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Re: What are the Lessons from the Metrolink Crash for SMART
Author: synonymouse
Date: 09-13-2008 - 20:26
You are all assuming that SMART will be approved at the polls. Maybe so, maybe no.
As far as I am concerned any transit operation beyond a certain frequency of service should mandate double track. Consider an automotive analogy. How often do you seen buses(or trucks) operating in opposite directions on the same traffic lane. Very rarely and then under supervision. Why - from repeated experience it has been shown that operator competency cannot be assured even under normal, safer conditions. Even experienced drivers have been known to do inexplicable things - like run a loaded propane truck in front of an oncoming train.
Carrying passengers is not the same as carrying freight. If you cannot afford another track run a bus instead. AT least it will have its own traffic lane. More terrible accidents like this will focus attention on busway or other alternatives where you don't have two operations and two operators commingling.
To the public there is a pattern developing here, whether coincidental or not. The FRA and the NTSB will be under pressure to respond with something more than do nothing other than crackdown on rule enforcement.
As far as I am concerned any transit operation beyond a certain frequency of service should mandate double track. Consider an automotive analogy. How often do you seen buses(or trucks) operating in opposite directions on the same traffic lane. Very rarely and then under supervision. Why - from repeated experience it has been shown that operator competency cannot be assured even under normal, safer conditions. Even experienced drivers have been known to do inexplicable things - like run a loaded propane truck in front of an oncoming train.
Carrying passengers is not the same as carrying freight. If you cannot afford another track run a bus instead. AT least it will have its own traffic lane. More terrible accidents like this will focus attention on busway or other alternatives where you don't have two operations and two operators commingling.
To the public there is a pattern developing here, whether coincidental or not. The FRA and the NTSB will be under pressure to respond with something more than do nothing other than crackdown on rule enforcement.
