Rail transit proposal caps year of DOT safety initiatives

Rail transit is the only mode of transportation within DOT that operates without comprehensive Federal safety regulation, oversight, or enforcement. For the sake of the 14 million Americans who ride rail transit every weekday, we must close that gap.

So today I went to Congress to propose legislation reforming DOT safety oversight of America's rail transit systems.

Traveling by rail transit in the United States remains extraordinarily safe. Yet serious accidents do occur, such as this summer’s tragic Washington Metro crash and other recent accidents in Boston and San Francisco.

And, as transit use increases in this nation, passengers need additional action to make rail transit even safer.

Look, we have safety regulations in place for planes, trains, trucks, and automobiles. Yet rail transit riders enjoy none of the stringent standards that protect passengers on airlines and railroads.

And, even though rail transit systems carry far more passengers daily than either airplanes or railroads, DOT is actually prohibited from issuing safety standards and regulations for these systems.

This doesn't make any sense; the nation's rail transit passengers deserve to see it fixed; and this DOT wants to help fix it.

I am pleased to be able to look back on this year and see a host of DOT efforts that show safety really is our number one priority. If you've been reading this blog, then you already know about these initiatives.

Rail transit protection is a critical piece in the safety puzzle. I urge Congress to consider it.

Comments

[Gord Currie]

We don't need any more rules and regulations which just drive costs higher which we the people have to pay.
Get smart any additional costs incurred by Companies have to be passed on to the consumer or they would go out of business.

The Rail companies will deal with safety cause they can't make money if the Trains are smashed up!
Just Like the Truckers who are over regulated we are going broke and leaving the industry cause there is no decent wages to be made anymore.

[Michael E. Bailey]

This is great news. More people are using commuter rail, light rail, and subway systems than ever before and the number will keep growing. It is not a question of should we have improved safety for commuter, light rail and subway passengers or should we have high speed rail. We need both. Commuter rail, light rail, subways, and Amtrak are the necessary connections that high speed rail needs to be a success. Without such connections high speed rail will be a failure. So we should not sacrifice rail passenger safety in the other rail modes because of some fear that to improve rail safety means putting funding for high speed rail at risk. This is what happened in one state. Grant funding requests to make commuter rail, light rail and subways safer was killed at the state level because the state sent a grant request three days or so earlier for high speed rail funds and considered the rail safety grants too much of a threat to let them go forward. Your initiative will put an end to this kind of thing, something that will be of critical importance. Thank you and best wishes, Michael E. Bailey.

[Marlene Mahoney]

Every time there is a train accident, either like the one in June in DC or anywhere else in the US,I'm glad the FRA is committed in having rail safety the number one priority. I am sure it keeps our RR Safety inspectors busy, but then, it's there job, right?
Have a safe day.

[Marc Ebuna]

Mr. LaHood, I've found these intentions to be well-meaning, but you can't seriously be talking about enforcing federally mandated safety regulations on American transit agencies who are hurting from decades of deinvestment and underinvestment without also talking about HOW they will be funded. You can't talk one without the other since so many systems (especially the older ones) are struggling to secure funding to do repairs to avoid derailments (MBTA Red Line north of Harvard), ceiling collapses (uptown Manhattan MTA Transit subway station), etc. while dealing with the influx of riders, that you do acknowledge in this post, and keep them moving without incurring delays that disincentivizes transit to yet more of the riding public.

I also take issue with the fact that you paint the lack of safety standards as something that is broken instead of pointing at the root cause which is the fact that these systems have not had the funding to necessarily commit to safety. You also talk about safety standards as something people 'enjoy'. I don't necessarily 'enjoy' the crumple zone on my train or the black box on my plane, but I can tell you that millions of people *would enjoy* transit that ran on time because switches, signals, and equipment didn't fail during their commute. I just find it frustrating that you have this great setup to an argument for transit, then talk about safety as something that is inherently broken and that transit 'deserves' these safety standards. What transit *deserves* is its nation (and federal overseers) to acknowledge its significance with a better monetary commitment to fix the things that *ARE* broken.

I beseech you to talk funding, because many of the nation's older transit agencies (and many newer ones) wouldn't be able to keep up with federal mandates without some sort of additional funding because of the massive amounts of deferred maintenance and debt they've had to incur due to all those decades of municipal, state, and federal disinvestment and subsequent underinvestment. It's the elephant in the room and I read your blog daily in the hopes that one day, you will acknowledge it and talk seriously about how we can have a federal transportation budget that properly reflects the value of transit and rail.

[John Niles]

Public Interest Transportation Forum in Seattle has calculated and posted a comparison of U.S. fatalities per passenger mile for light rail and for urban driving. See http://www.bettertransport.info/pitf/linksafetycertification.htm for the graphic of results.

Shockingly, light rail fatalities per passenger mile for 1998-2007 are worse than in urban driving per passenger mile, as shown in the graphic. This is because light rail trains hit cars and trucks far too frequently, and occasionally kill people in the process. Suicides by light rail are not included in the numbers behind the graphics.

Sound Transit's new light rail in Seattle has a better collision record than expected. The EIS for this system forecast a collision with a motor vehicle, pedestrian, or bike every 12 days based on statistics from the 1990s, but the collision experience along the Seattle light rail tracks has turned out far better since the train opened last July. This is partially the result of a significant educational campaign carried out by Sound Transit.

Collisions between motor vehicles and light rail trains are almost always the fault of drivers who do not heed signals that are supposed to keep them off the tracks when a train may be coming. However the details of track and signal design are contributing factors. Improvements are possible, especially based on new technologies.

The new DOT transit safety initiative will hopefully include determining why some light rail systems do much better at preventing collision accidents than others, and then cause improvements to be made.

[Connor Crowley]

What merit does the federal government have to claim regulatory powers over entirely state agencies? Only a handful of which operate across state lines.

By what remarkably small ratio of deaths per hundreds of thousands is this even called for?

Such an attempt at federal regulation for local transit agencies is remarkably foolish when considering marginal,or no improvement on safety at a much greater cost.

[Robert Lambert]

I think that the money for high-speed rail should be spent on developing Chinese-European styles 200 MPH corridors rather than wasting money on existing rail lines. Illinois already has the land available between its major interstates that could be used to expand the type of infrastructure required for a maglev type of system...Just a thought...

[California Blogger]

I totally agree with Robert Lambert's comment above. Right On!

[watch eclipse online]

In india its also a problematic thing...