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My point is that we can spend billions of dollars making trains safer, or we can spend those billions expanding passenger rail to reduce the number of people wh

My point is that we can spend billions of dollars making trains safer, or we can spend those billions expanding passenger rail to reduce the number of people who drive, something which would save far more lives. It is a matter of economics. A dollar spent on PTC is a dollar not spend expanding passenger rail service (and the PTC mandate raises the cost of building new passenger lines), and the question is whether or not it is worth the extra safety. Considering how safe rail transit already is, and how much more unsafe driving is, it seems like our money would be better spent taking cars off the road. Or to put it another way, I am arguing that focusing only on rail fatalities is too narrow and that we should instead focus on travel fatalities in general. Increased access to passenger trains, more frequent and more reliable service, and faster passenger service are all ways to reduce travel fatalities because all the above reduce the number of people who drive. PTC also reduces travel fatalities, but not by as much. If you need a more extreme example, many lives could be saved by banning automobiles altogether, but obviously the costs would be far too high to justify such an approach.

mulmen 9y ago
Except in this case we did spend the money on PTC but then didn't bother to turn it on. This fatal crash was the first run of a newly expanded line. Are all new rail line expansions dangerous? If so will trains still be safer than cars if we expanded them enough to carry similar numbers? I think I understand your argument but I'm not convinced more routes without PTC is safer without seeing numbers. That train was only 1/3 full, if we added more trains and put more people on those trains would the deaths really be lower? What if we compare to just the alternative of traffic fatalities on interstates between Seattle and Portland? Also this train fell onto the freeway and injured drivers, is that included in traffic statistics (slightly facetious)? I'm not convinced that banning automobiles entirely would save lives. There are too many practical concerns there. Do ambulances still exist? Would people just drive anyway, perhaps ignoring all laws or driving unsafely to flee police? It's not a compelling argument. I take issue the most with the attitude that we shouldn't be critical of the safety of trains because there is another method of travel that is worse because that kind of thinking does nothing to make trains safer.
- betterunix2 9y ago
  Keep in mind that Amtrak had tested the route and conducted numerous practice runs prior to this accident. None of those practice rules ended with derailments. It is unfortunate that on the first day that this route was operated with passengers, some kind of mistake was made and the train exceeded the speed limit. Obviously there is not much more that can be said about what happened until the NTSB report is published. New passenger services are introduced without incident on a fairly regular basis. I have no idea how popular Cascades is between Portland and Seattle, or how many people would choose to take that train rather than drive on I-5. As for fatality numbers, here is one study that tries to extract an apples-to-apples comparison of different transit modes, from 2010 (before PTC had been installed or activated on many routes): http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ipsavage/436.pdf http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ipsavage/436.pdf Trains are safer than cars according to those numbers. There may be some nuances involving how fatalities are being reported; for example, whether or not we should count fatalities involving trespassers being struck by trains. Regardless, it seems pretty clear that yes, if more people took trains instead of driving, fewer people would die. If you know of a better way to make the comparison I would love to see it. I am not suggesting that we should not be critical of train safety. There is a long history of railroads killing people and there are good reasons for many of the safety regulations applied to trains. The reason passenger rail is so safe is that so many regulations are in place. For the same reason, it is hard to see why spending billions of dollars to install one more safety system makes sense, especially when there is a competing mode of transit that is far less safe.
  - mulmen 9y ago
    The test runs did not include PTC though. The entire point of requiring PTC is that railroads will not install it themselves because they don't think they need it. My concern with saying trains should replace cars because they are safer is that trains don't do the same thing as cars and interstates do. Trains can't take me around town but cars are often used for that which skews the numbers. I would like to see the risk in micromorts [1] for travel from Seattle to Portland by car, plane and rail[2]. If I want to go to Portland from Seattle I have several choices. The top three from most to least likely for me are: 1) Drive my car down I-5. 2) Fly. 3) Take the train. I suspect most people are in a similar situation and I think we can both agree that more people drive their cars to Portland than take the train in any given period of time. I do not agree with your assumption that just putting more people on trains will magically save lives. Specifically I do not think that putting the people who drive to Portland on a train will necessarily save lives. This is for several reasons: 1) The existing trains do not carry anywhere near as many people as I-5 does so we must drastically increase the number of trains and possibly rails. This would drastically increase the chances of train on train collisions which are uncommon today (but still happen). There could be other issues here such as the availability of qualified operators. 2) Trains are much slower than driving or flying. The train to Portland takes 10.5 hours, by car it takes 3.5 and by plane is an hour in the air plus a couple hours to get to the airport and get through security so call it the same as driving. For trains to compete with this we would have to significantly increase speed which would increase danger. I'm with you, I would love for there to be better rail options in the United States. I don't think we get there by just scaling up and ignoring the risks and problems. If rail companies can't safely operate their trains with the small amount of current utilization why would we expect it to get better (or even stay the same) with higher volumes? Changes must be made to a lot of aspects of railroads to increase ridership but safety is absolutely one of them. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort [2]: Note that 250 miles by car seems to include all forms of driving, not just driving on the freeway. e: From the linked study it looks like highway driving is one of the most dangerous forms of driving. My point stands that this is more complex than it looks and rail transit does not scale linearly.

mulmen 9y ago

Except in this case we did spend the money on PTC but then didn't bother to turn it on. This fatal crash was the first run of a newly expanded line. Are all new rail line expansions dangerous? If so will trains still be safer than cars if we expanded them enough to carry similar numbers? I think I understand your argument but I'm not convinced more routes without PTC is safer without seeing numbers. That train was only 1/3 full, if we added more trains and put more people on those trains would the deaths really be lower? What if we compare to just the alternative of traffic fatalities on interstates between Seattle and Portland? Also this train fell onto the freeway and injured drivers, is that included in traffic statistics (slightly facetious)? I'm not convinced that banning automobiles entirely would save lives. There are too many practical concerns there. Do ambulances still exist? Would people just drive anyway, perhaps ignoring all laws or driving unsafely to flee police? It's not a compelling argument. I take issue the most with the attitude that we shouldn't be critical of the safety of trains because there is another method of travel that is worse because that kind of thinking does nothing to make trains safer.

betterunix2 9y ago
Keep in mind that Amtrak had tested the route and conducted numerous practice runs prior to this accident. None of those practice rules ended with derailments. It is unfortunate that on the first day that this route was operated with passengers, some kind of mistake was made and the train exceeded the speed limit. Obviously there is not much more that can be said about what happened until the NTSB report is published. New passenger services are introduced without incident on a fairly regular basis. I have no idea how popular Cascades is between Portland and Seattle, or how many people would choose to take that train rather than drive on I-5. As for fatality numbers, here is one study that tries to extract an apples-to-apples comparison of different transit modes, from 2010 (before PTC had been installed or activated on many routes): http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ipsavage/436.pdf http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ipsavage/436.pdf Trains are safer than cars according to those numbers. There may be some nuances involving how fatalities are being reported; for example, whether or not we should count fatalities involving trespassers being struck by trains. Regardless, it seems pretty clear that yes, if more people took trains instead of driving, fewer people would die. If you know of a better way to make the comparison I would love to see it. I am not suggesting that we should not be critical of train safety. There is a long history of railroads killing people and there are good reasons for many of the safety regulations applied to trains. The reason passenger rail is so safe is that so many regulations are in place. For the same reason, it is hard to see why spending billions of dollars to install one more safety system makes sense, especially when there is a competing mode of transit that is far less safe.
- mulmen 9y ago
  The test runs did not include PTC though. The entire point of requiring PTC is that railroads will not install it themselves because they don't think they need it. My concern with saying trains should replace cars because they are safer is that trains don't do the same thing as cars and interstates do. Trains can't take me around town but cars are often used for that which skews the numbers. I would like to see the risk in micromorts [1] for travel from Seattle to Portland by car, plane and rail[2]. If I want to go to Portland from Seattle I have several choices. The top three from most to least likely for me are: 1) Drive my car down I-5. 2) Fly. 3) Take the train. I suspect most people are in a similar situation and I think we can both agree that more people drive their cars to Portland than take the train in any given period of time. I do not agree with your assumption that just putting more people on trains will magically save lives. Specifically I do not think that putting the people who drive to Portland on a train will necessarily save lives. This is for several reasons: 1) The existing trains do not carry anywhere near as many people as I-5 does so we must drastically increase the number of trains and possibly rails. This would drastically increase the chances of train on train collisions which are uncommon today (but still happen). There could be other issues here such as the availability of qualified operators. 2) Trains are much slower than driving or flying. The train to Portland takes 10.5 hours, by car it takes 3.5 and by plane is an hour in the air plus a couple hours to get to the airport and get through security so call it the same as driving. For trains to compete with this we would have to significantly increase speed which would increase danger. I'm with you, I would love for there to be better rail options in the United States. I don't think we get there by just scaling up and ignoring the risks and problems. If rail companies can't safely operate their trains with the small amount of current utilization why would we expect it to get better (or even stay the same) with higher volumes? Changes must be made to a lot of aspects of railroads to increase ridership but safety is absolutely one of them. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort [2]: Note that 250 miles by car seems to include all forms of driving, not just driving on the freeway. e: From the linked study it looks like highway driving is one of the most dangerous forms of driving. My point stands that this is more complex than it looks and rail transit does not scale linearly.