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Grim 10th anniversary: the 2008 Chatsworth train collision
2008 Chatsworth train collision
The Chatsworth train collision occurred at 4:22 p.m. PDT (23:22 UTC) on Friday, September 12, 2008, when a Union Pacific freight train and a Metrolink commuter train collided head-on in the Chatsworth district of Los Angeles, California. The scene of the accident was a curved section of single track on the Metrolink Ventura County Line just east of Stoney Point.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which investigated the cause of the collision, the Metrolink train ran through a red signal before entering a section of single track where the opposing freight train had been given the right of way by the train dispatcher. The NTSB faulted the Metrolink train's engineer, 46-year-old Robert M. Sanchez, for the collision, concluding that he was distracted by text messages he was sending while on duty.
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Positive train control
Positive train control (PTC) is a system of functional requirements for monitoring and controlling train movements and is a type of train protection system. Attention was focused almost immediately about the lack of PTC on equipment involved in the Chatsworth collision; Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph H. Boardman told a reporter days after the accident that PTC "would have stopped the train before there was a collision". The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member leading the investigation also said she was convinced that such a system "would have prevented this accident".
In 2008, Congress passed the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 in direct response to the accident. It required Class I Railroad mainlines with regularly scheduled intercity and commuter rail passenger service to fully implement PTC by December 31, 2015. By 2015, few railroads were anywhere close to implementing PTC and asked for an extension; the deadline was extended to December 31, 2018, with a provision extending compliance to December 31, 2020 if railroads submit plans for doing the work by December 31, 2018. The failure to implement PTC earlier was cited by the Board as a contributing factor in the 2015 Philadelphia train derailment.
Metrolink was the first commuter system to deploy the technology, and it is currently fully active on 341 miles of trackage owned by Metrolink. Regarding the other 171 miles of Metrolink track that are owned by freight lines BNSF and UPRR, the agency states as of 2017 that they are "working towards PTC interoperability".
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The Chatsworth train collision occurred at 4:22 p.m. PDT (23:22 UTC) on Friday, September 12, 2008, when a Union Pacific freight train and a Metrolink commuter train collided head-on in the Chatsworth district of Los Angeles, California. The scene of the accident was a curved section of single track on the Metrolink Ventura County Line just east of Stoney Point.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which investigated the cause of the collision, the Metrolink train ran through a red signal before entering a section of single track where the opposing freight train had been given the right of way by the train dispatcher. The NTSB faulted the Metrolink train's engineer, 46-year-old Robert M. Sanchez, for the collision, concluding that he was distracted by text messages he was sending while on duty.
....
Positive train control
Positive train control (PTC) is a system of functional requirements for monitoring and controlling train movements and is a type of train protection system. Attention was focused almost immediately about the lack of PTC on equipment involved in the Chatsworth collision; Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph H. Boardman told a reporter days after the accident that PTC "would have stopped the train before there was a collision". The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member leading the investigation also said she was convinced that such a system "would have prevented this accident".
In 2008, Congress passed the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 in direct response to the accident. It required Class I Railroad mainlines with regularly scheduled intercity and commuter rail passenger service to fully implement PTC by December 31, 2015. By 2015, few railroads were anywhere close to implementing PTC and asked for an extension; the deadline was extended to December 31, 2018, with a provision extending compliance to December 31, 2020 if railroads submit plans for doing the work by December 31, 2018. The failure to implement PTC earlier was cited by the Board as a contributing factor in the 2015 Philadelphia train derailment.
Metrolink was the first commuter system to deploy the technology, and it is currently fully active on 341 miles of trackage owned by Metrolink. Regarding the other 171 miles of Metrolink track that are owned by freight lines BNSF and UPRR, the agency states as of 2017 that they are "working towards PTC interoperability".
....
