$1.5 Million Allocated to Design a Railroad Grade Separation at Fifth St. & Rice Ave., Oxnard, California - 2016

 

$1.5 Million Allocated to Design a Railroad Grade Separation at Fifth St. & Rice Ave., Oxnard, California

In April 2015, I published an article regarding the March 24, 2015 Metrolink collision in Oxnard, California. That predawn collision injured thirty-three passengers and took the life of Metrolink Senior Engineer Glenn Steele. With its daily traffic count of 35,000 vehicles, the Fifth Street and Rice Avenue (Fifth & Rice) grade crossing already ranked as the deadliest in Ventura County. During my April 2015 visit to the site, I noted that the southbound Rice Ave. approach to the crossing remained as derelict as it was prior to the collision.



Since then, I have published a series of rail-safety articles, each of which mentioned specific unsafe conditions at Fifth & Rice. To be fair, Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) completed minor repairs to the traffic warning system and rebuilt a fence destroyed by the Metrolink cabcar during the collision. Now, thirteen months after the latest deadly collision at Fifth & Rice, the busy rail crossing still looks much as it has for decades.

In past articles, I have called out the UPRR, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), Rail Corridor Agency LOSSAN, Metrolink, the City of Oxnard and the Ventura County Transportation Commission (VCTC) for their sluggish response to the ongoing dangers at Fifth & Rice. Simple upgrades, such as repaving the Rice Ave. southbound approach, restriping its safety lines and adding additional pylons and street-level reflectors have not happened. Inexpensive changes of this type could militate against an accidental turn on to the UPRR tracks. It was just such a wrong turn that led to the 2015 Oxnard Metrolink collision.

According to evidence at the scene, all of the agencies listed in the previous paragraph dithered, delayed or ignored short-term fixes of the obvious deficiencies at Fifth & Rice. Meanwhile, one person made it her mission to help solve both the short-term and long-term safety issues existing there. That person is Congresswoman Julia Brownley (D-Westlake Village). Soon after the February 2015 Oxnard Metrolink collision, Brownley stepped up her communications with several agencies, including Caltrans, the CPUC and the Federal Railroad Administration.

In a March 2, 2015 letter to Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty and CPUC President Michael Picker, Brownley implored both agencies to free up some of the unallocated $42 million in federal safety grants then languishing within those agencies. On April 30, 2015, Dougherty wrote a letter to the Brownley, indicating that none of the rail grade crossings in Ventura County ranked high enough on the “priority diagnostic list” to warrant funding at this time.

In defense of CPUC actions, Dougherty sited $7.4 million in funds allocated to Ventura County in 2015. As the lead agency in the Sealed Corridor Project, Metrolink utilized those funds to upgrade warning and safety systems at three grade crossings in Simi Valley and another in Moorpark. Why Fifth & Rice, the busiest and deadliest commercial grade crossing in Ventura County received no mention or funding is a mystery of bureaucratic communications and cooperation.

In his April 30, 2015 letter to Brownley, Dougherty made the following statement: “The at-grade crossing at issue, on Rice Avenue in Oxnard, is equipped with median islands, quad gates, flashing lights, audible warning bells, and an interconnected traffic signal in addition to the required pavement markings and advance warning signage. Further improvements could be a grade separation. We will work with Ventura County to consider the State of California’s Section 190 Program as a possible funding source for this solution.”

Technically, everything that Dougherty wrote at that time is defensibly correct, but the actual conditions at that intersection are nowhere near as safe as state officials would have us believe. Here are my rebuttals, point by point:

“Median islands, quad gates, flashing lights, audible warning bells” – At the time of Dougherty’s letter, the support structure for the overhead warning lights, known as a crossbuck showed evidence of damage from an earlier traffic collision. Only after I published photos showing the perilous condition of the overhead safety equipment did the UPRR replace the entire unit.

“An interconnected traffic signal” – When a train approaches the crossing, the traffic signals on Rice Ave. turn red. The left turn signal from Fifth St. East to Rice Ave. North also turns red. When a train is present, those signals keep traffic northbound on Rice Ave. from crossing the tracks. Normally, the traffic signals approaching the tracks northbound work as intended.

“Interconnected traffic signal (cont.)” – Southbound on Rice Ave, the traffic signals do not provide adequate safety for vehicles stopping at Fifth St. The distance from the crosswalk at Fifth St. to the railroad tracks is less than fifty feet. As the major truck route to Naval Base Ventura County and the Port of Hueneme, hundreds of big rigs travel south on Rice Ave. every day. Inexperienced or unknowledgeable truck drivers often pull across the tracks and stop at the intersection, waiting there for a green light. While waiting there, the rear portion of a fifty-three foot long trailer overhangs the railroad tracks. If cross traffic prevented an idling tractor-trailer from moving forward in time, an approaching train could easily strike the trailer.

“Required pavement markings and advance warning signage” – On the southbound Rice Ave. approach, the pavement is cracked, rutted and generally worn out. Likewise, the pavement markings appear worn, cracked and faded. On approach to the tracks, there are no road reflectors of any kind, thus making a nighttime approach a disorienting experience for drivers unfamiliar with the intersection. Within a few yards of the tracks, there are two small signs reading, “Do Not Stop on Tracks”. Other than the crossbuck and the faded roadway markings, those two small signs are the only visual warnings for big rig drivers. The overhead crossbuck should include a lighted, flashing sign reading, “Big Rigs Stop Here on Red Signal”.

The cause of the February 2015 Oxnard Metrolink collision is not in dispute. Mr. Jose Sanchez-Ramirez mistook the railroad right-of-way for Fifth St. After making an errant right turn, Sanchez-Ramirez drove his work truck and utility trailer on to the railroad tracks. Eighty feet west of Rice Ave., his rig came to rest. Soon thereafter, Metrolink Train Number 102 struck the disabled truck, derailing all of the cars in the train, injuring thirty-three and ultimately causing the death of Senior Engineer Glenn Steele.

With the prevalence of faded or nonexistent roadway safety markings, it is easy to see how Sanchez-Ramirez made that mistake. Almost one year later, an unnamed agency installed one small reflective pylon near the curb, on either side of the tracks. Although intended to warn drivers not to turn on the tracks, the two pylons now appear to be the entrance to a small roadway, thus creating the opposite of the intended effect. To avoid continued confusion, especially at night, the responsible agency should immediately install multiple reflective pylons and a string of road reflectors spanning the railroad right of way.

In December 2015, President Obama signed a $305 billion highway bill, intended to keep our highway infrastructure from deteriorating even further. Within that bill was an allocation of $1.5 million designated for the initial design of a grade separation and highway overpass at Rice Ave. and Fifth St., in Oxnard, California. When no one else could, or would do anything substantial to solve the problems associated with that deadly grade crossing, Rep. Julia Brownley stepped up and secured that funding. In doing so, she created the first step toward ending the serial disaster that is the grade crossing at Fifth & Rice.

On March 29, 2016, politicians, bureaucrats and the press gathered at the Oxnard Transit Center to celebrate the $1.5 million federal grant. As several Amtrak trains whizzed by just a few yards away, representatives from the Federal Railroad Administration, Caltrans, the Ventura County Transportation Commission, the City of Oxnard and Metrolink all spoke about the need for safety improvements at Fifth & Rice. With no half-cent sales tax levy in Ventura County focused on transportation projects, none of the speakers mentioned that it might take ten years to secure funding for the $42 million grade separation and overpass. Still, the conclave and its message amounted to a small step in the right direction.

After the close of the public ceremony in Oxnard, I once again visited the dangerous intersection at Fifth St. and Rice Ave. With news cameras from several Los Angeles TV outlets rolling, a Metrolink official and I watched typical midday traffic at the grade crossing. In less than thirty minutes, a local freight train traveled north and an Amtrak train traveled south along the tracks. In the interval between the two trains, at least one big rig stopped for the southbound signal at Rice Ave. For more than one minute, its trailer blocked the tracks.

Moments later, as the Metrolink representative and I looked on, a late model Camaro approached the tracks southbound on Rice Ave. As the traffic signal changed to amber, the driver sped up to perhaps fifty-five miles per hour. After the Camaro crossed the tracks, it briefly went airborne, and then landed hard in the middle of Fifth St. From there, it continued at high speed. In my mind, I pictured that driver seeing flashing red lights at that grade crossing. Would he have skidded to a stop or tried to drive under the safety gates as they descended? In 2009, motorist Joel Anthony Arias, 20, tried to beat a train to the same crossing. Both he and his passenger died in a high-speed collision with an Amtrak train.

Several days after the ceremony, Julia Brownley continued her efforts to seek interim solutions to the safety problems at Fifth & Rice. In a letter to one of the passengers injured in the 2015 Oxnard Metrolink collision, Brownley’s staff members wrote; “Ms. Brownley has visited the site, and has been trying to get the state to address the marking issue. In fact, she spoke to CPUC President Picker about the need to improve the markings. At Ms. Brownley’s urging, CPUC sent a team to inspect the crossing. Ms. Brownley requested that our District Director accompany them during the inspection. Our District Director pointed out the deficiencies in the markings, and showed them pictures of other crossings that had new, more visible, reflective markings. We also provided those photos to President Picker. The CPUC team is preparing a report based on that inspection, and we have requested a copy.”

Now, over one year after the death of Senior Engineer Glenn Steele and the injury of dozens more, we begin to see some small steps toward increasing public safety at the deadliest grade crossing in Ventura California. When no one else could or would address rail safety at the street level, Brownley and her staff persisted in their advocacy and actions. On behalf of all who must cross the tracks at Fifth & Rice, I offer special thanks to Congresswoman Julia Brownley and her dedicated staff.

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By James McGillis at 03:26 PM | Railroad Safety | 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.

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

Railroad vs. Motorist Collisions - An Escalating Disaster in Southern California - 2015

 

Railroad vs. Motorist Collisions - An Escalating Disaster in Southern California

Early in the morning of February 24, 2015, Jose Sanchez-Ramirez, 54, mistakenly turned his Ford F-450 work truck and utility trailer onto the Union Pacific Coast Line railroad tracks near the intersection of Rice Ave. and Fifth St. in Oxnard, California. Soon after Sanchez-Ramirez abandoned his rig, Metrolink passenger train No. 102 struck his disabled work truck at a place eighty feet west of Rice Ave. A week later, Senior Metrolink Engineer Glenn Steele succumbed to injuries suffered in the collision. During the derailment of the five-car Metrolink train, twenty-nine other people onboard suffered moderate to severe injuries.

After firefighters extinguished the resulting fire, a work crew soon removed the coaches and made emergency repairs to the damaged railroad infrastructure. Almost two weeks later, when I surveyed the scene, all looked well at the Rice Ave. grade crossing. To the casual observer, there were few signs that a major rail collision had so recently occurred. Looking closer, I soon found many deficiencies in the hasty cleanup and repairs that had so recently concluded.

Along the northern border of the crash scene, the tail end of cab-control car No. 645 had whipped into a cinder block and wrought iron wall. After the cleanup, a gaping hole measuring almost one hundred feet remained where that substantial fence once stood. Immediately east of Rice Ave., a misalignment of the north-side rail was obvious to the naked eye. East of the grade crossing, where steel railroad wheels had bent the north-side rail and sliced into the roadbed, workers had reused damaged railroad ties during repairs. Despite the addition of many reinforcing clamps to that damaged rail, train traffic in the interim had loosened many of the railroad spikes intended to stabilize the roadbed. Two weeks after the accident and the completion of emergency repairs, the whole scene appeared to be less safe than it was prior to the wreck of Train No. 102.

In the Southern California press, many articles have discussed the overall safety of the Metrolink system and the Rice Ave. grade crossing in particular. Transportation studies have concluded that a $30-35 million grade separation is the only way to make the crossing safe. That would require a complex roadway overpass spanning both Fifth St. and the Union Pacific Coast Line. Like a freeway, the overpass would require ramps to transition from Fifth St. to the elevated portion of Rice Ave.

To date, voters in nineteen of fifty-eight California counties have approved additional, transportation-focused sales taxes. In 2004, the electorate in Ventura County defeated a levy of one-half percent. Despite the highway and rail carnage of the past decade, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors has steadfastly refused to allow or promote a new popular vote on a sales tax dedicated to transportation projects. Safety concerns at the Oxnard Plains rail crossings alone should be enough to engender a county ballot measure. I find myself asking, “When we need leadership, where are our leaders?”

As a result, there is insufficient funding to complete the design of a Rice Ave. grade separation, let alone building the $30-35 million project itself. Neither state nor federal transportation agencies tend to support projects unless the affected county defrays at least some of the cost. Unless voters approve an additional county sales tax levy, it may be a decade or more before construction can alleviate the menace of the Rice Ave. grade crossing to both rail passengers and vehicular traffic.

Rice Avenue is not the only dangerous rail grade crossing in Ventura County. Less than two weeks after engineer Glenn Steele lost his life on the Coast Line in Ventura County, there was a non-fatal collision of an Amtrak train and a passenger vehicle. This collision was on a rainy night at the nearby Pleasant Valley Road and Fifth St. grade crossing. Confused, the driver of a green sedan somehow came to a stop upon the diagonally crossing train track. Prior to the collision, which destroyed the sedan, the driver and a passenger were able to exit the vehicle without injury. Imagine getting stuck on the tracks in the rain and darkness. After a hurried departure from your vehicle, you and your passenger watch as an Amtrak locomotive crushes your vehicle into a mass of twisted metal. That could be scary.

On April 23, 2015, exactly two months after the collision of Train No. 102 at the Rice Ave. crossing, yet another fatal train/auto collision occurred on the Oxnard Plain. That morning, an unnamed 35-year-old male driver attempted to cross the tracks at South Las Posas Rd. and Fifth St. Remarkably similar in configuration to the Rice Ave. and Fifth St. grade crossing, the SUV driver’s southbound journey ended abruptly on the Coast Line tracks. There, an eastbound Union Pacific freight train struck the side of the SUV, rolling it multiple times along the tracks and into a dirt ditch. After using special equipment to remove the driver from the crumpled vehicle, first-responders declared him dead at the scene.

Remarkably, this latest deadly incident barely made news in Los Angeles. Both the Ventura County Star and the Los Angeles Times published online accounts that day. The following day, the Star headlined the story on its front page. Television coverage by Los Angeles TV stations was limited to news crawlers at the bottom of the screen. Was this latest deadly accident a suicide? Alternatively, was it one more distracted driver speeding south along the road that morning? In either event, the dismal state of rail-crossing safety in Ventura County requires an immediate and comprehensive review.

Phillips 66, which operates an oil refinery at Nipomo, in San Luis Obispo County, California has plans to build a railroad spur from the Union Pacific Coast Line to their facility. If San Luis Obispo County approves the Phillips 66 plan, “rolling bomb” trains of eighty-cars each will begin their journey by traversing the Los Angeles basin five times each week.

After exiting a train tunnel under Santa Susana Pass, each northbound oil train will encounter multiple grade crossings in the suburbs and fields of Ventura County. In Simi Valley alone, there are ten grade crossings. In Moorpark and neighboring Somis, there are twelve more. Between Camarillo and Oxnard, there are an additional thirteen grade crossings. Each train will carry 52,000 barrels of flammable, highly toxic Bakken crude oil in single-wall tank cars of dubious integrity and crash-worthiness.  
 
Explosions of Bakken crude oil trains have recently become an ongoing hazard to anyone nearby. Even with a new federal mandate to upgrade tank cars to double-walled, insulated designs, it will be 2020 before all 43,000 obsolete tank cars are retired from service. If nothing else, the February 24, 2015 Metrolink collision in Oxnard proved that if even one obsolete or deficient car is included in a train, it can compromise the integrity of the entire train. As seen in numerous crashes and explosions of oil trains in the past few years, derailment and decoupling of the older tank cars can wreak havoc on nearby towns.

There are thirty-five grade crossings between Simi Valley and Oxnard. If the oil trains run, there will be more than one hundred seventy-five opportunities for an oil train collision in Ventura County each week. Not counting the return trips made by empty oil trains, the Phillips 66 plan will present a minimum of 9,100 opportunities for an oil train collision in Ventura County each year. Annually, 13,520,000 barrels of oil will move past the makeshift memorial still standing at the Rice Ave. and Fifth St. in Oxnard. That is as much oil as the U.S. consumed on a daily basis within the past twenty years.

Whether any future train collision is the result of driver inattention, excessive speed, domestic terrorism or "suicide by train" is immaterial. Despite slower speeds now required of oil trains in populated areas, eventually a “rolling bomb” oil train will collide with a motor vehicle in Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara or San Luis Obispo Counties. If that happens, the ensuing fire and explosions could raise the casualty count exponentially.

After successfully negotiating the now decrepit and dysfunctional grade crossing at Fifth St. and Rice Ave., each proposed oil train will roll north, through the cities of Ventura and Santa Barbara. Only with incredibly good luck will all of those trains reach the Phillips 66 refinery in Nipomo. If only one more Ford F-450 high-centers on the tracks at Rice Ave., a $30-35 million grade separation there will look like a bargain. With both the county supervisors and electorate in Ventura County contemplating their own potential death in a flaming train wreck, I wish good luck to all in the path of this impending rail disaster.

This is Part 2 of a two-part article. To read Part 1, 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 09:52 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.

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