Metrolink to Spend $338 Million on New Locomotives, but Little for Passenger Safety
According to the Los Angeles Times “engines of change” article,
Metrolink plans to spend $200 million on twenty-nine new “Tier 4”
locomotives from Electro-Motive, a Caterpillar, Inc. subsidiary. That
means each new engine will cost almost $6.9 million. Options on another
twenty new Tier 4 locomotives will push that replacement scheme to a
total of almost $338 million. Using exhaust gas re-circulation
technologies, engines on Tier 4 locomotives are designed to lower both
nitrogen oxide and particulates in their exhaust stream. Since
Metrolink will be the first passenger rail system in the country to
operate Tier 4 locomotives, both reliability and fuel economy remain in question.
As
of 2012, Metrolink had 137 Bombardier cab-cars and coaches in its
operational fleet. In 2013, Metrolink spent $263 million to replace
what it said was “substantially all” of its obsolete Bombardier
bi-level coaches. The actual purchase included a mix 137 new Hyundai-Rotem cab-cars and coaches, for an average price of $1.9 million each.
As early as 2005, Metrolink admitted
that, “fixed worktables” in Bombardier bi-level coaches “added to
injuries” in a Glendale collision that year. Of the eleven deaths in
that collision, no one knows how many died because of impact with fixed
worktables. In 2005, a Metrolink spokesperson said, "We are not going
to start ripping out the old tables tomorrow". In the 2008 Metrolink
Chatsworth collision, more than one passenger died as a result of
abdominal or thoracic impact with a fixed worktable. Despite death and
near dismemberment in Chatsworth, Metrolink never did retrofit those
coaches with safer worktables, nor did they cordon them off from
passenger use.
The
2013 purchase of 137 new Hyundai-Rotem coaches with padded, frangible
tables was supposed to solve the “killer table” problem that Metrolink
had previously swept under the rug. Despite their average of over one
million miles traveled, Metrolink did not retire all of their obsolete
Bombardier bi-level coaches. Instead, in many of their current trains,
Metrolink intersperses Bombardier coaches with incompatible
Hyundai-Rotem coaches. The Hyundai-Rotem coaches employ crash energy
management (CEM) technology, while the Bombardier coaches are inelastic
and prone to decoupling in a collision.
The
National Transportation Safety Board has not yet published its final
report regarding the February 2015 Oxnard Metrolink collision, which
took the life of Metrolink engineer Glenn Steele, and injured
twenty-eight. When it does, it is likely to find that the obsolete
Bombardier bi-level coach riding in the second position was a major
contributing factor to the decoupling and derailment of all five cars
in that train.
If Metrolink replaced “substantially all” of its obsolete Bombardier bi-level coaches, why was Metrolink passenger Marc Gerstel
riding across the Oxnard Plain in that ill-fated Metrolink train? In
the Oxnard Metrolink collision, why was he tumbled against several
“killer worktables” in a coach that should have been retired years ago?
Apparently, in Metrolink-speak, “substantially all” is not the same as
“all”. It is time for Metrolink to go public on this issue and scrap
all Bombardier bi-level coaches still remaining in their operating
fleet.
In
early 2014, Metrolink quietly began selling off their excess fleet of
Bombardier bi-level coaches with “killer worktables” still installed.
If Metrolink-surplus Bombardier bi-level coaches should experience a
collision, unsuspecting Caltrain passengers
heading to or from Silicon City (San Francisco) may soon subject
themselves to severed bodies. Did Metrolink disclose the unsafe
worktables to Caltrain prior to purchase or did both agencies ignore
their fiduciary and legal responsibilities?
In 2012, Metrolink considered Bombardier bi-level coaches with more
than one million miles of service to be functionally obsolete. If those
coaches were obsolete in Southern California, why are they acceptable
for service in Northern California? As P.T Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute".
For the whole story regarding Metrolink's passenger safety issues, please visit our website, 5thandRice.com.
By James McGillis at 03:22 PM | | Comments (0) | Link
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