Citizens' Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line

As the stats show, trains pose a significantly greater safety hazard than any other vehicle on the road.

The reasons why are not difficult to understand:

• MTA’s light rail trains are much heavier than anything else on the road (no 225-ton motor vehicle would be allowed on the streets.  The Army’s Abrams Tank is comparatively 70 tons)
• MTA’s light rail trains can’t stop on a dime
• MTA’s light rail trains don’t have steering wheels, so they can’t turn to avert or lessen impacts
• MTA’s light rail trains have couplings at the front of the train (see below)

MTA tries to spin this fact primarily one of two ways: deceptively comparing raw data between cars and trains, and by using stats that tell nothing about the hazards street-level light rail vehicles pose to fellow motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.

1) MTA compares raw data between cars and trains.

MTA claims that significantly more people die from car accidents every day than light rail, thus “light rail is safer.” But there are millions of vehicles on the road every day, while there are only 250 Blue Line trains during a week day, and only 185 during the weekend. The amount of Blue Line trains that travel across a busy intersection in Downtown LA in an entire day (250) is equal to the number of cars in just one lane of traffic, going in just one direction, across just one intersection in just 30 mins during rush hour. Simply, there are exponentially more cars on the road, so of course there are going to be more accidents and deaths with cars, just as there is sure to be more violent deaths in the Canada (population 33,000,000) than there are in Compton (population 95,000).

How hard would you laugh at the suggestion that Compton is safer than Canada?

2) MTA uses passenger mile accident/fatality rate statistics instead of train mile accident/fatality rate statistics.

Train miles is the distance a train travels, while passenger miles is the combined distance passengers on the train have traveled.

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In the wake of the tragic Chatsworth accident, Southern California’s rail transit agencies have undergone increased scrutiny (for some inexplicable reason, the rail safety oversight body for the state, the California Public Utilities Commission, has been spared).

In so many categories, Metrolink (commuter rail) and MTA (light rail) have operated systems that even in comparison to their peers are far more deadly.

A comparison of the major commuter rail systems fatality rates from 1993 (the first full year of Metrolink operation) to 2007 (the most recent full year of Metrolink operation) from the Federal Railroad Administration Office of Safety Analysis database is below:

As mentioned in a previous post, in 2003, when USA Today compiled the American Public Transit Association statistics for light rail fatalities to compose their article, Blue Line takes a troubled route, in every category the Blue Line was the deadliest light rail system in the country. Here’s a graph that compares light rail system deaths from 1990 (the Blue Line’s first full year of operation) to 2002:

In an op-ed published in the LA Times titled “Rail Safety’s Human Error Excuse,” USC Professor Najmedin Meshkati, an internationally recognized expert in transportation system safety who testified on our behalf at the CPUC Evidentiary Hearing stated:

Are we to believe, for instance, that all crossing incidents were because of negligence when the death rate is so much higher here than almost any other place in the nation?

In the $30-40 billion dollar measure put on the ballot by MTA there is not one penny for grade separations on the Blue Line, additional grade separations on Phase 1 of the Expo Line, or Metrolink safety upgrades. The transportation measure that is intended to set the course of the MTA for the next 30 years and there is not one penny to fix the current problems.

The reality is the culture of MTA and Metrolink, which are governed by our region’s politicians, does not value lives. 

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We in the Fix Expo family have closely followed the catastrophic Metrolink accident in Chatsworth with deep pain, and we can only offer our condolences to the victims and their families.

The deceased were human beings who other human beings loved and needed.

In an op-ed published last Friday in the Daily News – which you have before you – we cautioned that solely focusing on actions of the train conductor distract us from discussing other contributing factors in the accident such as the technology and board policies, indeed our politicians rail-safety cost-benefit analysis.

For that reason we applaud Supervisor Antonovich for offering the Metrolink safety motion that will be discussed at Thursday’s MTA board meeting.

We at Fix Expo have been working on the issue of rail safety on the Expo Light Rail Line under construction in our South LA community. We have identified among our many opinions that we hold equally high concern for the safety hazard that the nearly three-dozen street-level crossings pose.

We have been fighting with you all requesting additional resources in South LA for life-saving grade separation.

To date we have received no support from any member of this board regarding even the most problematic street-level crossings on the rail line in front of 3,400-student Foshay Learning Center at Western and 2,100-student Dorsey High School.

Continue reading…

We came to you with the community organizations and you refused to change course.

We came to you with the LAUSD and you refused to change course.

We came to you with the UTLA, Parent Collaborative, and Neighborhood Councils and you refused to change course.

So I come today to bring you excerpts from the CPUC hearing testimony of an international rail safety expert – Major Russ Quimby.

Russ Quimby is THE international rail safety expert with impeccable credibility – a 1974 West Point graduate. In the 22 years he was at the National Transportation Safety Board he was the Investigator-in-Charge and/or Chairman of the Mechanical, Track, or Operations Investigation groups for all severity levels of railroad or rail-transit incidents, accidents and disasters.

He is the originator or major collaborator for over 157 NTSB adopted recommendations.

If Maj. Quimby hadn’t retired from the National Transportation Safety Board in 2007, he very likely would be the Investigator-in-Charge of the Chatsworth tragedy.

Here is what he’s said regarding the Farmdale crossing just 10 feet from Dorsey HS where over 700 students walk across the tracks in the 15 mins afterschool in surges up to 108 per min:

“[T]he proposed crossing at Farmdale Avenue…poses a higher risk of a catastrophic accident.”

“By ‘catastrophic accident,’ I mean an accident involving fatalities and/or injuries to a large number of people. As proposed, the at-grade Farmdale Avenue crossing creates the notable risk that a catastrophic accident may well occur under one of several different scenarios.”

Quimby then goes on to describe one scenario where a train hits a car and the car is lodged into the holding area where hundreds of children would be standing and/or the train derails. Another involves a car being hit by a train, rupturing the tank and fuel spraying onto children standing in the holding area. The third involves a combination of the two.

In the January LA CityBeat when saying why the Farmdale crossing must be built at street level, Supervisor Yarslavsky said, “The goal is to produce a product that your critics will come back to you and say, ‘You were right, we were wrong.’”

We fight at Fix Expo because Supervisors we don’t want to hear you say to us in 1 year, 5 years or 10 years after many have died, “The rail safety experts and community were right, we were wrong.”

We implore you Supervisors to Fix the Expo Line. Prevent tragedies. Save lives.

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Our following op-ed appeared in the September 19 Daily News: Blaming Individuals Misses The Big Picture

Despite the fact that Metrolink operates one of the deadliest commuter rail systems in America and MTA operates the deadliest light-rail system in America, our region’s rail transportation agencies continue to offer the lone-culprit theory for nearly every accident. This time it’s the train conductor; in the past it’s been the hundreds of deceased/injured motorist and pedestrian.

The blame the victim strategy distracts the public from the rail safety cost-benefit analysis that our transportation agencies continue to implement with impunity. It distracts the public from the manner in which our politicians have erroneously translated our requests for traffic relief into an unsafe commuter rail and light-rail system built on the cheap.

It may very well be true that in many rail accidents the transportation system’s user bears some responsibility. But with accident rates so much higher than their peers, it does not logically follow that the policies and the designs of our rail transport systems are not a factor.
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Blaming the victim or implying that accidents can’t be prevented takes the spotlight off inadequate policies, unsafe designs and system failures.

Continue reading for the full op-ed:

Blaming Individuals Misses The Big Picture
LA Daily News
September 19, 2008
By Damien Goodmon

In the rush to judgment in the tragic Chatsworth accident, the focus has been on the actions of the train engineer conductor, a tactic that is beneficial to our transportation agencies.

As a rail safety advocate who for the past two years has been involved in an intense political and legal battle regarding rail safety of a proposed light rail line in my South L.A. community, that line of reasoning is all too familiar.

Despite the fact that Metrolink operates one of the deadliest commuter rail systems in America and MTA operates the deadliest light-rail system in America, our region’s rail transportation agencies continue to offer the lone-culprit theory for nearly every accident. This time it’s the train conductor; in the past it’s been the hundreds of deceased/injured motorist and pedestrian.

The blame the victim strategy distracts the public from the rail safety cost-benefit analysis that our transportation agencies continue to implement with impunity. It distracts the public from the manner in which our politicians have erroneously translated our requests for traffic relief into an unsafe commuter rail and light-rail system built on the cheap.

It may very well be true that in many rail accidents the transportation system’s user bears some responsibility. But with accident rates so much higher than their peers, it does not logically follow that the policies and the designs of our rail transport systems are not a factor.

For the past two years the South L.A. group, the Citizens’ Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line, has been on the front lines of a battle with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority about rail safety. Our goal has been to secure investment in safety enhancements on the Expo Light Rail Line, which is currently under construction.

We are concerned that the line will have the same tragic consequences as MTA’s Blue Line, which at 90 deaths and 821 accidents is the deadliest light-rail line in the U.S.

In our legal proceeding before the California Public Utilities Commission, the state’s rail safety regulatory body, we’ve used the MTA and CPUC’s own reports, statistics, internal memos and e-mails to explain why the street-level Expo Line crossings will be deadly. World and nationally renowned authorities on transportation system failures, human error, rail accident causation, and car accident causation have testified on our behalf.

At each turn our broad coalition and our rail safety experts have been dismissed by the politicians on the MTA and subsidiary boards citing as their reasons: The recommendations and requests are cost-prohibitive, would cause delay, or “would violate their policy.”

Blaming the victim or implying that accidents can’t be prevented takes the spotlight off inadequate policies, unsafe designs and system failures. Whether it’s implementing more active alert systems, building new tracks so freight trains don’t operate on the same track as Metrolink, or adopting as a standard that light-rail trains be built elevated or underground in densely populated congested urban spaces, our transportation agencies can be doing so much more than they are right now.

We cannot allow the Chatsworth accident report to be shelved, the investigation mustn’t be limited to just this one accident, and we cannot accept as an explanation that the engineer conductor, was only to blame. An independent systemwide top-to-bottom critique that evaluates every policy and budget decision with the goal of creating a series of recommendations is the very least we must do to honor the memories of the victims of last week’s accident and the countless many who have been killed on our region’s tracks before them.

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By now most have heard of Friday’s terrible tragedy that occurred in Chatsworth, near the Ventura County border, as a Metrolink and freight train collided head-on. At last count 25 individuals have passed, over 60 remain in critical condition, and dozens more are wounded.

The large number of injuries has resulted in a call for healthy blood donors. For those that can give blood, please contact the UCLA Blood and Platelet Center, which is open Monday through Friday. To make an appointment call (310) 794 – 7217 extension 2.

Please keep the families and the victims in your prayers.

Damien Goodmon
Coordinator
Citizens’ Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line

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