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.

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

Mismatched Braking Systems on Metrolink Trains Presage Disaster - 2016

 

Mismatched Braking Systems on Metrolink Trains Presage Disaster

On October 1, 2015, I wrote about Southern California regional rail passenger carrier Metrolink’s decision to lease forty Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) freight locomotives. In September 2015, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) had notified Metrolink that serious safety deficiencies existed on their Hyundai-Rotem cabcars. The deficiencies involved the February 24, 2015 Oxnard Metrolink collision that injured scores of passengers and took the life of Metrolink Senior Engineer Glenn Steele.

In Oxnard, the “pilot”, a blade that rides just above track level at the front of each cabcar, had failed in a collision with the work truck. As the Metrolink cabcar swept over the truck, the pilot detached and disappeared into the wreckage. Speculation was strong that the detached pilot had contributed to the derailment of the cabcar and the several coaches riding behind it.

Information from NTSB to Metrolink and then via Dan Weikel of the L.A. Times to the public pointed to structural failure. The steel in both the pilot and its support struts was too porous to withstand the load of the Oxnard collision. In addition, welds between the struts and the pilot showed gaps or porosity that weakened the entire assembly. Confronted with an obvious public safety hazard, Metrolink made a snap decision to place a locomotive at each end of every train set.



On December 31, 2015, I rode on one of the first “double-ender” Metrolink trains traveling from Chatsworth to Los Angeles Union Station (LAUS). It was quite a sight to see a 420,000 lb. BNSF locomotive pulling a five-coach train back toward LAUS. The conductor on the train told me that both the BNSF locomotive and the Metrolink locomotive at the other end provided motive power while operating in either direction.

Citing available statistics for the weight of each locomotive and various Metrolink coaches, I wrote in October 2015, “Riding on four axles, current Metrolink diesel locomotives weigh 280,000 lb. At over 420,000 lb., the six-axle BNSF freight locomotives are fifty percent heavier. A 2015 five-car Metrolink train weighed approximately 460,000 lb. By adding a freight locomotive at one end, each "heavy iron" BNSF train set will weigh 880,000 lb., an increase of ninety-one percent.”

The sole purpose of adding the BNSF locomotives was to assure that any motor vehicle encountered on the tracks would be obliterated. Still unclear was how the braking systems on a double-ender would perform while stopping a 440-ton train. I reflected my concern by titling my October 1, 2015 article, “Metrolink Plans for Live Brake-Tests of BNSF ‘Heavy Iron’ Train-Sets on Commuter Tracks”.

At the Chatsworth Station on March 15, 2016, I discovered the answer to my questions about “heavy iron” and braking safety. The answer is that Metrolink double-ender train sets appear to be unsafe. The newly configured Metrolink train sets are a hodgepodge of engines and coaches. The BNSF freight locomotives are better suited to dynamic (engine) braking, rather than using their pneumatic braking system. Each train set also includes an ill-maintained Metrolink locomotive pushing from the rear. In normal “stop and go” usage between Metrolink stations, both locomotives rely on their pneumatic braking systems.

In between the two locomotives are the heavy, steel-sheathed Hyundai-Rotem coaches and lighter monocoque aluminum Bombardier Bi-level coaches. While both locomotives rely on pneumatic “brake blocks” similar to old-fashioned brake shoes, the Hyundai-Rotem coaches employ outboard disk brakes. Depending on their state of refurbishment, the Bombardier Bi-level coaches appear to utilize various combinations of disk brake and block brake systems.

Each locomotive and coach in any train set connects to its mates with high-pressure air hoses. When the engineer applies the pneumatic brakes, every block or disk in the system activates, creating friction and heat, thus slowing the train. With such diversity in ages and types of braking systems, each wheel-truck may receive a different level of braking power, leading to different stress and patterns of wear.

By Metrolink’s own admission, the agency does not conduct major preventative maintenance or periodic overhauls of its locomotive fleet. The agency prefers, instead, to run its locomotives until breakdown, and then conduct maintenance sufficient only to get a broken locomotive back in service. While allowing its current fleet of locomotives to self-destruct on the tracks, Metrolink is spending $338 Million in taxpayer money on new "Tier-4" locomotives. Metrolink may or may not conduct preventative maintenance on its locomotive braking systems. Since Metrolink does not publish information regarding maintenance of braking systems, no one knows.

In addition to aging and mismatched locomotives, Bombardier Bi-level coaches, are included in virtually every Metrolink train set. With over one million miles of service each, wheels with flat spots are a common problem on the Bombardier Bi-level coaches. On those coaches, some wheel-trucks include retrofits to disk brakes while others appear to utilize the older brake-block systems. With so many mismatches and deficiencies elsewhere, the relatively small disk brakes on the newer Hyundai-Rotem coaches and cabcars absorb much of the total braking load.

With all of the mismatched coaches and locomotives, the easiest way to detect brake wear on a Metrolink train is to inspect the Hyundai-Rotem brake rotors, which ride outboard of the wheels. While conducting a casual inspection of the Hyundai-Rotem brakes, I was shocked to see that every visible brake rotor displayed thermal-fatigue cracks (heat checking) radiating from the hub towards the outside edges of the rotors.

I am not a metallurgical engineer, but I have driven many vehicles that include disk brakes. The Hyundai-Rotem disk brakes are larger and feature pneumatic actuation. Otherwise, automotive disk brakes are quite similar to the Hyundai-Rotem type. After an automotive brake inspection, no competent mechanic would allow me to drive away with extensive thermal damage evident on my rotors. With the heat-induced cracks that I recently discovered on Hyundai-Rotem brake rotors, why are those damaged safety components still rolling on Metrolink coaches today? As Metrolink knows from the deadly Glendale (2005), Chatsworth (2008) and Oxnard (2015) collisions, greater attention to safety might prevent the next Metrolink rail disaster.

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By James McGillis at 11:36 PM | Railroad Safety | Comments (1) | Link

One Year After a Metrolink Engineer's Death, Agencies Largely Ignore Rail Safety at Oxnard Crash Scene - 2016

 

One Year After a Metrolink Engineer's Death, Agencies Largely Ignore Rail Safety at Oxnard Crash Scene

In the predawn hours of February 24, 2015, Metrolink Train No. 102 struck a disabled Ford F-450 work truck and trailer at the Fifth St. and Rice Ave. grade crossing in Oxnard, California. Over thirty passengers were injured and Metrolink Senior Engineer Glenn Steele later died from his injuries. After a twenty-four hour driving odyssey from Tucson, Arizona to Oxnard, Mr. Jose Sanchez-Ramirez had made a wrong turn on to the Union Pacific Coast Line tracks. After high centering his rig eighty feet from the intersection, Sanchez-Ramirez had turned on his emergency flashers and left the scene.

After the resulting fiery crash of the Metrolink train, police found Sanchez-Ramirez half a mile from the crash scene, in obvious distress. On February 22, 2016, The Ventura County District Attorney filed a misdemeanor charge of vehicular manslaughter against Jose Sanchez-Ramirez. Immediately, the Union Pacific Railroad, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), Metrolink, the LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency, Ventura County and the City of Oxnard all breathed a collective sigh of relief. With charges now filed against the truck driver, they were all “off the legal hook” for their collective negligence.

Union Pacific Railroad owns the Coast Line tracks and is responsible for safety of its railroad infrastructure. The CPUC, in conjunction with Caltrans is responsible for rail safety at grade crossings such as Fifth Street, which is also State Highway 34. Metrolink, which operated Train No. 102, is responsible for maintaining its equipment in safe condition. LOSSAN is a joint powers agency responsible for the overall safety of the second busiest rail passenger corridor in the nation. Ventura County and Oxnard are jointly responsible for maintenance of roadways that intersect with the rail corridor.

For each of the above-mentioned public entities to have remained silent and immobile for the past year is unconscionable. Yet, they all have a perfect excuse. In the case of injury accidents on the nation’s rail lines, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) becomes the lead investigative agency. On March 19, 2015, the NTSB issued a preliminary accident report regarding the Oxnard Metrolink collision. Since then, it has published no further findings.

Until the NTSB issues its final report, the responsible companies, agencies and local governments continue to eschew responsibility for the accident. In fact, each of those entities shares part of the blame for the unsafe conditions or for the faulty equipment involved. Let us look at each entity and its involvement in the collision.

Union Pacific Railroad – For an undetermined time prior to the collision, the Union Pacific Railroad had ignored a damaged steel pylon base that supported the Rice Ave. crossbuck. The crossbuck consists of overhead warning signs and flashing lights that activate when a train approaches. Loose wiring on the vehicle warning gates was visible after the crash. At the time, there were no reflective plastic safety pylons installed to warn motorists from turning on to the railroad tracks.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) – Various CPUC accounts hold over $42 million in federal funding intended for rail crossing upgrades in California. As of March 2015, the CPUC had allocated none of that money for repair of dangerous crossings such as Fifth & Rice. At the behest of Congresswoman Julia Brownley (D-26th District), the CPUC promised to investigate conditions at the Oxnard crash scene. If the CPUC has indeed studied the issue, it has published no findings on the internet.

Metrolink – The Southern California passenger rail agency has denied responsibility for the Oxnard collision. Instead, they have deflected legal responsibility while pointing to Jose Sanchez-Ramirez and his employer as the responsible parties. For their injuries on Train No. 102, Metrolink has offered passengers no compensation at all. Instead, they offered a one-month free pass for travel on the Metrolink system. If any injured passenger had accepted such a "payment in kind", would Metrolink have later used that fact to absolve itself of contingent liability? I hate to say so, but I believe that they would.

Late in 2015, the NTSB contacted Metrolink with urgent safety information. The NTSB had discovered an equipment failure on Metrolink’s Hyundai-Rotem Cabcar No. 645, which was involved in the Oxnard collision. From the sketchy reports that came from Metrolink headquarters, we can deduce that the “pilot” on Cabcar No. 645 was deficient. The pilot is a blade-like device designed to clear debris from the tracks, thus preventing derailment. Also called an “anti-climbing device”, the pilot on Cabcar No. 645 had detached during the collision with the F-450 work truck. As it disappeared under the cabcar, the detached pilot may have contributed to the catastrophic derailment and decoupling of the cabcar and the second coach in Train No. 102.

In response to the identified safety threat, Metrolink leased forty freight locomotives from Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF). Starting in late 2015, Metrolink began phasing in the use of BNSF locomotives on all of its routes. On outbound trips, a BNSF locomotive trails each train like a caboose. After reaching the end of the line, the BNSF locomotive then heads-up each Metrolink train on its return trip to Los Angeles Union Station. Using this “heavy iron” approach, a BNSF freight locomotive should be able to lift any stalled vehicle or debris off the tracks, thus preventing future derailments.

By its own admission, Metrolink no longer maintains its aging fleet of diesel locomotives. On March 11, 2016, a twenty-four year old Metrolink locomotive caught fire in Pomona, California. With the severity of the damage, it is likely that Metrolink locomotive No. 865 will never go back into service. In an ill-conceived and unsafe plan to save money, Metrolink runs its locomotives until they fail and then repairs them only as necessary to put them back into service.

The recent fire in Pomona calls into question the safety and reliability of the entire Metrolink fleet. If Metrolink no longer performs routine maintenance on its locomotives, do they still test, maintain and repair defective braking systems? Even after the derailment and decoupling of the cabcar and the second coach in Oxnard, inadequate breaking systems allowed Locomotive No. 870 to push the entirety of Train No. 102 well past the Rice Ave. grade crossing.

Finally, there is a question regarding the second coach in Train No. 102. It was a Bombardier Bi-level Coach with one million miles of service. In its final report regarding the 2005 Glendale Metrolink collision, the NTSB formally warned Metrolink. It said that the “fixed worktables” in Metrolink Bombardier Bi-level Coaches had contributed to injuries and possible deaths in that incident. After the 2008 Chatsworth Metrolink collision, the final NTSB accident report described death and near dismemberment when passenger torsos impinged upon similar fixed worktables.

Metrolink has since refurbished most of the aging Bombardier coaches in its fleet. Part of that process involves the installation of new fixed worktables, which have a thicker cross-section. Still, passenger at least maintains that derailed Coach No. 206, in which he was injured, had not been upgraded before the February 24, 2015 Oxnard Metrolink collision. That coach, along with the rest of Train No. 102 sits rusting in a Metrolink yard at Moorpark, California. Was the passenger injured by an unsafe, “killer worktable” of the type identified to Metrolink ten years prior? With a quick inspection, the passenger's assertion should be easy to prove or disprove.

By deploying BNSF freight locomotives weighing 460,000 lb., a Metrolink five-car train set now weighs approximately 880,000 lb. As an unintended consequence of this added weight, the obsolete and ill-maintained Metrolink diesel locomotives are now breaking down at an ever-increasing rate. Recently, at the Chatsworth Station, I discovered that Metrolink has secretly replaced some of its own F59PH locomotives with similar equipment provided by R&B Leasing, Inc. As my photos from that station show, Metrolink now has a BNSF locomotive at one end and an R&B locomotive at the other end of some trains. Sadly, Metrolink is becoming an outsourced passenger carrier that can no longer run trains with its own locomotives.

LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency – Managing all passenger train activity on the Coast Line, from San Diego to San Luis Obispo, LOSSAN is a de facto arm of the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA). With collocation and co-management at its headquarters in Orange, California, the agency pays little attention to Ventura County and beyond. How often does any LOSSAN agency staffer travel on its rail network to visit Fifth & Rice in Oxnard?

LOSSAN staff should make the arduous, time-consuming and oft delayed rail trip from Orange County to Ventura County. There, at the Fifth St. and Rice Ave. grade crossing they would discover gross deficiencies in safety management. Remember, it was there that Metrolink Senior Engineer Glenn Steele lost his life in February 2015. For LOSSAN staff, it is time to leave its headquarters and visit the “scene of the crime”. After the site visit, I suggest that LOSSAN make a public report about its findings.

Ventura County and City of Oxnard – The saddest agency on the Southern California transportation map is the Ventura County Transportation Commission (VCTC). With no half-cent sales tax for transportation projects, the commission can do little more than wave its hands and hope for the best. Before and after the 2015 Oxnard Metrolink collision, the agency called for action regarding safety improvements at the Fifth St. and Rice Ave. grade crossing. They informed us that it was a serial disaster, with death and dismemberment possible at any moment. What did the City of Oxnard and the County of San Buena Ventura do to mitigate safety issues at that grade crossing during the past year? You guessed it… nothing but verbiage.

The tracks in question are in Oxnard, which is in Ventura County. They are part of the Union Pacific Railroad Coast Line. The LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency manages passenger trains upon those tracks. On those same tracks, Metrolink Train No. 102 collided with Mr. Sanchez-Ramirez’s abandoned work truck. With the overlapping responsibilities of the companies and agencies listed above, it is impossible to know which entity did what and when. Among them all, here is what has happened in the past year to fix the problems existing at Fifth & Rice.

Unknown parties have replaced a concrete and wrought iron safety wall, previously destroyed by Metrolink Cabcar No. 645. The loose and ragged wiring on the grade crossing gates is no longer visible to the casual observer. Union Pacific, we assume, replaced the southbound Rice Ave. crossbuck with all new equipment, including LED warning lights and gate-arm flashers. Unknown parties have affixed two (count them, two) plastic safety pylons at the scene. Like two small candles in the night they stand, one on either side of the railroad tracks where Jose Sanchez-Ramirez made his erroneous and deadly turn. To her credit, Congresswoman Julia Brownley (D-Westlake Village) recently announced that $1.5 million in federal funds has been secured to create a preliminary design for the proposed Rice Avenue railway-highway grade crossing improvement project.

Occasionally, I visit the makeshift memorials for those who have lost their lives at Fifth & Rice in Oxnard, California. It is a place of personal disaster for many people over many years. Sometimes I feel that I am the only interested person who goes there to observe. If the staff of the legal entities responsible for the problem would jointly visit the site, what might happen? If they did, I know that they and their employers would be shamed into action.

Southern California is famous for its disastrous floods, wildfires and earthquakes. In the past fifteen years, all of those natural disasters combined have taken fewer lives than the grade crossing at Fifth St. and Rice Ave. in Oxnard. Union Pacific Railroad, California PUC, Caltrans, LOSSAN, Metrolink, City of Oxnard and Ventura County, it is well past time to act.

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By James McGillis at 12:28 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.

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By James McGillis at 11:29 PM | | 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.

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