While it is possible that Spain’s train crash that killed some 80 people was due to a broken rail or other equipment failure, most experts looking at the video below think the problem was simply high speeds. The video shows a train going an estimated 125 mph around a corner designed for 50 mph.
Much attention has been focused on the train’s driver, who apparently has been known to post photos of train speedometers at high speeds (but not more than the speed limits), suggesting he might have been less than fully attentive. But where was the positive train control system, which should have warned the driver and automatically slowed the train if the driver failed to do so?
According to one report, the crash resulted from a “deadly combination of high speed and low budgets.” Like France, but unlike Japan, Spain elected to build a “hybrid” system in which high-speed trains sometimes operated fast on their own exclusive tracks but other times operated at slower speeds on tracks shared with conventional trains. Where a conventional train might not have been capable of going fast enough to suffer such a deadly accident on this particular curve, the Class 130 train could go as fast as 160 mph.
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While it is too soon to draw any lessons from this crash, if the hybrid system is at fault, it suggests that the California high-speed rail plan may be vulnerable. California’s original plan was to build a completely dedicated system, but the current “low-budget” (only $68 billion instead of $117 billion) plan is for a hybrid system. Positive train control should prevent any accidents such as the one in Spain, but similar computer controls also should have prevented the 2009 Washington Metro crash that killed nine people. Like rails, computers work only as long as they are adequately maintained.
In related news, the U.K. Rail Minister, Simon Burns, likens high-speed rail opponents to those who opposed highways in the 1950s. That’s an insult to both groups: Highway opponents objected to the environmental impacts of driving and the social impacts of cutting roads through existing cities. Rail opponents object to the high costs and the fact that fares will never cover more than a portion of operating costs and none of the capital or maintenance costs, thus requiring continuing subsidies.
The Antiplanner was once a highway skeptics, but years of experience have proven that Interstate Highways were one of the best investments America ever made–largely because they were paid for out of user fees and built on a “pay-as-you-go” basis as those user fees were collected. Petrol taxes and tolls also pay for European roads several times over.
Meanwhile, in Europe as in the United States, high-speed rail requires giant continuing subsidies, which generally means something else will be underfunded. And while highways carry 75 to 85 percent of passenger travel in both the U.S. and Europe, rails carry only about 0.1 (in the U.S.) to 6 percent (in Europe), raising the question of why rail deserves such huge subsidies.
Building a “hybrid” system like this is better for the politicians in charge. With a hybrid system, you can hide some of your maintenance / operations budget into the capital side of the equation, by hiding them as improvements. (This is one of Amtrak’s favorite tactics with the Northeast Corridor)
The Antiplanner wrote:
While it is too soon to draw any lessons from this crash, if the hybrid system is at fault, it suggests that the California high-speed rail plan may be vulnerable. California’s original plan was to build a completely dedicated system, but the current “low-budget” (only $68 billion instead of $117 billion) plan is for a hybrid system.
Beyond safety, that “hybrid” system means that the high-speed trains must mix it up with an assortment of slower trains, which likely result in congestion, further slowing of what is supposed to be a high-speed system.
Positive train control should prevent any accidents such as the one in Spain, but similar computer controls also should have prevented the 2009 Washington Metro crash that killed nine people. Like rails, computers work only as long as they are adequately maintained.
In the case of the 2009 wreck at Fort Totten in Washington, the fault was with the trackside equipment, not the central computer system. And a contributing factor was the uncrashworthy design of the Series 1000 (Rohr) railcars, which the NTSB has frequently said should be scrapped or upgraded.
andarm16 wrote:
Building a “hybrid” system like this is better for the politicians in charge. With a hybrid system, you can hide some of your maintenance / operations budget into the capital side of the equation, by hiding them as improvements. (This is one of Amtrak’s favorite tactics with the Northeast Corridor)
Not just Amtrak. Other passenger rail operators (those that run rail transit systems) do this as well.
I firmly believe that the California High speed rail project will be a cluster#&@* of galactic proportions. I further suspect, but don’t know for certain, that the Spanish wreck was caused by human error. The NY Times reported that “On Thursday, Spanish news media reported that the driver had said the train’s speed had been about 120 miles per hour, more than double the limit in the stretch of track where the train derailed. On the day of the wreck, he took over from another driver just 60 miles before the crash, according to Spanish news reports.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/world/europe/spain-train-crash.html?ref=world&_r=0
That said, it’s a waste of time to argue about “dedicated” vs. “blended” high speed rail systems. The Japanese built a dedicated system to get around their gauge problem while the French built the TGV/LGV in such a way as to capitalize on existing infrastructure to extend the reach of TGVs without building expensive new infrastructure every inch of the way.
From a technical viewpoint, there’s nothing wrong with a “blended” system as long as adequate safety protocols are in place and are followed. I’m still impressed at how the French incorporated existing infrastructure into the initial Paris-Lyon service back in the 1980s.
Regarding economics, I’ll leave it to the French, Spanish and Japanese to evaluate their respective systems. I have absolutely NO confidence, however, in the California High Speed Rail Authority not to completely mess up the California project, much like the Big Dig and the new Bay Bridge went over time and budget.
And, right on cue, we get a report that the new Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco will cost $300 million more than estimated, and costs could grow higher, transportation officials said.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/bay-area-news/ci_23735135/cost-build-sf-transit-center-rises-by-300m
Is anybody even remotely surprised by this development??
No, Randal, it simply wasn’t just high speeds!
Based on what a very well-informed source very familiar with European rail technology is telling me, the Spanish crash has ZERO implications for HSR in the US, as long as you don’t use kludged odd-ball home built control systems and incompetently-designed locomotives.
Here is link to a photo of the odd type of hybrid electric/diesel locomotive used: here.
My source points out that the diesel part of the combination is much heavier than the electric half, and this weight was responsible for the locomotive being pushed off the tracks in the video, e.g., there’s no way the lightweight Talgo cars could have done so:
The most interesting part is the automated control, which apparently told the driver he was going too fast but did not pull the power. Also fascinating is the equipment. It was a patched together electric-diesel hybrid with the diesel in a second locomotive-height shell. The Talgo cars might have made it around the curve and don’t physically have the ability to pull the locomotive off the track.
If you look carefully at the video, the locomotive appears to be pulled off the track by what follows it, the obviously heavier and higher center of gravity diesel slug.
The first time I saw a picture of this set of equipment, I went WTF!, how can they have such an unbalanced set? Double locomotives each end and Talgo cars between? Turns out it may be slightly worse than that with 2 diesel prime movers in the mix. A Bombardier-Talgo collaboration on the motive power, and I wonder if the Bombardier contribution was some unmodified Montreal Loco Works crap in the second frame. It does not appear to be articulated like the Italian double locos. This is so much like the Acela design mess.
One must ask who was in charge of the whole design process! On the automated control, did they mix and match parts from all possible vendors like the Chinese?
Here is link to a page about this “unique” (sic) locomotive design: http://eurailmag.com/hybrid-high-speed-alvia-s730/.
I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theory’s. In fact I despise them. Never the less At 0:05 it looks like a burst or explosion. So days from now, people are gonna say this was a controlled explosion.
The explosion may have been diesel fuel flaring or igniting hitting the 25kv electric overhead.
Here is more photos of the bizarre locomotive layout:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/asturtren/9086652272/in/photostream/.
If I remember correctly, the initially constructed sections of the CA project (The line to nowhere) won’t be electrified initially. This will of course lead to a situation where budget constraints will lead to compromises being made. Among these compromises will probably be leaving many of these sections electrified (This will require diesel electric / electric multi-mode engines like the one in Spain that crashed) (a large gap like this was one of the reasons that the Milwaukee Road abandoned its electrical system (Which was at the time the largest in the United States)). An even worse scenario involves the California authority managing to make the project look cheaper by getting other commuter agencies to electrify shared parts of the route. This would probably lead to a scenario like on the Northeast Corridor where you have three completely different electrification systems.
“If you look carefully at the video, the locomotive appears to be pulled off the track by what follows it, the obviously heavier and higher center of gravity diesel slug.”
Was the equipment in use ordered before or after this section of track was built?