On Monday, December 18th, an Amtrak train on its inaugural run from Seattle, Washington to Portland, Oregon derailed off a bridge and fell onto Interstate 5, killing 3 people and injuring many more. Even though the route has been operating for two weeks with non-revenue trains, this was the first passenger train to use Amtrak’s new inland Cascades Line. Though the reason for the crash has not been determined, officials have said that speed was a major factor. At the time of the incident, the train was travelling at 80 miles per hour, well above the 30 mile per hour speed limit on the bridge. Furthermore, data from the train’s data recorder reported that the emergency brake was never manually activated, indicating that the train engineer made no effort to slow the train before the crash.
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They also believe that the engineer could have been using his cell phone, which is against Amtrak’s guidelines. Safety experts believe that the crash would have been prevented if positive train control was installed. With positive train control, a transponder is embedded into the rail line every two miles. When a train goes over it, the transponder alerts a separate transponder on the train of the speed limit for that area of track. If the engineer is speeding, an alarm goes off inside the engineer’s cab so that the engineer can apply the brakes in time. If the engineer does not apply the brakes in time, the train will brake automatically. Congress previously required that positive train control be mandatory for every rail line by the end of 2015, but later postponed the deadline to the end of 2018. Amtrak said in a statement that positive train control would not be active on the Cascades Line until the end of
They also believe that the engineer could have been using his cell phone, which is against Amtrak’s guidelines. Safety experts believe that the crash would have been prevented if positive train control was installed. With positive train control, a transponder is embedded into the rail line every two miles. When a train goes over it, the transponder alerts a separate transponder on the train of the speed limit for that area of track. If the engineer is speeding, an alarm goes off inside the engineer’s cab so that the engineer can apply the brakes in time. If the engineer does not apply the brakes in time, the train will brake automatically. Congress previously required that positive train control be mandatory for every rail line by the end of 2015, but later postponed the deadline to the end of 2018. Amtrak said in a statement that positive train control would not be active on the Cascades Line until the end of