rice Railroad Grade Crossing in Oxnard, California - 2015

 

Substandard Safety Prevails at the Fifth and Rice Railroad Grade Crossing in Oxnard, California

I have lived in Ventura County, California for almost half my life. I love the place, but I know its history as a formerly remote, rural county whose patron families did not like change. In the 1950s and 1960s, their mantra was, “If we don’t build roads, no one will come”. With or without adequate roads, the people came. In 1970, the county population was 400,000. In 2013, it had more than doubled, to 840,000.

In 2004, Ventura County voters spurned a half-cent sales tax that would have been devoted to transportation projects. In 2008, county officials again ran that idea up the flagpole, only to see it shot down from every direction. Continued attempts to raise sales taxes in Ventura County was like a parody of the famous line in the movie, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. “Roads? We don’t need no stinkin roads!”

In July 2015, the Ventura County Transportation commission announced the results of their most recent poll regarding a new half cent sales tax in Ventura County, which would fund transportation improvements. Although sixty percent of respondents favored the idea, a ballot measure would require a two-thirds positive vote to succeed. If the measure appears on the 2016 ballot, we can expect a groundswell of opposition. Their likely rallying cry will be, “Taxes? We don’t need no stinkin taxes”.

In July 2015, train crash survivor Marc Gerstel and I visited the February 2015 Metrolink Oxnard collision site. First, we paid our respects at the memorial for engineer Glenn Steele, who died from injuries sustained in the collision. Then, Gerstel and I agreed that we would use my characters, Plush Kokopelli and Coney the Traffic Cone to make our visit more meaningful. Almost immediately, Plush Kokopelli jumped up on the Rice Ave. “crossbuck”, which is the generic term for the big overhead railroad warning sign. Aiming his flute down toward ground level, Plush Kokopelli pointed out a serious safety deficiency. If left unattended, the deficiency could have catastrophic consequences for motorists and train passengers at the crossing.

On the cast metal base of the crossbuck, one of four support flanges was split wide open, thus weakening the entire structure. Since the split flange faced Rice Ave., I assumed that a speeding vehicle had hit the metal base quite hard. If another vehicle were to strike the base at that vulnerable spot, the crossbuck tower-sign could collapse onto the roadway and even the railroad tracks.

Meanwhile, Coney had waited patiently while we took pictures of the damaged base of the crossbuck. By then, he could hardly contain himself. While standing by the crossbuck, Coney had made friends with a large Caltrans traffic cone, which was lying on its side, unable to right itself. After Coney got my attention, I tipped the Caltrans Coney up, so that it could stand on its own base. Since I have channeled Kokopelli and Coney for years, I could see that my Coney wanted to help Caltrans Coney once again be a productive member of the safety cone community.

Most news reports about the February 2015 Metrolink collision are incomplete. The driver of the F-450 work truck, Mr. Jose Sanchez-Ramirez was not a “recent transplant from Tucson, Arizona”. In fact, he was making his first-ever trip from Tucson to the Oxnard Plain. There, he was to deliver welding equipment to one of the local farms. The previous day, after driving from Tucson to San Diego, his original rig broke down. After waiting for delivery of a replacement truck, he headed north toward Ventura County. Somewhere along the way, he was in a minor traffic accident, which only delayed him further.

After driving all day and all night without rest, Jose Sanchez-Ramirez arrived before dawn on Rice Ave., heading south toward Fifth St. Having no GPS guidance, Sanchez-Ramirez relied on a printout of an internet map to guide him. There, exhausted and in the dark, he mistook the railroad tracks for Fifth St. and turned too soon. Eighty feet west, he stopped on the tracks, thus setting up the pre-dawn collision with Metrolink Train No. 102.

In July 2015, Marc Gerstel and I stood where Sanchez-Ramirez made his fateful turn. Beyond the crossbuck, but before the railroad tracks, I placed Caltrans Coney in his rightful place. If Caltrans Coney had been there, silently standing guard between the crossbuck and the tracks on that fateful morning, there would have been no collision. The vigilant Caltrans Coney would have warned Jose Sanchez-Ramirez against his errant turn. If that turn had not happened, Glenn Steele would be alive today and Marc Gerstel would still be an adjunct professor of dental technology at LA City College.

I found my first Coney the Traffic Cone almost a decade ago. Since then, I have collected many of the mistreated and abandoned traffic cones that I have found along the highway. Some were in good shape while others were nearly shredded. The good thing about a traffic cone is that if run over by a vehicle, more often than not, it will pop back into shape and keep on coning. If you look along the roadsides of America, eventually you will spot a Coney, standing or lying there with nothing productive to do.

If you find an abandoned Coney along the road, please pick it up. If you are in Ventura County, please carry it to the Fifth and Rice grade crossing. Once there, place it along the side of the road, between the crossbuck and the tracks. Then, drive away smiling, because you may have prevented the next Metrolink collision at Rice Ave. and Fifth St. in Oxnard, California. As Marc Gerstel, Coney, Kokopelli and I drove away from the scene; the battered and beaten Caltrans Coney proudly stood guard at the deadliest railroad crossing in Ventura County.

After visiting the collision site, Marc Gerstel gave me the latest facts regarding that intersection. “According to David Golonski, the chairperson of the LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency, this is the second busiest rail corridor in the nation. For the past twenty years, the Rice Ave. and 5th Street crossing has earned the label as the ‘deadliest crossing in Ventura County’. With a total of fourteen accidents and four deaths, it is in the ‘top-23 list’ of most dangerous crossings in California. It ranks as the third most deadly in Southern California. The proposed solution by Mr. Leahy, which is to install ‘pavement sensors that would be faster and cheaper’ than a grade separation is like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound.”

According to the office of Congresswoman Julia Brownley (D - Agoura Hills), from 2006 - 2014, the Federal Highway Administration California Division has received over $42 million in federal money intended specifically for remediation of dangerous rail crossings. According to Malcolm Dougherty, Director of Caltrans, the grade crossing at Rice and Fifth is not high enough on the statewide priority list to receive any of that funding. Despite Dougherty's statement that, "We are committed to expeditiously obligating and utilizing all federal funds for this (safety) effort", to date none of the $42 million has been obligated or spent.

If the previously allocated, yet un-utilized federal funding were to be allocated for improvements at the Fifth and Rice grade crossing, there would be sufficient funds to build and dedicate the proposed "Glenn Steele Memorial Overpass" at the site of his fatal injuries. If not, I expect the sixth extinction to be complete and the next ice age to commence before we see any mitigation of the dangers still evident at Fifth and Rice, in Oxnard, California.

This is Part 2 of a two-part article. To read Part 1, please click HERE.

To read all of our Ventura County railroad safety articles in one place, please visit 5thandRice.com.

Email James McGillis

 

By James McGillis at 11:57 AM | | Comments (0) | Link

Ventura County - Remains in the Steam Era of Transportation Infrastructure and Railroad Safety - 2015

Ventura County - Remains in the Steam Era of Transportation Infrastructure and Railroad Safety

In February 2015, the grade crossing at Rice Ave. and Fifth St. (Fifth and Rice) in Oxnard, California was the scene of yet another deadly Metrolink train collision. While reading news reports of the collision, I found myself appalled by the continued carnage at the busiest commercial intersection in Ventura County.

Beginning in April 2015, I set out to investigate the circumstances of the collision between Metrolink Train No. 102 and a Ford F-450 work truck. Since then, I have published my own preliminary findings concerning the deficiencies at the intersection and within the Metrolink trains that traverse the Oxnard Plain.

As of this writing, it has been five months since the Oxnard Metrolink collision. In the interim, politicians and transportation agency chiefs from throughout Southern California have agreed that the intersection represents an ongoing danger to motorists and train passengers alike. Most officials pointed to the 2004 election loss of a Ventura County half-cent transportation sales tax as the root of the problem.

Without matching funds from a county sales tax, neither state nor federal money will soon be forthcoming to fix safety issues at that serial-collision site. Experts and policymakers agree that only a complete grade separation, utilizing a Rice Ave. overpass will eliminate future collisions at the site. With a $35 - $40 million price tag for the grade separation, no one in authority expects any substantial safety improvements at the collision site for at least the next decade.

In early 2015, Metrolink named transportation veteran Art Leahy as its new chief executive. On June 30, 2015, L.A. Times reporter Dan Weikel interviewed Leahy regarding the important issues facing both Leahy and Metrolink. One of those issues was the grade crossing at Fifth and Rice. Weikel asked, “Is anything being done about Rice Avenue near Oxnard, where a Metrolink train collided with a pickup truck and trailer that strayed into the crossing?”

Apparently, neither Weikel nor Leahy understood that a Ford F-450 is not a lightweight pickup truck or that its attached trailer was transporting heavy welding equipment. In fact, an F-450 weighs over seven tons and can tow a trailer weighing over fifteen tons. If the F-450 rig was fully loaded, it could have weighed more than 44,000 pounds. Nor did the truck “stray into the crossing”. Instead, its driver, Jose Sanchez-Ramirez, from Tucson Arizona, had prematurely made a hard right turn onto the tracks. Eighty feet west of the intersection, his truck and trailer had halted on the tracks in a “high-centered” position.

In answering the reporter’s question, Leahy began by reiterating the usual Ventura County “tax and funding” issues. Then, Leahy displayed his ignorance of what had happened in the predawn hours on that fateful February morning. By his answer, it was obvious that Leahy had bought into the assumption that the F-450 rig was a pickup truck that had “strayed into the crossing”. With that in mind, Leahy made his pitch for modest, yet superfluous safety improvements at the deadly crossing.

Leahy stated, “I would like to look into putting sensors in the pavement. It’s cheaper and faster to do than a grade separation”. Had Leahy read the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) preliminary accident report, he would have known that sensors in the pavement would not have detected a truck and trailer stalled eighty feet from the grade crossing. Nothing that Leahy suggested would have helped prevent the February 2015 collision of Train No. 102.

If he wants to know what happened at Fifth and Rice, Leahy should conduct his own site survey. In fact, it might be instructive for Leahy to ride the Metrolink Ventura County line to Ventura one afternoon and then take Train No. 102 back to Los Angeles the next morning.  As he approaches Fifth and Rice, I hope he is not seated at a killer worktable in an obsolete bi-level Bombardier coach. If so, in the event of a collision, he would have a high risk of debilitating injuries or even death. Doubting that such a busy person as Leahy would visit a former crash site so far from his home base in Los Angeles, I decided to survey the scene again, nearly six months after the deadly collision.

Soon after I published two articles about Metrolink and rail safety in Ventura County, I met Mr. Marc Gerstel. On that dark February morning, Gerstel told me, he was a passenger on Train No. 102. According to news reports that day, "the train was traveling at 79 mph headed out of the Oxnard Transit Center". While sitting in the second coach, Gerstel heard the brakes engage in full emergency mode. As his laptop computer flew across the worktable at which he sat, he felt the collision, saw a fireball outside the window and then began to “tumble like a tennis shoe in a dryer”. People and objects were flying everywhere inside the obsolete bi-level Bombardier coach in which he rode. After he struck one or more of what Metrolink has admitted for over a decade to be “killer worktables”, Gerstel sustained both a broken neck and shattered lower vertebrae.

In early July, when I asked Marc Gerstel if he would like to visit the scene of his recent, near-death experience, he said that he was ready. Regular readers of this blog know that I have two characters that accompany me on some of my fieldwork. They are Plush Kokopelli and Coney the Traffic Cone. As Coney likes to say, “Coney is my name and safety is my game”. Plush Kokopelli says nothing, as he is mute. Once Gerstel saw my dynamic duo, he was glad to have them along. Perhaps their whimsical presence softened the hard realities that he had so recently experienced during the train collision.

After parking in a safe location, Gerstel and I agreed that we would complete our observations from the relative safety of the public sidewalk that runs alongside Rice Ave. From there, we could observe and photograph much of what truck driver Jose Sanchez-Ramirez might have seen, or not seen in the early morning darkness of February 24, 2015.

Upon arriving at the scene, my first impression was that nothing had changed since my visit three months earlier. To the east, there was a gaping hole where engineer Glenn Steele watched as his cab-control car No. 645 whipped violently around and demolished a cinder block and wrought iron wall. Railroad ties, splintered by the steel wheels of the derailed Train No. 102 still supported the railroad tracks to either side of the crossing. At the crossing, a concrete and steel platform lay between the rails. While standing on its edge, where the platform meets the sidewalk, I could feel a rumble each time a vehicle passed by. Had the impact of steel train wheels loosened that platform from its moorings?

For Marc Gerstel, going back so soon to the scene of the collision was an emotional experience. On a grassy knoll, in the shade of a tree, he found a small memorial to the engineer, Glenn Steele. Atop the memorial was a replica of a U.S. postage stamp, “Honoring Railroad Engineers of America”. In Memoriam. Glenn Steele – Metrolink’s No. 1 Locomotive Engineer, who passed away in the line of duty, March 2015. “The people knew by the whistle’s moan That the man at the throttle was Casey Jones.” – Ballad of Casey Jones. After a moment of silence, Marc Gerstel said to me, “He could have run to safety, but he stayed in the cab, riding the brakes. I believe he saved my life”. As of this writing, interested readers may make a contribution to the family of Glenn Steele at a memorial website in his honor.

Sadly, rail crossing infrastructure deficiencies and an unsafe train configuration took the life of Metrolink engineer Glenn Steele. Since the Metrolink Oxnard collision, no one in any corporation, legislative body or government agency has moved to mitigate the unsafe conditions still present at the Fifth and Rice grade crossing. In fact, since workers removed the wreckage from the tracks, nothing except the addition of a memorial to engineer Glenn Steele has changed at the collision site. To the untutored eye, Fifth and Rice looks like a typical railroad grade crossing in Ventura County. To the cognoscenti, it is a patchwork of neglect, quick fixes and glaring danger. Although the use of bailing wire is not evident at the collision site, there is plenty of exposed electrical tape keeping the warning signals alive.

Each day, officials at the City of Oxnard, Ventura County, Union Pacific Railroad, Amtrak, Metrolink and regional rail authority LOSSAN hold their collective breath, hoping that history will not repeat itself at Fifth and Rice. In their collective inaction, they play a game of Russian roulette with the thousands of vehicle occupants and train passengers that cross there each day. Bureaucratic thinking and institutional inertia rule the day. Like a yachtsman who yells, “Tonnage” as he careens closer to a smaller boat, the big iron of the railroad rules the grade crossing at Fifth and Rice. After dreaming about their own collision with a Ford F-450 at that site, do the politicians, bureaucrats and agency executives awaken to the sound of a train whistle, howling in the night? If not, perhaps they should.

This is Part 1 of a two-part article. To read Part 2, please click HERE.

To read all of our Ventura County railroad safety articles in one place, please visit 5thandRice.com.

Email James McGillis

By James McGillis at 10:48 PM | | Comments (0) | Link 

With Its Fleet of Obsolete Bi-Level Bombardier Coaches, Metrolink Continues to Ignore Passenger Safety - 2015

 

With Its Fleet of Obsolete Bi-Level Bombardier Coaches, Metrolink Continues to Ignore Passenger Safety 

On February 24, 2015, Metrolink Train No. 102 collided with and abandoned work truck and trailer at a grade crossing in Oxnard, California. Over the years, there had been multiple train collisions and many fatalities at the Rice Ave. and Fifth Street crossing. News reports at the time indicated that there were fifty people on that train. Of those aboard, twenty-eight sustained injuries, including four transported from the scene in critical condition. One of the walking wounded exited the toppled second coach under his own power, only later to discover that he had a broken neck.

Another critically injured passenger, Mr. Marc Gerstel, was a regular rider on the early Metrolink train from the Oxnard Station to Union Station in Los Angeles. An adjunct professor of dental technology, Gerstel would ride Metrolink and then catch the Red Line to Los Angeles City College. On a normal day, Gerstel could depart Oxnard at 5:39 AM, arriving in Los Angeles at 7:14 AM. Absent any traffic, a similar trip by automobile would take about the same amount of time. If attempted during morning commute time, the automobile trip might take twice as long. Only Metrolink’s speedy train service allowed Gerstel to live in Ventura County and work near Downtown Los Angeles.

In 2005, Metrolink admitted that fixed worktables in its Bombardier bi-level coaches had added to injuries in a Glendale Metrolink collision earlier that year. Although the 2005 Glendale collision resulted in eleven deaths, no one except Metrolink knows how many of those fatalities resulted from human impact with fixed worktables. In 2005, Metrolink also knew that the Bombardier bi-level coaches were prone to decoupling in a collision. In a derailment, the uncoupling of coaches can exacerbate the effects of a collision, allowing coaches to both whip around and to topple over.

In 2008, a Metrolink train collided head-on with a Union Pacific Freight train in Chatsworth, California. With twenty-five deaths, the Chatsworth collision became the deadliest in Metrolink history. Led by a diesel engine, all three of the coaches in that train were of bi-level design, manufactured by Bombardier. The collision was so violent that the Metrolink diesel engine telescoped rearward into the first coach, tearing it open and igniting a fire. At Chatsworth, the third and fourth Bombardier bi-level coaches remained upright and on the rails. Luckily, for the passengers in those two coaches, the collision happened on a curve, thus sending both engines and the first coach to the outside of the curve.

News reports at the time indicated that at least one fatality resulted from human impact with a fixed worktable. In that case, first responders discovered that the worktable nearly severed the victim’s body upon impact. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Final Accident Report stated, "The tabletops are trapezoidal in shape, approximately of uniform size and manufactured of a high-pressure laminate without any form of safety padding". Although damage to the first coach was catastrophic, "the second passenger coach from the locomotive did not sustain severe structural damage". Although the NTSB report does not state a reason for the single fatality experienced in that coach, the "dislodged or separated work-station tables" were the likely cause. If not a human body being thrust against it, what else would dislodge a worktable in an otherwise lightly damaged coach?

On Page 62 of the same Final Accident Report, NTSB sidles up to the extant dangers associated with the worktables installed in all Metrolink Bombardier bi-level coaches. The report states, "As configured, these one-piece tabletops are at abdomen height for a passenger seated at the table, thus placing that person at risk of sustaining serious abdominal injury in the event... of a collision impact. As a result of its investigation of the 2002 collision of a Metrolink commuter train... in Placentia, California, the NTSB determined that two Metrolink passengers had been fatally injured as a result of abdominal injuries resulting from impact with a workstation table". The Final Report indicated that "Existing Metrolink coaches will also be retrofitted with (crash energy management) features". To date, however, Metrolink has not retrofitted the worktables on any of its Bombardier bi-level coaches still in service. In plain English, for at least twelve years prior to the February 24, 2015 Rice Ave. collision, Metrolink knew that its Bombardier bi-level coaches contained killer tables, yet did absolutely nothing to curtail their use or to remove them from service.

With ridership plummeting and an unenviable safety record, Metrolink moved forward to spend a reported $263 million on new Hyundai-Rotem rolling stock. With enhanced Crash Energy Management (CEM) and “frangible worktables”, the Metrolink purchase included fifty-seven new cabcars and sixty bi-level coaches. Later in 2010, Metrolink purchased twenty more Hyundai-Rotem bi-level coaches of similar design. By June 2013, Metrolink claimed to have "replaced almost all of its aging rail cars".

In 2012, Metrolink published its five-year “Metrolink Fleet Plan”. Buried under the section titled “Current Metrolink Inventory”, the document discusses “Metrolink’s established benchmark in safety, upgrades and passenger comfort”. Using language so dense that I had to read it several times, Metrolink indicated that ongoing fleet replacement plans preclude upgrading the older Bombardier bi-level coaches. They cite “Guardian (Hyundai-Rotem) layout and table type for CEM benefits versus retrofitting Sentinel (Bombardier) with energy absorbing tables”. In plain English, that means that Metrolink will continue to utilize obsolete Bombardier bi-level coaches with killer worktables until their eventual replacement with new Hyundai-Rotem coaches. Since there is no currently published plan for Metrolink to purchase additional Hyundai-Rotem "Guardian" coaches, the obsolete Bombardier bi-level coaches will continue to roll for many years to come.

As stated in Metrolink’s own 2012 Metrolink Fleet Plan, coaches that have traveled over one million miles should be retired. Still, as of 2012, Metrolink was operating sixty Bombardier “trailer cars” and twenty-eight “cab cars” which averaged 1.3 million miles of service. At that time, another twenty-three Bombardier cabcars and coaches averaged 950,000 miles. By 2016, almost every Bombardier cab and coach in the Metrolink fleet will be functionally obsolete. When you consider Metrolink’s refusal to retrofit existing Bombardier bi-level coaches with safer worktables, Metrolink’s own “benchmark in safety” sounds more like “gross negligence” to me.

Under normal circumstances, Marc Gerstel rode in the third or fourth coach, facing toward the rear. Typically, the third and fourth coaches in Train No. 102 were of the newer type, manufactured by Hyundai-Rotem. After a collision, the design of the Hyundai-Rotem coupling systems should keep all coaches connected and heading in the same direction of travel. That morning, Gerstel needed to make a quick transfer to the Red Line at Union Station. Therefore, Gerstel rode facing forward on the Metrolink train, sitting at a worktable in the second coach, which was an obsolete Bombardier bi-level model.

Before sunrise on February 24, 2015, Metrolink Train No. 102 traveled across the Oxnard plain. According to the NTSB Preliminary Accident Report, it approached the Rice Ave. grade crossing at fifty-six miles per hour. Upon seeing the work truck and trailer disabled and lodged on the railroad tracks, a student engineer at the controls of the Hyundai-Rotem cabcar engaged the emergency brakes and sounded the horn.

Seated at a worktable on the right-hand side, upper level of the Bombardier bi-level coach, Gerstel heard the brakes engage. Seconds later, Gerstel felt and heard the impact of the cabcar with the work truck. Immediately, his laptop computer flew forward across the worktable. Instinctively, Gerstel reached in vain for his laptop. As his coach passed the collision site in the darkness, Gerstel saw a fireball outside the window. Hearing steel wheels riding across the concrete grade crossing, Gerstel knew that his coach was off the rails.

Although it decelerated rapidly from fifty-six miles per hour to a whipping and rotating halt, the size of the Bombardier bi-level coach created a slow-motion effect. Another passenger rode through the collision while clutching one of the vertical stanchion poles inside Gerstel’s coach. Weeks later, he described to Gerstel what he had observed. He said that all of the passengers appeared to fly vertically out of their seats. In this case, vertical was only in reference to the inside of the coach. In reality, the Bombardier bi-level coach had decoupled at both ends. As the cabcar whipped to the left, the rear end of the coach whipped forward and to the right, while simultaneously toppling on its side.

During his recuperation, Gerstel has pieced together his own personal chain of events. In May 2015, he told me, “As I reached forward to grab my laptop, I was pulled sideways out of my seat, in a backward motion. I went airborne and struck what I assume was the worktable across the aisle. When the train slammed down on its side I sustained serious injuries. I believe that I hit my original worktable and/or another object. My neck was severely fractured and my back vertebrae shattered. At impact, I blacked out... so I cannot attest to how many times I hit any of the worktables. I also had a head injury, so I must have tumbled like tennis shoes in a dryer”.

In the newer Hyundai-Rotem coaches, the edges of the worktables are five or six inches thick. During impact, their design allows them to break away from their moorings, thus cushioning the blow to any human body that may impinge upon them. In the older Bombardier bi-level coaches, the tops of the worktables are of "high pressure laminate" design. Designed in the 1970s, the worktables look like a fortified version of a kitchen table from that era. The worktables feature a single support column that is through-bolted to a plywood sub-floor. The opposite end of each tabletop is firmly attached to the interior wall of the coach. Unintentionally, Bombardier worktables will sacrifice a human body before they will accept the dishevelment of a coach.

Although his mobile telephone was permanently deformed during impact with various immovable objects in the Bombardier bi-level coach, it still functioned after the crash. With its new and interesting shape, one wonders what objects it hit as it cushioned its wearer, Mr. Marc Gerstel. Did his mobile telephone "absorb the bullet" that might otherwise have taken his life? Weeks later, during Gerstel’s long and arduous recovery, his supervisor and mentor at Los Angeles City College visited him in the hospital. After the dismembered train came to a thunderous halt, Gerstel lay crumpled, broken and unconscious. There, in an overturned, obsolete rail car filled with hazardous worktables, he awoke. Regaining consciousness just long enough to voice-text his boss, “Train wreck. Cancel class.” was all that he said.

Having embarked from Oxnard on Metrolink Train No. 102 many times before, Gerstel had observed Senior Engineer, Glenn Steele, but only from afar. With his forty-two years experience and number-one ranking on the Metrolink seniority list, Steele had his pick of any assignment within the Metrolink system. Always up for a challenge, he often chose the Ventura County Line to polish his skills. In deference to the engineer's privacy and the gravity of his task, Gerstel had never approached nor spoken to Steele.

After the accident, paramedics transported both Gerstel and Steele to the intensive care unit at Ventura County Medical Center (VCMC). For the next several days, lying injured and awake in his ICU bed at night, Gerstel often heard medical professionals attending to Steele. More than once, caregivers attending to Steele encouraged him to breathe. Twice during his stay at VCMC, Steele's heart had stopped. Four or five days after the collision, Steele was transferred to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for specialized care.

A few hours short of one week after the collision, Senior Metrolink Engineer, Mr. Glenn Steele succumbed to his injuries. According to Darren Kettle, executive director of the Ventura County Transportation Commission, instead of running to the back of the train to save himself, Steele stayed in front and apparently laid on the brakes much longer to try to protect the fifty passengers on board. As the Ventura County Star newspaper reported that day, “Four were critically injured, including Steele. Of the other three, only one remained hospitalized Tuesday, in stable condition at Ventura County Medical Center”. With a broken neck and shattered spine, that remaining patient was husband, father, teacher and friend, Mr. Marc Gerstel.

To read all of our Ventura County railroad safety articles in one place, please visit 5thandRice.com.

Email James McGillis

 

By James McGillis at 11:41 PM | | Comments (0) | Link

Ventura County Railroad Grade Crossing at Rice Ave. Becomes a Deadly, Serial Disaster - 2015

 

Ventura County Railroad Grade Crossing at Rice Ave. Becomes a Deadly, Serial Disaster

Jack Kerouac began his novel, “The Dharma Bums”, with a northbound train trip on what is now the Union Pacific Railroad’s Coast Line. Kerouac wrote, “Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara. It was a local and I intended to sleep on the beach at Santa Barbara that night and catch either another local to San Luis Obispo the next morning or the first class freight all the way to San Francisco at seven p.m. Somewhere near Camarillo where Charlie Parker’d been mad and relaxed back to normal health, a thin old little bum climbed into my gondola as we headed into a siding…”

With its fertile land and mild coastal climate, the Oxnard Plain can support up to three row crops per year. After making a turn south of Camarillo, the Coast Line railroad heads due west for several miles, and then turns north at Oxnard. From Camarillo to Oxnard, State Route 34 (known as Fifth Street in Oxnard) parallels the train tracks. As it was during Kerouac’s 1955 excursion, northbound trains still encounter grade crossings at Pleasant Valley Road, South Las Posas Road and again at East Pleasant Valley Road. Before reaching Rice Ave., there is still one more grade crossing at North Del Norte Blvd.

The Coast Line, now operated by the Union Pacific Railroad, starts in San Francisco. In his 1950’s journal entry titled “The Railroad Earth”, Jack Kerouac described milepost 0.00. “There was a little alley in San Francisco back of the Southern Pacific station at Third and Townsend in redbrick of drowsy lazy afternoons with everybody at work in offices in the air you feel the impending rush of their commuter frenzy as soon they’ll be charging en masse from Market and Sansome buildings on foot and in buses and all well-dressed through workingman Frisco…”

Just over 406 track-miles south from Kerouac’s surprisingly contemporary description of San Francisco, at Oxnard is the infamous intersection of South Rice Ave. and Fifth St. In frequency and severity of rail collisions, the grade crossing at Rice Ave. and Fifth St. is the most dangerous in Ventura County.

Although the location ranks as only the 23rd most hazardous rail crossing in California, the carnage involved with high-speed collisions at Rice Ave. makes it seem much worse. Since 2009, three separate train collisions have occurred at what is now the deadliest rail crossing in Ventura County. A small shrine near the grade crossing includes three white crosses, two of which commemorate a June 3, 2014 Amtrak/car collision that took two lives. The largest cross features a fading “RIP” for Joel Arias.

Two baseball caps left at the makeshift memorial indicate that one or both decedents were San Francisco 49er fans. A long-dead miniature Christmas tree and wreath commemorated a poignant moment for friends and family of the young men. That fateful day, Arias accelerated his black, 2004 Infinity G35 southbound towards the Rice Ave. crossing. As his vehicle approached the tracks, red lights flashed, bells sounded and the crossing arms were down. Speeding onto the tracks, Arias’ Infinity collided with the engine of the eastbound Amtrak Coast Starlight passenger train. Although no one on the Amtrak train was injured, both twenty-year-old Arias and his nineteen-year-old passenger, Chris Stevens perished upon impact with the Amtrak locomotive.

Nine months later, before sunrise on February 24, 2015, Jose Sanchez-Ramirez, 54, a first-time visitor from Tucson Arizona, approached the same location. In the dark, driving on unfamiliar roads, Sanchez-Ramirez turned his vehicle too soon. Eighty feet west of Rice Ave., his Ford F-450 utility truck and double-axle trailer came to rest, straddling the southern rail. After realizing that he had high-centered his rig, Sanchez-Ramirez turned on the emergency flashers, opened the driver-side door and vacated the scene on foot.
 
Originating from the East Ventura Metrolink Station at 5:25 AM that day, Metrolink Train No. 102 accelerated to seventy-nine miles per hour before approaching the Rice Avenue grade crossing at 5:44 AM. Southbound Metrolink trains typically feature a diesel pusher engine, several commuter coaches of various types and a cab-control car with enhanced crash protection at the front. In this case, the unoccupied pusher engine was the venerable Metrolink No. 870 and taking the lead was the newer Hyundai-Rotem cab-control car No. 645.

After a deadly collision in 2008 involving a Metrolink passenger train and a Union Pacific freight train in Chatsworth, California, Metrolink spent $263-million on a fleet of new, more crash-worthy passenger coaches. Although the cab-control car and the Hyundai-Rotem third and fourth coaches were of the new design, the second coach was an older, lighter and less crash-worthy Bombardier bi-level model. In retrospect, it seems foolish for Metrolink to create a five-car train in which the second coach is both unsafe and functionally obsolete.

Soon after Sanchez-Ramirez abandoned his rig, Train No. 102 approached the Rice Ave. crossing at fifty-six miles per hour. Senior Metrolink Engineer Glenn Steele, 62, was in the right-hand seat of the cab. Steele, of Homeland in Riverside County, had forty-two years of experience and ranked No. 1 on the Metrolink seniority list. Operating the train from the left seat was an unnamed student engineer. This was to be his final check ride prior to the student becoming a Metrolink engineer.

Survivors of a train collision often describe the events as happening in slow motion. Because of their immense size, railroad rolling stock takes time to derail, head off in different directions and then come to a rest. Still, in less than one minute the calamitous events of that February morning came to their inevitable conclusion.

Moments before the collision, the truck’s headlights and emergency flashers loomed into view of cab-control car No. 645. From there, the student engineer applied the emergency brakes. It is unknown if the student engineer stayed in his seat throughout the inevitable collision with the truck and trailer. Later reports indicated that engineer Glenn Steele stayed in his seat throughout the flaming collision. In those brief moments, he witnessed and felt the derailment, decoupling, spinning and toppling of the cab-control car.

With the train's brakes in full emergency mode for only eight seconds, cab-control car No. 645 collided with the Ford F-450 eighty feet west of the Rice Ave. grade crossing. Lighter than its diesel pusher engine to the rear, the cab-control car derailed and then rode up over the wreckage of the F-450, slicing it almost in half. Forensic evidence shows that the derailed left wheel-truck of the cab-control car hit the steel edge of the grade crossing platform, hopped into the air for several feet and then veered diagonally to the left across Rice Ave.

As Sir Isaac Newton taught us, objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Metrolink Engine No. 870, an EMD F59PH rated at 3000 horsepower, took longer to stop than the four lighter coaches that preceded it across the roadway. Although cab-control car No. 645 featured an anti-derailment device, which looks similar to a small snowplow, that lightweight blade was no match for the mass of a 14,000-pound utility truck and trailer. A photo taken after the collision shows that the anti-derailment “plow” had detached from the cab-control car and was lost in the collision.

As cab-control car No. 645 veered to the left, the obsolete Bombardier bi-level coach No. 206 behind it pushed forward, exacerbating the derailment. Just east of the Rice Ave. grade crossing, the cab-control car and the second coach fully derailed and soon decoupled. As the cab-control car veered to the left, its steel wheels ripped up wooden railroad ties, further compromising the roadbed. Meanwhile, Engine No. 870 continued decelerating at the rear of the train.

Like a highway patrol officer performing a “pit maneuver”, momentum from the second coach pivoted the cab-control car to the left. As it veered off-track and down an embankment, its crash-resistant nose dug into the bottom of a shallow depression. Because of its lightweight construction, the obsolete second coach had not withstood the extreme pressures exerted on the couplers at each end. Inertia from its previous mate pivoted the cab-control car 180-degrees, while toppling it onto its side. Coming to rest, cab-control car No. 645 lay on its right side, pointing opposite its original direction of travel.

Meanwhile, the lightweight Bombardier second coach was off the rails at both ends and decoupled from both the cab-control car and the third coach. Having expended so much kinetic energy pushing the cab-control car asunder, the second coach launched off the rails to the right, where it came to rest, on its right side, many yards away. The newer and heavier third and fourth coaches derailed, yet stayed in alignment with the tracks. In the final moments of the collision, the third coach toppled onto its left side. Although partially derailed, Engine No. 870 came to rest in an upright position.

As the nose of the cab-control car hit the dirt, Engineer Glenn Steele remained at the controls. As his lead car finished its tumultuous pirouette, the right side-window of the cab broke out and disappeared into the rubble. According to news reports, Steele suffered chest injuries in the crash. Later, a family member told the press that Steele’s heart had stopped twice in the days after the accident. One week after the collision, Glenn Steele succumbed to his injuries.

This is Part 1 of a two-part article. To read Part 2, Click Here.

To read all of our Ventura County railroad safety articles in one place, please visit 5thandRice.com.

Email James McGillis

By James McGillis at 05:37 PM | | Comments (0) | Link