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Post by wrcousert on Sept 19, 2008 7:23:30 GMT -8
Light rail hits bus near L.A., injuring at least 13Metro Blue Line train collision comes a week after deadly Metrolink crashLOS ANGELES - A Metro Blue Line train collided with a bus south of downtown during Friday morning's commute, injuring at least 13 people, fire officials said. The light rail train was headed to Long Beach carrying passengers while the bus was out of service. As many as two dozen people were hurt, but none of the injuries appeared to be life threatening, Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said. "We had an out-of-service bus turn in front of the train," said Marc Littman, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the train and the bus involved. "We don't know who had the right of way." The impact knocked the front car of the electric train off the track. The other cars remained on the track. Littman said they were still investigating the incident. The crash comes one week after a Metrolink commuter train smashed into a freight train in the San Fernando Valley, about 30 miles northwest of downtown, killing 25 people and injuring more than 130. MTA's popular light rail system includes the Gold Line to suburban Pasadena, the Red Line subway to Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley, the Blue Line to Long Beach and the east-west Green Line across communities in the southern portion of the county.
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Post by jejozwik on Sept 19, 2008 9:08:38 GMT -8
nice. now the blue line is taking out is own.  wonder if the BRU will spin this as metro is tring to take its buses out of service so the public will be forced to ride the train... |
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Post by Jason Saunders on Sept 19, 2008 9:24:47 GMT -8
Are quad gates practical on this portion of the Blue Line?
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Post by damiengoodmon on Sept 19, 2008 12:10:49 GMT -8
Which victim will MTA blame for this accident: MTA or MTA?
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Post by jejozwik on Sept 19, 2008 12:39:36 GMT -8
um...
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Post by Jason Saunders on Sept 19, 2008 12:48:37 GMT -8
Spokker, Damian: Please send this stuff privately. Most of us don't want to read it.
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Post by spokker on Sept 19, 2008 12:49:49 GMT -8
What? I want to know about the man behind the advocacy. It can't always be such serious business around these transit sites.
You're not curious? Come on.
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Post by damiengoodmon on Sept 19, 2008 13:05:12 GMT -8
spokker is spooking me out.
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Post by spokker on Sept 19, 2008 13:12:13 GMT -8
Alright, alright. Just trying to inject some humanity into these arguments about trains and buses and whatever else.
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Post by metrocenter on Sept 19, 2008 13:43:57 GMT -8
spokker is spooking me out. yeah me too  |
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Post by kenalpern on Sept 19, 2008 16:24:48 GMT -8
Damien, you better pray your girlfriend doesn't read these posts! ) (Posts deleted by The Transit Coalition) |
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Post by darrell on Sept 19, 2008 20:36:03 GMT -8
A certain rail critic wrote in an email today: Fiscal Year 08 was a "good year" for the Blue Line. It was "ONLY" involved in 29 "reportable" accidents and "ONLY" 3 people were killed. ...
Despite FY08 being a "good year" here are the comparative stats:
The accident rate for freeways in 2007: 1.09 per million miles driven.
The accident rate for the Blue Line in FY08: 17.1 per million miles operated.
The fatality rate for roads in 2007: 0.012 per million miles driven.
The fatality rate for the Blue Line in FY08: 1.77 per million miles operated. The "spin" (his term) implicit in this mismatch of units and mismatch of geography becomes quickly apparent, when the appropriate comparison is the rate per passenger mile, in Los Angeles. * The fatality rate for Los Angeles County roads is around .0224 per million passenger miles (1). * The fatality rate for the Blue Line is around .0167 per million passenger miles (2). (1) According to FARS, there were 2,093 traffic fatalities in Los Angeles County in 2006. Metro's 2008 Draft LRTP reported (Technical Document, page 53), "In 2004, LA County residents drove almost 159,900,000 vehicle miles daily." And average Vehicle Occupancy for all car trips is around 1.6 ( National Transportation Statistics 2006 pdf, Table 4-22). Divide 2,093 / (159.9 million x 365 x 1.6) = .0224 per million passenger miles. (2) The Blue Line carried about 180.5 million passenger miles per year from July 2007-June 2008, per the latest Metro Ridership Report. So 3 fatalities / 180.5 million passenger miles = .0167 fatalities per million passenger miles. It's a good thing that repeated statements by a certain candidate for vice president that she opposed the "Bridge to Nowhere" have brought fact-checking back into fashion. |
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Post by spokker on Sept 19, 2008 20:46:29 GMT -8
That certain rail critic doesn't believe in per passenger mile statistics.
However, those per passenger mile statistics are valid because you assume that if people didn't get on a train or bus together, they would have all driven separately. Most of them anyway.
Isn't the average 1.1, 1.2, or 1.3 occupants per car? Something like that.
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Post by darrell on Sept 19, 2008 21:48:16 GMT -8
Isn't the average 1.1, 1.2, or 1.3 occupants per car? Something like that. Commute statistics are lower, around 1.1-1.2. I was surprised, too, that overall they're as high as 1.6, but seek to be accurate with documented sources. |
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Post by spokker on Sept 19, 2008 22:00:55 GMT -8
You can't get people to organize a carpool to save their life.
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Post by jejozwik on Sept 20, 2008 6:37:23 GMT -8
You can't get people to organize a carpool to save their life. hey i car pool when i drive! ...it just so happens that i am car pooling with my wife  |
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Post by spokker on Sept 20, 2008 12:38:14 GMT -8
You can't get people to organize a carpool to save their life. hey i car pool when i drive! ...it just so happens that i am car pooling with my wife If you got 4 people in a car, or up to 7-8 people in a van, and they did this consistently to get to work, transit wouldn't be as big of an issue as it is today, if everyone did it and there were no solo drivers. But like I said, few people even make the effort to start or join a carpool, and even fewer sustain it. |
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Post by damiengoodmon on Sept 22, 2008 15:17:18 GMT -8
That rail critic, rail advocate, and rail researcher is me and you spokker are correct I don't believe in using passenger per mile rates when discussing light rail safety grade crossing issues. From an email I recently sent: PASSENGER MILES ARE NOT THE SAME AS TRAIN REVENUE MILES
A trains revenue miles is the distance that it's traveled in service. It's passenger miles is the distance passengers have traveled on the train while in service. Understand there is a difference, they're two completely different statistics and they both tell you two completely different things.
According to the MTA's July 1990 - June 2008 quarterly report on Blue Line Train/Vehicle and Train/Pedestrian accidents, the number of train revenue miles (a.k.a. train miles) for fiscal year 08 (July 2007-June 2008) was 1,692,591 miles. I've had the report for a while and the LA Times reported it recently: link
There were 29 accidents and 3 fatalities in the same period (and again, 3 deaths and 29 accidents is what constitutes a "good year" for the Blue Line, which says a lot, but I digress).
29 accidents/1.692 million train miles = 17.1 accidents per million train revenue miles
3 deaths/1.692 million train miles = 1.77 deaths per million train revenue miles
I don't have any information on the passenger miles of the Blue Line for fiscal year 08, and for the purposes of understanding the safety risk that the trains pose to motorists and pedestrians they are irrelevant. Here's why:
- If Train A is carrying 10 people and it travels 10 miles that equates to 100 passenger miles and 10 train revenue miles.
- If Train B is carrying 30 people and it travels the same 10 miles that equates to 300 passenger miles and 10 train revenue miles.
If Train A & B are both involved in one accident, Train A's accident rate is 1 per 100 passenger miles, while Train B's is 3 times less at 1 accident per 300 passenger miles.
The train's traveled the same distance, it's the same train vehicle, yet one appears 3 times safer than the other, when really the accident rate is exactly the same (1 accident per 10 miles traveled). That discrepancy only appears if one calculates the PASSENGER miles instead of TRAIN REVENUE miles.
Karen, I'm sure you agree that it's simply dishonest to insist that the number of people on the train have anything to do with the number of people maimed, injured and killed on the tracks.
Passenger miles may be helpful for potential riders when determining whether they feel safe riding the train or car, just as it would be good to know the percentage of Hummers in your town when considering to purchase a Mini Cooper. :-) But passenger miles tells one absolutely nothing about the safety hazards trains pose on our roads when they're allowed to operate across intersections with motorists, pedestrians and cyclists, in particular children, elderly and the disabled.
And so you know, the statistic for deaths per milllion miles comes directly from The CHP as reported by the LA Times:
"The number of people killed per 100 million miles driven on California roadways has dropped to the lowest level in history. The newly released Mileage Death Rate (MDR) is 1.18 deaths per 100 million miles driven. The numbers are based on 2007 data."
1.18 deaths per 100 million miles driven = 0.018 deaths per million miles driven
Similarly, the statewide statistic 1.09 accidents per million miles driven on freeways comes directly from CalTrans as reported by the LA Times: link
Like you Karen I didn't know the difference between passenger miles and train revenue miles until I took a much closer look. Our transportation agencies try to hide the very unsettling rail line accident and fatality statistics. It's up to smart and honest advocates to tell people the truth. You should have asked me why you saw the discrepancy before you sent off your email, I would have been more than happy to clarify the issue for you.
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE MORE ACCIDENTS/FATALITIES WITH CARS BUT THE FREQUENCY IS CONSISTENTLY GREATER ON LIGHT RAIL AND COMMUTER RAIL
It should go without saying, but the Blue Line crosses an intersection at most 250-300 times a day (125-150 in both directions). This equates to the number of cars that cross the Pico/Overland intersection going in just ONE direction (of the four possible directions) in just ONE lane in just 20 minutes during rush hour.
Simply there are a lot more cars on the road than trains, so comparing raw statistics will always make cars appear less hazardous than light rail, but the rates suggest otherwise.
There are some rather simple explanations for this: trains can't turn to avert accidents and they can't stop on a dime. As one blogger put "There's not much else an operator can do other than pull the emergency brake" and often by that time it's too late. |
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Post by spokker on Sept 22, 2008 19:21:04 GMT -8
People killed on the tracks, whether in their car or not, are usually at fault. And I say usually only because there might be the one or two instances where it wasn't. People are preoccupied with their phone, mp3 player, or just aren't thinking, and get hit. Drivers just can't wait for that mile long freight train to pass and try to beat the train, only to discover it was a Metrolink that would pass in 30-45 seconds. Drivers do not check their blind spots, etc. etc.
There are suicides. There are trespassers who walk along the tracks, whether they know the line is active or not. There are daredevils, teens who play chicken in tunnels where trains are known to run. If you grew up near Stoney Point Park, there's a decent chance you walked through that tunnel on a dare. I know people who have.
I say protect the train from the cars that decide to place themselves on the track! Not the other way around!
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