Those Caltrain accidents seem to happen all the frigging time [1]. I'm not sure much can be done about them, but every time I hear about one my heart sinks a little lower.
Is there any obvious thing that I'm missing that could be done?
Most subway stations in Singapore have walls with doors between the train and the platform. The doors open only after the train arrived and stopped. (It's similar to elevator doors.)
Makes it impossible to fall or jump on the tracks.
Unlike that system, Caltrain runs at ground level for >100km through built-up areas, with many (hundreds of?) road crossings. It would be extremely expensive to make the tracks completely inaccessible to pedestrians.
I do think there's something wrong with our entire government-paid-infrastructure-system where we pay vastly more than we receive in value when any work is done.
If we got fair value for infrastructure projects, I'd like to see a huge amount more transportation, energy, etc. infrastructure in the US -- a lot of what we have is outdated or insufficient. I don't really care if it is government or private industry, but that it costs vastly more to get the same work done in the US than in other places contributes to substandard infrastructure.
- The train doors need to line up closely with the glass doors, for obvious reasons. Commuter trains in the US are not capable of stopping so precisely. Usually the trains would have to support some kind of computerized stop-assist in order to be precise enough to pull this off.
- Said stop-assist wouldn't just be a train feature, it would involve communication with the track, and therefore upgrades to the entire signaling system. Many systems have this "for free" by virtue of being built later. The actual track Caltrain runs on pre-dates Caltrain itself by a wide margin.
- You need to run a unified, homogeneous vehicle fleet so the doors are in the same places on all trains. This is the problem with safety doors in large legacy train systems (see: NYC, Chicago) where due to legacy factors there are many vastly different trains all running on the same track.
A lot of non-trivial problems where the only solution is vast capital spending.
For some greater detail: AAR regulations require that trains that run on lines which include freight traffic meet certain weight and crash standards. US freight cars have the highest standard axle loads in the world, so any train that runs where it can hit one must be able to withstand a head-on collision. The sole exception to the rule is when all freight traffic runs at a particular time when no passenger trains are running, with derails (a safeguard) in place to keep any freight from making it on to the tracks outside the window.
Caltrain runs on the old Southern Pacific line, which includes several on-line customers and a few branch lines. Due to the way the line is made, there is no way to have the required separation without significant upgrades.
Finally, stop-assist is now doable via GPS signals and other lineside equipment, removing the need for signalling upgrades. However, it also requires either lighter equipment or disc brakes on all cars along with equipment in the cab. Both are quite costly, and always require a homogenous fleet with the exact same door configuration.
TL;DR -- it doesn't have to be difficult or expensive.
It's not as hard as you make it out to be. I live in Japan where these (very effective) safety doors have been rolling out for more than a decade.
I don't think there is any need for computerized stop-assist. On at least some of the trains here, and I think most, it is up to the driver top stop the train. Once in a great while, they accidentally overshoot by a foot or two, apologize on the loudspeaker, and back the train up to align it properly.
There is not need for a homogeneous vehicle fleet, either. In fact, in Japan just about every line gets a unique train design (which does seem weirdly inefficient, but whatever). At first they we in fact designing different safety doors to match every train. But later, to cut costs and make it possible to have safety gates at stations featuring trains with different door configurations stop, they just designed wider safety gate that can open more on one side than the other.
This brings to mind another simple optimization -- if your trains really suck so much ass that the driver is unable to stop them with reasonable precision, just make the safety gates six feet (or ten feet, whatever) wider than the train doors. (Easier if you make them lift up to open rather than opening laterally.) There is no need for the safety doors to be the same width as the train doors.
They also don't have to be expensive and made of glass. A cheaper gate consisting of a few strong bars is nearly impossible for a human to accidentally fall through.
Finally, it doesn't have to be a track feature. Some of the ones here are essentially the same as an American style garage door opener. When the operator/conductor opens the train doors, he then opens the safety gates.
> It's not as hard as you make it out to be. I live in Japan where these (very effective) safety doors have been rolling out for more than a decade.
Japan has one of the largest passenger rail industries with massive capital investment. They are quite good at station design and engineering and I definitely applaud their use of enclosed platforms - which ironically came about more out of a desire to reduce wasted energy on air-conditioned subway stations ventilating into the tunnels.
> I don't think there is any need for computerized stop-assist. On at least some of the trains here, and I think most, it is up to the driver top stop the train. Once in a great while, they accidentally overshoot by a foot or two, apologize on the loudspeaker, and back the train up to align it properly.
Lighter trains can do so manually, but on the majority of lines in the JR network commuter trains and shinkansen have a computerized stop-assist that will get the train within a few inches of the desired point. Some lines do not use the computerized stop-assist (Yamanote, Chuo, etc.) as they are primarily above ground with longer platforms.
> There is not need for a homogeneous vehicle fleet, either. In fact, in Japan just about every line gets a unique train design (which does seem weirdly inefficient, but whatever). At first they we in fact designing different safety doors to match every train. But later, to cut costs and make it possible to have safety gates at stations featuring trains with different door configurations stop, they just designed wider safety gate that can open more on one side than the other.
In Japan, the majority of trains use very similar door configurations. They either have end-cap doors, or 2-4 doors with even distribution. Most commuter lines with the enclosed platforms employ a single type of rolling stock on a dedicated platform.
The Keisei railway and other private roads have platform gates, which are a bit different. Those are waist height and are simply to keep people from stepping to the edge when express trains pass. I think you are referring to these, and they are definitely useful, but see my final point as to why they aren't feasible for Caltrain.
> This brings to mind another simple optimization -- if your trains really suck so much ass that the driver is unable to stop them with reasonable precision, just make the safety gates six feet (or ten feet, whatever) wider than the train doors. (Easier if you make them lift up to open rather than opening laterally.) There is no need for the safety doors to be the same width as the train doors.
They don't suck ass, they are just quite heavy. A Caltrain rolling stock set is 160 tons for the locomotive and then 20 tons per car (est.) That is far, far heavier than any JR trainset in operation and much harder to stop. You don't get electro-pneumatic brakes to stop every car at exactly the same rate - instead you have dynamic brakes and air. Try to stop that with some precision :P
In the end, the main sticking point isn't the rolling stock anyway. The problem is that the platforms are open and anyone can walk on at anytime. There is no way in current Caltrain stations to restrict access with any degree of certainty. To change this would require grade separation and massive overhauls of each station at the very least.
Japanese trains exclusively use raised platforms and 99%+ of stations have restricted access (with only rural/flag stops being the exception). This makes it easy to use some sort of safety mechanism to restrict access to the tracks. Trains in the US are far different and don't really fit the same mold, unless you get to the Northeast and ride the NYC commuter trains (MTA, LIRR, ConnDot, etc.)
I have always felt enclosed platforms are necessary to move passenger rail forward in the US, but they are a long ways off - and likely will never happen regardless.
The same system is used in Hong Kong. Trains rock up to fully enclosed stations (even for above ground) behind a perspex barrier. Doors line up with the doors in the perspex and both open at the same time.
Are most of these cases suicides, or accidents of some kind? If they're accidents, it seems like a few cheap IR sensors deployed in the tunnels near each station could be used to trigger an emergency stop for any approaching trains.
If they're suicides then there's no point spending a lot of money trying to prevent them, at least not at such a late stage.
Emergency stops are a big deal for trains, especially loaded freight trains. False alarms (from animals, or people jaywalking across the tracks) would create a whole 'nother set of problems.
However I believe there is at least another solution doable for commuter trains in the us. It is not that hard and not that expensive to have a sliding panel who opens in front of the doors.
But what probably matters here is that cost of a dead human < cost of new system to protect human lives. So as long as this is the case they won't change it.
Caltrain trains has 2 types of cars, with doors at different locations, which makes this solution not trivial. I guess you could have 2 sets of doors, to open depending on the car model, but even that has the alignment problem.
Since there would normally be no one there except when a train is present, it should be easy for whoever monitors the security cameras to spot such people.
A large portion of Caltrain is at ground level with streets, such as at the station at Mountain View. You could easily walk around such barriers by walking on the road and into the wrong side...
Caltrain is a train, not a subway. I don't know the technical difference, but the trains are bigger and heavier, and the tracks are not elevated or really separated from their surrounding cities, and the "stations" are really "platforms." In other words, the suicide threat is along the entire length of the route, from SF to San Jose.
Sadly yes. The trains that caltrain has are not able to stop within the 12" requirement for automatic platform doors. In addition the platforms are 3-4x longer than in Singapore (I've been there).
Still a bit shorter than Caltrain platforms, but very close. Japan has very long enclosed platforms as well.
It isn't that you can't enclose a long platform - more that it is both costly and requires raised platforms with grade separation.
Caltrain stations are not designed to restrict platform access to ticketed passengers and anyone can just walk to the end of the platform and go around. Subways and many raised-platform stations on high-density lines are designed to restrict platform access in such a way that it is difficult to get around and hop on the tracks.
Of course, not much will stop a very determined person - it is more designed to stop accidents.
The walls without doors (open at the door area) might be simple. But walls with doors does not seem as simple.
If someone gets trapped between the doors, then the train should be disabled from moving. You see it most often - people dashing in at the last moment getting themselves or their backpack getting stuck. The station doors also have to synchronize with the train doors. Else say, the train door opens, you step out but the station door does not open. Now the train is ready to move...
Agreed. We have them in Paris at a minority of stations. Hopefully this will eventually be ubiquitous and not having them, like elevators with no internal doors, will seem extremely outdated.
(Yes, this must be costly, but it's not just relevant to prevent suicides. I have once been at the very brink of a subway platform in Paris without that did not have such equipment, along with a huge crowd of other people who were eager to get in the train. Anyone behind could just push anybody on the (electrified) tracks, and if panic were to break out for any reason it would have been a disaster.)
Are Singapore trains indoor and/or on highway bridge? Most caltrains stations are open platform. Not sure if you have ever been on a caltrain, it runs between suburban area so anyone can just lay herself on the track at any point.
However, there are some above ground sections, and I think the stations there don't have walls. It's been ten years since I've been there, so things might have changed...
For every station platform, there's half a dozen pedestrian-accessible grade crossings. There's nothing you could really do without rebuilding the whole thing.
Common sense 101 teaches that this can only be true after some point.
In the case of this particular "101", that point is not yet met. However, when the cost of 6.4 miles of single-lane is $72 million, it does get a bit pricey. [1]
They are planning to add another TOLL/HOV lane for most of the corridor, and open up the existing HOV to TOLL. You might get to drive it in 2018! But I don't see cost estimates for that one yet. [2]
Curious, is the opposite true? Maybe we should drop the 101 down to one lane, and the speed limit to 25 for good measure? Then there would be practically no traffic at all, as everyone would avoid it like the plague. Problem solved!
...or, you know, we could just fix the underlying social injustices that cause so many people to seek to end their lives that it causes friggin delays in my busy little life. Those jerks.
I'm sympathetic to the issue of social equality, but depression resulting in suicide is not a rational process. Addressing class issues will not eradicate this problem. The wealthy become depressed and suicidal too, for example: http://www.ibtimes.com/eric-salvatierra-killed-caltrain-payp...
Yeah, but that just means that those with mental illness -- hi, btw -- probably require more treatment than they've been getting.
A story. Up here in Vancouver, the police recently released a study showing that the thing we did in the nineties -- ending welfare and closing institutions for the severely mentally ill -- actually cost us vastly more, because the police ended up doubling as nurses/counsellors/social workers, and the additional training cost vastly more than the original division of labour.
What is the annual cost of leaving the hurt hanging?
You don't find it fascinating, you're just being an asshole. You took a general problem and made it about yourself - because for whatever reason you've decided your interpretation of the problem rules above all else, and everyone else is blind uncaring sheeple for thinking otherwise. And now you're playing armchair psychiatrist for everyone who disagreed.
By the way, I think Larry is a genius and a comedian in your situation because what the fuck else can you say to a blanket statement like "People keep killing themselves"?
Is pointing out an ethical blind spot really 'being an asshole'? And yes, I'm playing armchair psychiatrist, because the only alternative is to think less of people. I'd rather understand them than judge. And you?
HN will mature as a platform for discourse when it becomes less of a concentrator of one particular worldview and more of a reactor of many.
Oh, and also? The black humour was intentional. It is charming that you took it to be your discovery, but I will leave the obvious speculations on the table. While furiously glancing at them.
The downvotes are for your assumption that (1) people don't care about addressing underlying causes of suicide, and (2) people only want to fix the problem because it is inconvenient to them, and not for the sake of the people killing themselves.
It seems that you have extrapolated both these things from the fact that someone has proposed a technical solution to suicide, which is completely illogical. There is strong evidence that removing popular, easy methods of suicide actually reduce suicide rates.
No, my response is on evaluating the character of people that immediately leap to a technical solution without asking (a) who the solution benefits (apart from some a dodgy mention of an absent, undocumented statistic)
(b) whether there is a technical approach to the problem that might be a bit less Soviet than putting up a wall to keep the jumpers in. For example, better funding for health care.
Most Caltrain deaths are suicides, and its hard to stop people who stand on a platform, waiting for a Baby Bullet to pass through. That's the reality of having stations skipped.
And it's not just at stations. Four high school students committed suicide at the same crossing in Palo Alto in 2009, so a security guard was hired to patrol it [1]. There is still a guard there today.
Caltrain tracks go through high stress areas in the Bay Area where more people are prone to suicide. It's a readily available mean nearby to get it done quickly. I've known a friend of a friend done it after years of depression. A number of students in Palo Alto high school have done it on the track. Palo Alto high school is very competitive and students are under enormous pressure from parents to do well.
I notice in the BART stations, there's sort of a lip on the platform edge that (if you have time) you can tuck yourself into so you avoid being hit. Do the Caltrain stations not have this? Of course, it assumes that the chap who was on the tracks initially, was there by accident.
[1]: 12 a year on average apparently: http://kalw.org/post/caltrain-engineer-talks-about-coping-tr...