[PRCo] Fwd: METRORAIL DISASTER

[Schneider Fred]

This gentlemen is the point I was trying to make.....
You don't just cough up a billion dollars you don't have to remove  
300 cars from service, or simply remove them and put 100,000 more  
automobiles on the highways.  That's insanity.   The gentleman from  
Idaho needs to see the roads around Washington before even suggesting  
that.   I have a close friend who lives northern Virginia who will  
tell you when you can leave town and when you cannot just based on  
traffic.   You don't even drive from here (Lancaster, PA) to  
Williamsburg Virginia through Washington anymore ... it's faster to  
drive 100 miles out of your way around the city to the west.

Ed Tennywood, by the way, lives in suburban Virginia.   He may  
actually be on the Pittsburgh Railways list ... I don't know.   I  
know that he worked for the Railways Company more than 60 years  
ago .... he also worked for Speedrail ... and the City of  
Philadelphia ... and then state of Pennsylvania ... now he is a  
consultant out in the Vienna, Virginia area and he'll retire when  
they plant him.

(I have deliberately suppressed every address below except for Ed.)

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Edson Tennyson <etennyson at cox.net>
> Date: June 24, 2009 11:20:26 PM EDT
>
> Subject: Re: METRORAIL DISASTER
>
>  JOHN  IS  RIGHT  THAT  THE  ROHR  CARS  ARE  FLIMSY  ALUMINUM  B U T
>   I believe he is wrong to demand that they be taken out of  
> service.   Forcing 18 % of all MetroRail
> commuters to commute by automobile would kill far more people than  
> leaving them on Rohr cars.
> MetroRail has a fatality rate of 0.04 per 100 million passenger- 
> miles after 33 years of Rohr car
> experience.  That is about as safe as travel ever gets, and 25  
> times safer than auto travel per
> per 100 million passenger-miles.  The highways, including buses, do  
> not have the capacity to
> move all those people.  So long as we accept highway travel with  
> one whole fatality per 100 million-
> miles, how can we logically demand  the safest form of movement be  
> curtailed. ? That is totally illogical.
>   While the death toll of nine so far is very tragic, it is not  
> very high for a two-train collision involving
> 12 cars.  I remember twice in a few years when I was younger, Long  
> Island RR had two head-on collisions
> that killed maybe 60 or 70 each time  with steel cars.   Around  
> 1972, Illinois Central had violent rear-ender that
> killed about as many, probably with AAR approved steel cars.  The  
> telescoping action of the Rohr lead car may
> have cushioned the jolt for people in the other 11 cars.   I am all  
> to familiar  with violent rail and air accidents.
>  In Pittsburgh we had a head on interurban crash when one car  
> sanded the rail too heavily and lost signal
> shunting.  An intermediate signal, by luck,  warned the other car  
> that collision was iikely, so the motorman moved
> his passengers to the rear or as close to it as they could get  
> before they hit. Both cars were destroyed.  In Milwaukee
> we lost 10 people when the company president ran a red block.  I  
> was called before the coroner's inquest.  In Harrisburg
> I lost our state aircraft, our Secretary of Transportation and a  
> State Senator along with ten other people.  The Senator was
> too heavy for a full load in a small plane in bad weather.  Our  
> pilot did not dare tell the Senator that so they both died.
> I had to call the Governor and tell him what happened.  The same  
> year of the Milwaukee disaster, Greyhound had two
> head-on collisions on wide open highways killing I forget how many.  
> In Pittsburgh about 1948, a Greyhond bus collided
> with a PCC  car killing about a dozen people, all in the bus which  
> split all open like a Rohr car.  No buses were taken out
> of service.   Total accident avoidance is impossible, but we sure  
> must try for perfection. I would abandon  the automated 	
> train operation system that makes the operator inattentive to what  
> is ahead.  Obvioulsy, the electronics failed to do its vitally
> essential job.  That happened once before, but that time the  
> motorman saw the accident getting  ready to happen and
> intervened manually to stop in time.
> 											E d  T e n n y s o n
>
> On Jun 23, 2009, at 1:09 AM, J Aurelius wrote:
>
>> All:
>> The Rohr cars are structurally flimsy and are death traps!  D.C.  
>> Metro had a non-fatal accident in a storage siding about a year  
>> ago, and one of these Rohr cars telescoped badly.  This was a wake- 
>> up call - the fleet should have been taken out of service  
>> immediately.  Keeping them running was like Brit Rail keeping the  
>> slam-door mu's in service when in any collision they turned into  
>> flinders.  Of course, doing the right thing has BIG downsides:  
>> "Oh, the money" and "We're short cars and can't operate the system  
>> without them."  Too bad.  Now they have some dead and many injured  
>> in a wreck that probably would be survivable in reasonably robust  
>> cars.
>> John Aurelius
>> -
>> Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 7:06 PM
>> Subject: RE: METRORAIL DISASTER
>>
>> Six are known dead, there are reports of a seventh trapped in the  
>> wreckage.  70 were taken to various hospitals, with a few being in  
>> critical condition; according to the press, some may not make it.
>>
>> I have read that the NTSB wanted the Rohrs retired or at least  
>> strengthened; the Bredas were strengthened but not the Rohrs.  Mr.  
>> Catoe has not proposed doing anything, at least publicly.  The  
>> 1000's are also suffering fatigue, with early stages of cracking.   
>> They must be replaced according to press reports by 2020 or so.   
>> There next equipment order, the 7000's, are for the Dulles  
>> extension - Metro informally calls them the Virginia cars.  Only  
>> after that car order will Metro order cars for general fleet  
>> expansion and/or replacement of the 1000's.
>>
>> This is reportedly the third collision with Rohrs overriding other  
>> cars.
>>
>> There are three levels of automation:
>>
>> 1.  Automatic train protection - this is always in operation and  
>> appears to have not functioned properly.
>>
>> 2.  Automatic train control -  the computer drives the train, not  
>> the operator.  Normally Metro operates in this mode, but not  
>> always.  The Shady Grove collision and fatality was due to poor  
>> braking during a snow storm; the operator requested permission to  
>> operate manually, was not permitted to do so, and died as a  
>> result.  The rail operating manager had ordered 100% automatic  
>> operation to save money on break pads.  He left the authority not  
>> long after the fatality.
>>
>> 3.  Computer train scheduling (I've forgotten the technical term  
>> for this) - the computer increases or decreases speed to keep  
>> trains on schedule.  This has never been implemented.
>>
>> I do not consider myself an expert on either Metro or transit, but  
>> I think the above is true.
>>
>>
>>
>>                            Alan Schneider
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ____________________________________________________________
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>