Rail union says two-man crew would’ve averted 2015 train crash

BY JANET POST

PHILADELPHIA — The National Transportation Safety Board issued a report May 17 blaming Amtrak engineer Brandon Bostian’s “loss of situational awareness” for the Amtrak 188 passenger train crash here May 12, 2015. “His attention was diverted to an emergency situation with a nearby SEPTA train that had made an emergency stop after being struck by a projectile,” the report stated.

Eight passengers were killed and 200 injured when the train, headed from Washington, D.C., to New York, derailed on a curve while travelling more than twice the 50 mph speed limit.

Bostian, 33, an experienced and respected engineer, has been suspended without pay since the crash.

Minutes prior to the derailment two engineers operating trains nearby reported projectiles hitting their cabs — causing “radio chatter,” as the report put it. The engineer’s window on a SEPTA commuter train broke and an Amtrak Acela train window was shattered.

A pattern of cracks in the windshield of Amtrak 188 indicate it may also have been hit by a projectile. Bostian, who has no recollection of the crash, was found with a head gash.

The NTSB report ruled out mechanical failure, weather or track conditions as causes. Bostian tested negative for drugs and alcohol and was not using his cell phone.

Need two workers in train cab

Rail unionists, who have long called for two people in the train cab and “positive train control” measures to prevent excess speed, are protesting the effort to scapegoat the engineer.

“Terms like ‘the loss of situational awareness’ attempt to place blame on the locomotive engineer, without considering that any human being can be given too many tasks at any given time,” Dennis Pierce, national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said in a May 19 statement. “If a second engineer as necessitated in many areas of Amtrak had been present to assist the engineer of train 188 in managing the multiple tasks confronting him, there would have been no accident.”

“The NTSB ignores completely the fact that there was a single employee alone in the cab, with no one to assist him in a distracting situation,” said a May 17 statement by Railroad Workers United, a group that includes members of several rail unions.

“In the four most high-profile passenger train wrecks in recent years, ALL of them had just one employee alone in the cab of the locomotive. And it is quite likely that ALL of them could have been prevented had there been two employees in the cab.”

When the government-funded passenger line was created in the 1970s, Amtrak locomotive cabs were required to have at least an engineer and a fireman. But in the name of reducing costs, Amtrak has refused since 1983, when Congress ended the requirement, to crew Northeast Corridor train cabs with more than the engineer.

Rail unionists point to the need to install Positive Train Control — a system that automatically brakes a train that exceeds the speed limit if the engineer does not respond — on all tracks. PTC was not installed on the northbound rails at the time of the 188 crash. “Without question, the accident would not have occurred if a combination of PTC and two-person train crews were in use,” the BLET states.

Congress has moved back the deadline for rail companies to complete installation of PTC until at least 2018. The NTSB report recommended training engineers to manage “multiple concurrent tasks and prolonged, atypical situations” and reiterated demands for inward-outward facing cameras and recording devices in cabs, higher quality crash-resistant train windows and use of seat belts. For years, rail unions have opposed cab cameras, insisting what’s needed is two-person engine crews.

Related articles:
Unions striking Verizon broaden labor support
1,700 CWA members also strike AT&T in Calif.
California blueberry pickers strike, vote in union
On the Picket Line

Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home