A Lot of Blame to Go Around

Three-and-one-half years ago, the first Amtrak train over a new, shorter route between Seattle and Portland crashed and killed three passengers. Now Steven Brown, the engineer who went 80 miles per hour around a 30-mph curve, wants to be reinstated, saying the accident was Amtrak’s fault, not his.

It was Amtrak’s fault because, he admits, he was inexperienced with the route (having made “only” three practice runs and seven to ten observational runs) and had never run that model of locomotive before. Given this lack of experience, he says, Amtrak never should have assigned him the train. Of course, as it was a brand-new route, all of Amtrak’s engineers were equally inexperienced with the terrain, and he was given the job because he had scored 100 percent on a written exam for the route.

Based on his argument, he is suing Amtrak, hoping to not only get his job back, but to be retroactively paid (at the rate of $105,000 a year) for the years since the accident that he hasn’t been working. Apparently, a federal law states that a railroad employee can be fired only if they were “solely responsible” for a crash.

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However, I have even less sympathy for Amtrak, which operated the train; Sound Transit, Seattle’s transit agency which owned the tracks; and the Washington Department of Transportation, which spent the better part of $800 million improving the tracks on this shortened route so that Amtrak trains could save ten minutes on the three-and-one-half hour trip between Seattle and Portland. I’m not the only one: The National Transportation Safety Board’s final report on the accident puts responsibility on all of these agencies as well as on the engineer.

The report blamed Amtrak for not adequately training Brown on the new locomotive and for using lightweight passenger cars that “did not provide adequate occupant protection.” It blamed Sound Transit for not installing positive train control even though it was required by federal law and the agency’s own analysis said that the 30-mph curve would be dangerous without it. (This doesn’t excuse Brown; engineers have operated millions of trains over nearly 200 years without positive train control and for the most part have done so safely.) The report also blamed the Washington Department of Transportation for being too eager to start service on the new route before safety measures were in place.

Amtrak is still not running trains on this shorter route. Sound Transit has around $100 billion to spend on rail transit in the Seattle area but somehow hasn’t found the money to finish installing positive train control or clear the route for passenger trains. The real problem is that both Washingtons, the state and the city, have a fetish for spending money on trains despite their dubious advantages over buses, cars, and planes.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

9 Responses to A Lot of Blame to Go Around

  1. metrosucks says:

    Mr. O’Toole,

    I noticed you used the figure (100 billion) that includes the cost of servicing Sound Transit’s ST3 debt. Oddly enough, local governments and their media apparatchiks seen more comfortable using the $58 billion number (the cost of the bond measure when you leave out interest) when proudly citing their ST3 “investment” in “safe, reliable, high speed transit”.

  2. prk166 says:

    The NTSB chairman has stated that the engineer was set up for failure.

  3. prk166 says:

    Look at a different domain, the shooting of Daunte Wright.

    If you look at the video, you’ll see the Brooklyn Center police making both mistakes in execution, strategy + general policy failure by the department. They failed to shut the drivers door, move Mr. Wright to the rear of the vehicle, have him spread his legs and position themselves to prevent resistance and fleeing and the department didn’t require 2 person cuffing ( common; much safer )>

    Does that mean Potter didn’t screw up in a big way? On no, that was the biggest screw up one could make. Nevertheless, if we don’t want that sort of thing to happen again, the focus as to be on the bigger picture, the administrators culpability, not on scapegoating.

    In the case of Daunte Wright’s shooting, to date not a single change has been implemented that will ensure that situation doesn’t happen again. Sure, Brooklyn Center has changed some policies. But none of that changes that an armed officer will be arrested people for felony warrants.

    No commitment to annual training to ensure officers never use a gun when they mean to use a taser. No commitments to update arrest techniques or commitments to better training and execution. Just some scapegoating and hooplah.

    We see the same here. Sure, the engineer made some mistakes. But so did the administrators. They bought unsafe equipment, put a conductor on the route THAT WAS NOT CERTIFIED, didn’t bother with PTC, et al.

    This is why another NTSB board member called it the blind leading the blind. The mistakes by the engineer are troubling. But we’re losing sight of the big picture if we make the issue about him and not the INCOMPETENT administration.

  4. LazyReader says:

    When Japan opened its first high-speed rail line in 1964, nearly 70 percent of passenger travel was by rail and only 12 percent was by automobile. Although Japan’s lines are considered highly successful, today only 25 percent of passenger travel is by rail and nearly 70 percent is by auto. ”

    Where does the Antiplanne get this data?

  5. LazyReader says:

    Engineering disasters are rare circumstances. When They happen; management is often more responsible than engineers/designers.

    Space Shuttle challenger disaster, Physicist richard feynman took a sample of rubber O-ring from shuttles booster segment and put it in a glass of ice water for a few minutes. Then took it out to prove how bad it deformed in cold weather. Engineers knew cold weather was bad; That’s why launches take place in Florida to begin with. But management says “LAUNCH”. But engineers, Concerned with keeping their jobs remained quiet, never spoke up.

    • Henry Porter says:

      “But engineers, Concerned with keeping their jobs remained quiet, never spoke up.”

      And that, right there, ladies and gentlemen, is the crux of why America is in such deep trouble right now.

      Had the engineers and scientists spoken up, Biden and his predecessors and Buttigieg and his predecessors would not have been able to pull the wool over the eyes of an engaged American public.

      Behind every transportation failure, like all those reported here by the Antiplanner, there is at least one FTA, FRA, FHWA, FAA, NHTSA engineer who signed off on it. And there are many others, in the private sector and in the public sector, who sat idly by and watched it happen without saying a word.

  6. Metrosucks,

    I counted ST1 and ST2 as well as ST3. As I understand it, ST1 is mostly complete but ST2 is not and it was about $18 billion. Add that to the $58 billion and you’ve got $75 billion. Not $100 billion but a lot closer than $58 billion.

    LazyReader: My data on Japanese travel come from the Ministry of Transport, which has been merged into other ministries and no longer posts such data on the web. I have data from about 1950 to 2005.

    Everyone: Engineers have a responsibility to operate safely. Positive train control was invented over 100 years ago. Engineer Brown should not escape blame because Sound Transit failed to install it on this line any more than engineers whose mistakes caused all of the other rail accidents in the last 100 years can escape responsibility for their errors. Brown took the job because he believed he was the most qualified to do so. Now he claims he shouldn’t have been given the job. Why did he take it if he wasn’t qualified? He wasn’t solely responsible for the accident, but he was the passengers’ last line of safety and he failed to hold that line.

  7. TCS says:

    Management failure + operator errors. Cue Vernon Dalhart singing ‘Wreck of the Old 97’.

    • metrosucks says:

      Mr. O’Toole:

      I remember reading somewhere that the fully adjusted cost of ST3 alone, with interest included, was close to 100 billion. That’s why I asked about your use of that figure. I believe the bonds are intended to be spread over an extended period of time, making interest charges much higher than one might expect.

      Generally speaking, I believe government agencies post the before-servicing costs of bonds (officially, initially around 58 billion for ST3).

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