L.A. tragedy should put new controls on track

So, have enough people died yet?

Unfortunately, it often takes a high body count to finally convince business or government to take preventive safety steps. That appears to be what’s happening in the wake of the Southern California commuter train crash that killed 25 people Friday. It was the deadliest U.S. rail disaster in 15 years.

That tragedy has heightened interest in “positive train controls,” satellite-based technology that can serve as a backup to apply brakes if a signal is missed or a train gets on the wrong track. In the Metrolink disaster, an engineer’s failure to stop for a signal is believed to have been the reason his train collided with a freight train on the same track.

The National Transportation Safety Board has been pushing railroads to install positive train controls for years. The railroads say the controls’ cost is too high – an estimated $2 billion nationwide – and the technology has not been perfected.

But the technology is already being used on 240 miles of track in the Northeast and being tested on another 2,600 miles in 16 states. It was credited with stopping a rush-hour commuter train in March when it detected that a freight car had gotten loose on the same set of tracks.

In Congress, the House and Senate have passed conflicting legislation to implement the technology. The Metrolink crash should give members more impetus to resolve the differences before they recess next week.

In many parts of the United States – including the Puget Sound region – commuter trains share railroad tracks with freight trains. In fact, virtually all Sounder trains run on such tracks.

Sound Transit says no accidents involving Sounder trains have been caused by track conflicts with freight trains. There is no move afoot here to install positive train controls, even though Sounder train service is expanding to accommodate greater demand – increasing the chance of track conflict with freight trains.

Another possible issue in the Metrolink crash is an unconfirmed report that the engineer may have missed the signals because he was text messaging at the time.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe, which operates the Sounder trains for Sound Transit, prohibits engineers from using their cell phones or text messaging on the job – but so does Metrolink.

Burlington Northern would not discuss how it enforces its prohibition or whether any employees have been disciplined for disobeying it. But a spokesman notes that Sounder’s track record is “superior” and that there have been no collisions or injuries related to track conflicts or employee use of cell phones.

The NTSB has recommended that there be a federal regulation against cell phone use, but so far that has not happened. If it turns out that the Metrolink engineer was text messaging at the time of the crash, giving federal weight to a ban would be a good idea.