CTA Tattler

Celebrated with yet another derailment....

"The 15-horsepower locomotive pulled a passenger car at a stately 9 mph."

That's faster than the L goes today!

Wow, a trial run in 1883...

Has it arrived at the destination yet?

"CTA Red Line train derails; 1 injury reported"
June 3, 2008

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-red-line-derail-web-jun04,0,6331985.story

FIRE HUBERMAN!!!

I was gonna say but UC said it for me :)

Its definitely faster than my trip from grand to lake...lol

KevinB

How many times have you been on a L riding over bad tracks with the train bouncing from side to side, sometimes quite violently? I used to be able to just dismiss any safety concerns I had while on rough tracks as "this is how it is." With the number of derailments lately, now I'm thinking, "wow, this train could derail at any point, it has and it will happen again." Scary scary.

The derailment happened at the crossover just north of 95th station, i.e. another switching problem like the Green Line. This is a result of operating error (maybe not the operator's fault, could be control center's). Bouncing side to side is not indicative of an imminent derailment. Railroad engineers are quite aware of the various forces at play in a railroad; if the track is at all unsafe, the area is slow-zoned, no ifs and buts about it.

Of course, so many switching errors leading to derailments is troubling as well. The past few have happened at low speeds; a mal-operated switch at high speed of course could be disastrous. So there are certainly things to worry about; but my point is that seemingly strong lateral forces side-to-side while the train is at high speed is actually not one of them.

Regarding the above comment, the "Engineers" may be aware of the lateral foces, but how many work for the CTA? Not too many, mostly hubermans and daley friends. Good luck to all taking the El. At least when the bus breaks down (happens about once every two-three months) I get off and walk a block back and catch the next one. It's just a matter of time before another high-speed derailment takes place (like the one on the Blue line between Grand and Clark/Lake). Did they settle the lawsuits from that fiasco just yet?

That reminds me of something else I've been wondering about. Sometimes I notice, when the L train is stopped at the station, that it seems to be leaning slightly to one side. I think it's in the Sheridan station that I notice this. Are the tracks tilted to one side for a reason--does it have to do with the curve?

C C Writer: this is called superelevation. it's intentional and allows the train to negotiate the curve better - on a perfectly flat curve, the flange of the outside wheel would always be in contact with the rail, causing wear on both the wheel and the rail (and a really uncomfortable ride). superelevation also enables higher speeds by counteracting the tendency to tip to the outside of a curve. this is key.

The story in the Trib about the Red Line derailment is sort of interesting, and raises a lot of questions.

It's interesting to note that the TO was only 23 years old, and last week's Green Line TO had more years of service than this kid was alive.

It sounds like the kid got sloppy, and tried to cover-up his mistake, hoping that doing so would make it okay. Of course, it was too late to undo it so easily.

Trying to undo/cover-up a bonehead mistake is certainly something we all consider. Of course in hind-sight it's easy to see the only way to fix this error involved getting someone who could reset the switch before moving the train. But did he not seek help because he was an inexperienced kid, or did he not seek help because of some institutional reason? Or some combination of the two?

Off the top of my head, I think that some of the worst rail transit accidents have involved inattentive operators who missed a signal or stop, and decided on their own to back-up. It should be drilled into even the most inexperienced operator that you'll get in more trouble for backing up without permission than you will if you immediately admit you made a mistake.

God help us if it turns out that he did have permission to try this move on his own. That would be even worse.

Backing up in a yard is dangerous enough. Backing up on a revenue track is something that should never be done even if you know the next train behind you is 20 minutes away. And backing up after approaching a switch should never be done unless you can check your wheels to confirm that they have not entered the switch.

Just so many obvious mistakes here. And that's what gets my attention. Are we talking about one kid with horrible judgement? Or is there more to the story? And if it was just him, how did he pass training?

Thank goodness this happened where it did, and when it did so questions can be asked without a body count clouding the issues.

"ENgineers",

The repeated derailments are troubling, but not for engineering reasons (yet). The 2006 Blue Line derailment was because the tracks were out of gauge: too far apart. Of course, that will cause a derailment. The track should have been slow-zoned, and it turns out the inspectors and their managers were derelict in duty.

But as long as the gauge is set to the right level and curves are banked (see Steven Cranen's post) you'd be surprised how much lateral force a train can deal with.

I have a solution, fire Huberman and his mis-management team. This is getting ridiculous. Now I blame Huberman. If he is still around on July 4th, I will start blaming Daley. Huberman knows nothing about transit, nor is he a leader. He's a gofer.

Everyone blaming Huberman is really starting to piss me off. He's been on the job for maybe a year and a half and already everyone is laying into him. What about the disaster he inherited from Frank Kruesi? He's doing his damnedest to clean it up and all anyone can do is bitch and moan that he's not doing enough. Kruesi's mismanagement is institutionally ingrained and will take at least a couple more years to weed out.

All of these derailments, accidents, etc., have been caused by the last 10-15 years of neglect, not the past year or so.

Tread:

Obviously, Huberman should be riding every train in the operator's cab to make sure no mistakes are made, while simultaneously checking every foot of the system's trackage each day.

How is an operator passing a red signal caused by 10-15 years of neglect?

So let's, for arguement sake, say Frank was to blame for everything. Well, then shouldn't a President with some experience in the business be the logical choice to come in and fix things? Why hire a political hack when there are problems to be solved?

What has happened in the past year is the CTA has focused on communication. Not necessarily communicating the information we want, but rather to communicate the message they want us to hear. Ron is one great spin doctor!

A year has been more than enough to prove that Ron is not up to the job of building a better transit system. But he is up to the job of convincing us that he already has built a better transit system.

I'm sure that if you need help defending him that someone on his staff will be able to provide you with a list of talking points, and a Powerpoint to go with them.

Kruesi is responsible for the motorman passing a red signal because he's the one that put most of the managers in place that are still there today.
The culture of the CTA is broken, it was broken by Kreusi & corporate cultures can't be repaired overnight or even in 18 months.
Kreusi, which in effect means Daley destroyed the CTA.
The question is why?

Jesus, guys. Neither Kruesi nor Huberman is responsible for the moterman passing through a red signal. The motorman is. Why is there always so much of a need to blame those at the top for every little thing? They cannot control what goes on every second of the day, especially on a huge system with thousands of employees. If there are systematic problems (such as, obviously, the blue line derailment a few years ago caused by bad track maintance procedures) then those at the top are to blame. But not little things that result from one employee doing something wrong. Do you blame the CEO if you see garbage on the floor of a Starbucks once? I've never understood the tendancy for people to always blame the top guy for everything. For example, I thought it was truly bizarre that everyone blamed the commissioner of the Chicago Police Department for that one cop who beat up a bartender. Everyone acted as if it was Phil Cline's fault that there was, shockingly(sarcasm), a bad employee out of the thousands and thousands of cops. And that was apperently the catalyst that caused him to lose his job. Maybe he deserved to lose his job, but not for that reason. Why do so many people so lack common sense? The head of an organization is not a magician who can control all his employees actions by a remote control at all times of the day. If that were possible, no organization would need any employees at all.

I do, however, tend to agree with Rusty about Huberman. While he seems to have done some good things (like improve bus reliability), he does strike me as increadibly political. I think it is pretty unfortunate that he created a new position of "Vice President of Customer Communication" and then got the newspapers to act as if this would solve all communication problems. The reality is, if anything, communication with passengers has gotten worse. The signs informing people about reroutes are always extreamly disorganized around the stations. They have often cancelled reroutes (or changed the times) but did not take down or update the old signs. Huberman was also obviously attempting to impress everybody at the detriment of the CTA when he praised Blagojevich's senior free ride manuever. And, of course, his removal of the Grand Theft Auto ads was just nuts.

And has anyone noticed that they are no longer rerouting the red line and the loop elevated trains at the same time after many people on here (including myself) pointed out how idiotic that was? On the website, they had declared that they were going to be doing the loop work almost every weeknight and many weekends. It seems that Huberman was in a bit of a rush to impress everyone that he was getting the work done (even though there were almost no slow zones on the loop tracks and the trains are not going very fast anyway since the stations are so close together) that he didn't realize that scheduling them at such an inconvienant period made no sense. So it took people critisizing this to realize that he would impress everyone more by apperently slowing down or cancelling the work. And I find it interesting that there are now virtually no slow zones on the brown line between Belmont and Western before any of the promised work to elimanate the so-called slow zones in the area has begun. Almost all of the only area that had been slow zoned on the website's most recent slow zone report(at least northbound) between Addison and Irving Park has suddenly disappeared without any of Huberman's magic to take the credit. Apperently they were just in need of some small mainteance. But if this work does occur (and inconveniences everyone at the same time as the red line work and the three tracking) he will undoubtadly say that he has removed huge slow zones through the entire area.

The scariest track is the Red or Brown line when it goes around that corner by the Merchandise Mart. I have been on that and the train goes too fast for that turn. You feel like your on a roller coaster. When I took that train, I was sitting down and peering out the window, noticing that it was really a long way down if the train would tip over. And when that train makes that turn you can feel yourself tipping a bit too much for comfort and feeling safe. Ya'll know which turn Im talking about, right?

that's why I am so glad that I never had to take the El to work each day.

PookieMarie:

There are guardrails on the outer edge of he wheels around every corner. Basically, they sandwich the wheel flanges between the rail and the guardrail, so that they cannot ride up the rail and slip off. The likelihood of a train tipping over is extremely low.

Huberman has had two years to improve Operator training and put safety mechanisms in the trains. What has he focusing on instead? Bogus mystery shopper programs and 100's of Powerpoints. Huberman couldn't even maintain the crummy status quo, operations have gotten worse since he has been in place. Huby is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic and he is in way over his head. Huby needs to go back to driving a bus instead of mismanaging 2,000 of them. Daley better realize this soon or the consequences may be catastrophic. Is it that hard to find someone with transportation experience? Or do all the quality people work in private business and not government? That what it seems like when it comes to the CTA.

Of course all the "quality" people work in the private sector. Why not? Salaries are much higher and the perks connected to the job are much greater. There are many truly quality individuals working in the public sector, but they are very often encumbered by behemoth bureaucracies that limit personal efficacy. There are many people with many years of transportation management experience that could be hired to run the CTA if Daley weren't such a manipulative control freak. He will never hire anyone who might possibly challenge him. Let's not forget Kreusi had transit experience at the federal level and look where 10 years of that acumen got us. No one with solid transit experience is going to step into a situation where they have to be completely beholden, so the CTA will continue to be a shadow of what it could be. While Huberman may be doing the best he can, it's not good enough and that's sad. It's got to suck to be him right now.

Unindicted Co-conspirator, I agree with you!

Yes, Unindicted Co-conspirator, let's blame the motorman and not the higher ups that are responsible for training their employees. Daley doesn't want the CTA to be the deathtrap that it is, he wants it to succeed. He put friends in charge hoping it would work, but it hasn't. It's time to move on and dump the CTA management and find qualified people.

Prototype is not spelled correctly