Train derailments occur roughly 1k times a year in the United States

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/02/07/ohio-train-derailment-toxic-impacts/

by Ballu • 3 years ago

30 19 3 years ago

washingtonpost.com

canadianfella• 3 years ago

Many are minor. Train cars can derail without even tipping over.

Source: I’ve helped clean up many derailments.

ragingrobot3• 3 years ago

Unfortunately this fact is buried half way into the article.

From personal experience in commuter rail, derailments happen more often than one would like, but most are not severe enough to attract attention.

A single axle off the rail counts as derailment, and may get reported as such for statistical purposes. This can happen frequently on a siding or in a storage yard. Where there's no significant damage, the car body is lifted, the trucks replaced on the track, and once it is all back together, inspected.

The FRA stats linked don't seem to break down derailment causes from what I can see. To be frank, while that number looks significant, when one considers how many miles of track there is in this country and how many miles the rolling stock travels (bad track is just as guilty as bad rolling stock), it could be far worse.

Natsu• 3 years ago

Yeah, usually when we think of "derailment" we think of a big accident that makes the news, not the technically accurate "one axle came off the track" definition, even if the latter may be something more important to look at in terms of preventing the big accidents that people are concerned about.

Kon-Peki• 3 years ago

The table below the stats in the link you mention also seem to indicate that most incidents are in rail yards, though I am really not sure how to interpret that table.

Are there comparable stats for elsewhere in the world? Is 1000 derailments per year a lot?

ragingrobot3• 3 years ago

I had been thinking along those lines originally, but it just states "yard accidents" That number was near the derailment stat, but there can be other types of incidents in yards, such as collisions. So, they are as far as I can tell, "mutually inclusive".

fransje262• 3 years ago

To be frank, while that number looks significant, when one considers how many miles of track there is in this country and how many miles the rolling stock travels (bad track is just as guilty as bad rolling stock), it could be far worse.

No, that's putting your head in the sand. Per ton-mile it's already far, far worse than in Europe & Russia.

https://i.imgur.com/CrzErQx.png

Taken from: https://d-rail-project.eu/IMG/pdf/DR-D1-1-F1-Summary_Report_...

ragingrobot3• 3 years ago

We lag behind Europe and Russia on other things as well.

I wasn't trying in any way to bury my head in the sand, I know for sure things can be better.

I opined looking from inside and knowing maintenance. I have seen bent track spikes and bolts reused (on mainline track!), rotten ties ignored, tracks sitting on ballast with nothing securing them. I have witnessed for years at a facility where the tracks had spread wider than gauge due to rotted wooden ties, and the solution was "just go real slow," in order to avoid shutting down the track and doing proper repairs.

fatnoah• 3 years ago

That was a fascinating read. For the period reported, US derailments, while still way higher than in other places, have declined 60%, whereas they've been pretty constant elsewhere. A huge factor seems to be the weight of US rail car loads and train sizes, which are substantially heavier and longer than those elsewhere in the world.

Ballu• 3 years ago

Thanks.. fascinating read. We have all the data and we know the issues, any reason these things are not tackled?

hunglee2• 3 years ago

is this an uptick in instances or simply heightened media awareness of it? Obviously any derailment is bad, but it would be useful to know where on trend this is, to know exactly how bad

thagerty• 3 years ago

Translation: We're never going to address rail union safety concerns.

rootusrootus• 3 years ago

Is that accurate? How many people are killed in the US every year by trains, versus (for example) Europe, which ought to have better unions? Should be higher in the US, I assume?

garyfirestorm• 3 years ago

How many people commute by train in EU everyday compared to US?

fransje262• 3 years ago

Let's compare the death rate of US astronauts per shuttle flight to the death rate of -say- Haitians astronauts per shuttle flight.

Oh, I'll be damned, said Haitians have a death rate of 0. They're clearly much safer. Even without unions.

etempleton2• 3 years ago

The US has expansive freight rail networks, but they are in poor repair as the operators, such as Norfolk Southern and CSX, cut costs even if it impacts safety. This has been a major complaint of rail works for decades, but little has been done.

There was a bill to help prevent just the type of accident that happened in Ohio by requiring electronically controlled brakes on cars carrying toxic / volatile chemicals, but it was repealed by the Trump administration.

Grimburger• 3 years ago

This was bearing failure, it had nothing to do with the brakes and Trump hasn't been in office for over 2 years.

etempleton2• 3 years ago

In the event of a derailment, electronic brakes can prevent car pile ups like this one by automatically stopping the individual cars behind the car that derails. Brakes are not the root cause of this derailment, but they could have prevented it from becoming a catastrophe. Would it have changed the outcome here? I don't know, but most major train derailments are preventable with better maintenance / more modern safety features.

bane• 3 years ago

It's hard to describe to the rest of the world how uncomfortable passenger rail in the US is to people not from the US. It's not "European levels but less availability". I've thought a lot about it and the best analogy I can come to is that if "German Autobahn" is the pinnacle of road engineering...and "zero roads whatsoever" is the bottom of road engineering...US passenger rail is closer to "unpaved and maybe gravel road" level of road engineering.

I've personally spent hundreds of hours on U.S. Amtrak trains in my youth. Truly, there is no equivalent in the US to the Shinkansen or even the Korean KTX or the French TGV. The Accela is a shadow of it's global peers. At it's absolute best, the American passenger rail system is the difference between being show via cannon to your destination and....maybe cargo train elsewhere. If the Shinkansen is something that fell out of a future alternate reality, the American rail system is a big box road truck, with a flat tire driving on an unpaved mountain pass with regular rock falls.

We once took a train from Rome to Florence, we sat across from a lovely elderly Scottish couple who thought the entire ride was entirely normal. We thought (this is before experiencing the magic future that is the Shinkanesen), that it was the most civilized travel experience we had ever encountered. We had a nice chat, a brief snack, and then were off to see the glories of the Renaissance.

My wife is Korean, but immigrated to the US before the KTX was a well known system. I dream of a future world where the entire planet has at least some level of passenger dedicated rail.

The cargo-first ownership policy is among the stupidest passenger rail policies I've ever encountered anywhere on the planet outside of heavy coal mining regions.

euroderf• 3 years ago

Hedge fund buys asset, extracts ALL value, runs asset into the ground, leaving a shell. This is news ??

Train derailments occur roughly 1k times a year in the United States

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