Here’s a tip for transit agencies: Buy insurance guaranteeing ridership revenue so that, when you screw up and ridership declines, you can sue the insurance company to cover the revenue losses. That’s what Washington MetroRail has done in response to ridershop losses that it claims resulted from the 2009 accident that killed 9 people.
According to Metro, delays in repairs led to systemwide losses of 6 million trips, which would have produced about $13 million in revenue. So it wants its insurer to cover those revenue losses. The Washington Examiner article about the lawsuit strongly hints that at least some of those ridership losses might have been due to the shrinking economy instead.
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What the article doesn’t say is that the accident was caused by Metro’s own failure to adequately maintain its signaling system. Why bother to maintain your rail lines when your insurance company is obligated to cover your losses when the system fails?
At least when a car crashes…..true we have insurance but the insurance is not designed to compensate for a lack of safety when the car crashes. Cars carry aboard years of researched advanced safety devices. When you eliminate deliberate safety violations such as alcohol, drugs, and criminal misconduct (high speed chases) cars are pretty safe. Just 40 years ago they were death traps, but today we have seat belts, sensors, fully encompassing air bags, crumple zones, blocker beams, anti-lock brakes, traction control, sealed fuel bladders, dashboards made of plastic (as opposed to metal or wood).
Amazing, Amazing, Amazing, I’m hoping there is some mis interpretation here, I can’t believe this is true.
The Antiplanner wrote:
What the article doesn’t say is that the accident was caused by Metro’s own failure to adequately maintain its signaling system.
The Washington Metrorail system was designed from the ground up to be highly automated (and safe as a result). The signal systems and (in particular) the trackside sensors were very much to blame for the 2009 fatal wreck on the Red Line near the Fort Totten station which left 9 people dead.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s report is online here (Adobe .pdf, 4.59 MB).
From physical page 15 of that report:
The National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation found that the Metrorail automatic train control system stopped detecting the presence of train 214 (the struck train), which caused train 214 to stop and also allowed speed commands to be transmitted to train 112 (the striking train) until the collision. This loss of detection occurred because parasitic oscillation in the General Railway Signal Company (GRS)/Alstom Signaling Inc. (Alstom) track circuit modules was creating a spurious signal that mimicked a valid track circuit signal, thus causing the track circuit to fail to detect the presence of train 214. The investigation found that the track circuit modules did not function safely as part of a fail-safe train control system because GRS/Alstom did not provide a maintenance plan that would detect anomalies in the track circuit signal, such as parasitic oscillation, over the modules’ service life and prevent these anomalies from being interpreted as valid track circuit signals.
On physical page 16, the report goes on to discuss the design of the 1000-series (Rohr) railcars, which suffered catastrophic failure in this crash (and had in previous crashes as well).
With regard to the survivability of the accident, the investigation found that the structural design of the 1000-series railcars offers little occupant protection against a catastrophic loss of survival space in a collision and this contributed to the severity of the occupant injuries and fatalities. In 2006, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that WMATA accelerate retirement of the 1000-series cars or retrofit them with crashworthiness collision protection comparable to the 6000-series cars. In 2007, that recommendation was classified “Closed—Unacceptable Action†based on WMATA’s response that it was not feasible to retrofit the 1000-series cars and that they would remain in service until replacement with the 7000-series cars in 2014.
I sell insurance for a living and I have two thoughts.
In many business insurance policies, there can be an endorsement for loss of use or overhead expense coverage. That means the insured is entitled to compensation for the stream of income or at least for the overhead he must maintain while he gets the business up and running after a loss. There is nothing unsusual about that.
When the antiplanner says, “Why bother to maintain your rail lines when your insurance company is obligated to cover your losses when the system fails?” he is describing a very real phenomenon for the insurance industry called “morale hazard”, not the same as moral hazard. The insurance carriers mitigate this hazard by requiring the insured to retain some of the risk, called the deductible; inspecting the subject property regularly; requiring the insured to maintain certain safety measures; and insuring the subject property for “actual cash value only”, if required by the age and condition of the property.
Most insurance policies in the UK require that the insured takes adequate responsibility for their end of things. So, in the UK, if you leave the engine running in the car, you leave the car, and consequently the car is stolen, the insurance company is not liable.
The Washington Examiner article about the lawsuit strongly hints that at least some of those ridership losses might have been due to the shrinking economy instead.
I was under the impression that the D.C. economy (contra the rest of the U.S.) has been booming. “The Washington Examiner”, a site I’m wont to like, is just exhibiting intellectual laziness if it can only come up with that excuse.
The D.C. economy is an unusual thing. Government employment on the federal level accounted for about 27 percent of the jobs in Washington, D.C. This mass of people working is thought to immunize Washington to nationwide economic downturns because the federal government continues to operate even during recession. Many organizations such as law firms, independent contractors (both defense and civilian), non-profit organizations, lobbying firms, trade unions, industry trade groups, and professional associations have headquarters in the city too. The city has an immense constant workforce running off the expenditure of federal dollars and yes for them their economy may grow during recessions because of an increase in government spending.