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On the occasion of the deadly crash of two Washington D.C. Metro trains, which obviously happened on a curve as photos of the crash clearly show, I republish this investigative piece about the routine killings of humans by New York City Subway trains. As the media ponders the great “mystery” of this crash, you can wonder why a simple rule is not imposed: that the operator of a train maintain a speed only fast enough to control what is plain to see in front of the train, just as a person does in an automobile.

(After reading, see my recent 3/2010 update.)

DEAD MAN’S CURVE AND THE KILLING OF MARVIN FRANKLIN

By Mark Crane Motormanmark.com

A sample of notes on subway killings that I took while reviewing incident reports down in Brooklyn sitting up on the top floor of Metropolitan Transportation Authority-New York City Transit (MTA-NYCT)’s corporate tower:

• June 23, 2007 – 63 year-old passenger, Judy Desilva is killed as a northbound D train enters 155 St. station. The train operator reports as he entered “on a right hand curve” he observed the victim attempting to climb up from the roadbed, but could not stop his train in time.

• March 8, 2006 – A train operator on an inbound 7 train entering the 103^rd St./East Elmhurst station reports: “Entering 103 St. station around a curve, I noticed an object that appeared like a person and I immediately placed my train into emergency.” “Emergency” is full train-activated braking. The unidentified victim was killed.

• December 18, 2005 – A track worker walking the tracks discovers a body of a passenger under the third rail, south of Fordham Road on the D-line. After investigation, remains from the passenger are found on the undercarriages of six trains, each which in succession have run over the victim, not one train operator able to notice the body. The incident report states: “The area is very dark,” and “The only reason he spotted the body was that he smelt an odor of burnt flesh.”

I would say policies that involve life and death should have responsible oversight. However, I’ve found the truth is, after these types of killings, policy is questioned only internally. And almost always, subway killings are ignored by the media and investigated by the police with no more scrutiny than is afforded a common burglary.

On April 29, 2007, Track Worker Marvin Franklin was killed by a subway train that was moving within the posted speed limit. Due to the speed the train was traveling, the train operator did not–and could not–see Mr. Franklin in time to keep from hitting him and a coworker, (who survived,) even though the workers–both wearing reflective safety vests– were occupying the track before the train appeared.

Since this was the second track killing of an employee in less than a week, workers were outraged, and in the intense media glare that followed, MTA-NYCT, breaking with the usual routine of drying-compound scattering and paper shuffling, pledged to conduct an inquiry. By the end of July the six employees MTA had dressed up as investigators concluded the killing had been caused merely by rule violations.

The Board concluded the train operator had a view of the roadway that was “inhibited” by the curve, and that, considering conditions such as sight lines and allowable speed in the area the train operator “…could not have avoided making contact with the employees.” But this was not a revealing factor to this investigative board–it was only mentioned in the final report in an effort to acknowledge the train operator bore no responsibility.

Here, to determine the causes for a man’s killing by an MTA subway train, a board is assembled of only MTA employees, which in itself is absurd. Then, in the text of the board’s report they do find their way to the cause–the fact that the train was going too fast for the train operator to stop when he came in view of the men, but not one board member recognizes the significance of this main causal factor. It is never mentioned in the report again, as if the speed rating of the track is set by God, as remote from our control as the tides. In fact, none of the board’s recommendations address excessive speed ratings for curved track, nor do they address or even discuss the poor view afforded by these 25+ year-old trains.

Instead, the board suggests myriad rule changes to increase oversight of workers’ attention to following the rules that keep them away from moving trains.

DEAD MAN’S CURVE

There exists in the subway a condition I call “dead-man’s curve,” as subway trains are routinely operated, within the rated speed limits set by MTA-NYCT, over curved areas of track that do not allow a train operator to see a pre-existing obstruction on the roadbed in time to stop the train.

Subway trains weigh 400 tons, and so they take a long time to stop once the brakes are applied. If you are a train operator operating a train through one of these sections of track, you do not have the control necessary to avoid contact with whatever waits around the bend, whether it be a collapsed track worker, a passenger retrieving a dropped cellphone, or a terrorist-planted derailing device.

Take, for example, the express tracks on the Upper West Side’s #2 & 3 lines.  Those trains travel through 40 mph-rated curves–lightspeed to a train operator.  A passenger on the last car of that train knows as much as the train operator about what is just 25 feet ahead on the tracks. And, at full brake, that train will put about three 70-foot-long cars over any obstruction before coming to a rest.

TUNNEL VISION

Evidently, the MTA’s theory of operation is that accidents are avoided by control of what gets on the roadway, not by expecting a train operator to maintain the control necessary to be able to avoid an accident.

This is consistent with the fact that management neglects actual sight conditions in the operating cabs. On the older subway trains, which amount to a full 61% of NYCT’s rolling stock, cab windshields are scratched and dirty. Unlike the 1921 Dodge, the first automobile to have a windshield-washing feature, there is no convenient way to clean the hard-to-reach windshields of these trains.

Windshields stay dirty (MTA Subway crews are not even provided squeegees;) wipers are poor and only cover about 70% of the glass, even though above-ground operation amounts to 40% of the average run. (The windshield wipers on the “redbird” trains that were scrapped only five years ago had a comical rocker arm that required operators to manually swipe the windshield with a free hand, though subway operation is already two-handed–one of them on the brake handle, the other locked on the dead-man power controller.)

Further, modern boy scouts carry stronger flashlights than the headlights on these trains, and poor cab designs leave reflections from the train interior beaming off the inside of the windshields.

Here is a cellphone pic a train operator sent me showing the notorious cab door window reflection that train operators must endure, glowing off the inside of the windshield as a train enters a station with a curved platform. This pic was recorded off the same train class as the train that killed Track Worker Franklin.

Even on a straightaway, it is a challenge for a Train Operator to see the roadbed clearly for just 40 feet, let alone the distance one might see from, say, a car or a truck windshield. And on their way along structures above ground, these trains have no visors or sun-blindness protection.

Each of these conditions could easily be retrofit-corrected, and, in fact, each were corrected in the design of the newer trains MTA purchased ten years ago, but they’ve not lifted a finger to begin adjustments to the remaining and majority 30 year-old fleet they keep committed to.

Either the MTA brass has a romantic fantasy that train movement is an act of nature or they just don’t give a damn about the hapless and often anonymous victims that end up blood-on-the-tracks.

DRYING COMPOUND ON THE TRACKS

In flagrant violation of the law, MTA has refused to produce the majority of the records I’ve requested through the state’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL.)

Still, they did provide enough records for me to determine that four people are killed by being struck by NYC subway trains each month. MTA claims 42% of these killings are suicides, but refuses to show records to represent how such a determination was made. Even if the cases MTA claims to be suicides are suicides, and even if no suicides would have been avoided by correcting the issues I raise, that still would leave an average of 2 ½ killings a month that are not suicides—that might be prevented by simple, inexpensive policy and equipment alterations.

I have written to a wide array of public officials, each who might choose to accept some responsibility to address these issues, from the secretary of the federal Department of Transportation to Mayor Bloomberg to City Council President Christine Quinn to MTA CEO, Eliot Sander, and MTA-NYCT’s own President, Howard Roberts, and I have been ignored by each of them.

The fact is, there is no one responsible to oversee MTA’s response to track killings. There is no agency who accepts responsibility to even take a complaint that MTA subways are routinely slaughtering homeless people and transit workers without taking appropriate avoidance measures.

State officials are aware of this lack of oversight, and in 2007 they approved a Track Safety Bill (S4580/A8945 ), legislation that provides oversight by a 3-member panel made up of one MTA rep, one Albany rep, and one union rep. The panel, which applies only to worker safety, however, is assigned no responsibility for which it can be held accountable, as it operates only discretionarily and serves really just to quiet the one voice that might complain about subway killings–the Transport Worker’s Union, Local 100. By including one of the union’s vice presidents–a train operator who can be assumed to know as much about forensic accident investigation as any other average Joe–and paying his expenses, the board puts a loving arm around its union buddies. This panel also wields a double-whammy of chilling power against an employee seeking to report conditions the MTA or Local 100 would prefer stay under wraps.

You see, the union does not have a dog in the fight against subway killings. The union is there to protect members against discipline, not to promote public safety. For every subway worker killed by a subway train, there are 125 subway users killed, and for every person killed by a train, there are a hefty number of possible cases of disciplinary action against active union members who could be blamed for failing rules in a way that contributed to the killing (ie: flaggers, the train operator, signal operators, etc….) MTA wields a notoriously punitive management, which, according to Local 100 President Roger Toussaint, had 15,000 outstanding disciplinary cases in 2005 among a worker pool of 33,000.

A good example of the effete nature of union participation in oversight occurred during the investigation into the death of Marvin Franklin. When that 6-member board piled into the train operator’s cab, they noted only that the windshield was “clean,” not noting the large reflection that is standard in that train’s class and exists on the same windshield. They concluded the headlights “were on,” but made no measurement of their strength. The union rep who was the only non-MTA executive on the board–that same train operator I mentioned before–did not make a peep.

You may remember wide reporting of the board’s findings, slamming blame on supervision, but leaving Local 100 members virtually unscathed.

Take a look at the report. You can download a pdf file of it HERE. It carefully aims its investigation to a very limited area: the work site. The board is not assigned to investigate the matter as a subway killing, but as a work site killing. All recommendations have to do with work sites. Conditions this killing shared with those four deaths a-month I mentioned earlier are carefully excised from consideration at the board’s conception. In fact, MTA has never conducted an inquiry into a killing of a subway user of the type of the two they conducted into the deaths of the two track workers. Considering the documents I viewed, it seems MTA merely fills out a few forms and turns the page.

MY CONCLUSIONS

In response to my FOIL request, MTA-NYCT generated a list of all track killings between January 2002 through October 2007, with notes for each–a list of 301 killings (you download a pdf of this list HERE.) They then let me inspect a stack of carefully selected documents–mostly incident reports–from an apparently random selection of 23 track killings (while their Deputy FOIL Officer sat beside me, watching over my shoulder trying to read the notes I was taking.) In addition, I had access to the detailed investigations of two train killings of track workers occurring in the same week in April, 2007, Mr. Franklin’s killing being one of those. I combined these with the 23 case files to make a unit of 25 cases to survey. MTA response to my FOIL requests took so many months and provided such a small proportion of the requested documents that a comprehensive survey of subway killings leading to today was impossible. Still, the documents provided me with enough information to indicate a survey with a free reign of documents would be likely to produce the following conclusions:

1. Subway killings occur at a much higher rate on sharply curved areas of track, even though such areas of track make up only a minute percentage of system lay. By my best estimation, curved areas adjacent to passenger platforms only account for about 25% of subway stations, and, obviously, a much smaller percentage of system lay (train tracks need to get to where they’re going, so they generally are laid as flat and straight as possible.)

In my survey, 48% of the killings occurred on areas of track where the train operator’s view of the road is limited by a curve. As would be expected, when killings MTA designates to be suicides are excluded, the part of the sample occurring in such areas goes up to 60%.

Curved track is speed rated throughout the system with the purpose of minimizing train vibration and mechanical damage to the equipment, but clearly no effort has been made to limit speeds to allow the train operator to anticipate track condition. In curved areas of particularly high speed, no apparent efforts have been made to limit access of personnel or trespassers.

Though every year passengers are killed by pitching their heads out over the tracks, looking in the wrong direction for approaching trains, high-speed-rated and/or curved platforms feature no protections for passengers straying too close to the platform edge.

Though MTA-NYCT has agreed to retrieve fallen items from the tracks for passengers, it provides no such notice, as it easily could, in-station, on the wall over the tracks or, better yet, between the running rails. Every year, passengers are killed retrieving their property in-station.

2. Subway killings are much more likely when the train involved is one of the older variety with the conditions I have described that limit/obscure/distract from a train operator’s view of the road ahead.

In my survey, 88% of the killings were caused by the older trains, though they only account for 61% of the active fleet.

Most train operators assert the older trains generally have better or, at best, equivalent braking ability when compared with the newer trains. In fact, in rainy/snowy weather, the newer trains have serious, MTA-acknowledged braking problems that the older trains just never experience. Understanding this would lead one to expect more killings to result from operation of the newer trains, not the older trains.

I wonder whether a New York City accident on a par to the D.C. smash-up will be necessary before MTA New York City Transit wakes up and changes its reckless policies.

(See 3/2010 update.)