(The following story by Doug Irving appeared on The Orange County Register website on October 23, 2009.)
ORANGE, Calif. — Amtrak engineers would take the controls of the region’s Metrolink trains under a contract now under consideration – replacing a private company whose employee was in the driver’s seat for a deadly crash last fall.
The proposed contract would pay Amtrak $28 million in its first year to provide crews for the commuter trains that run through Orange County and across Southern California. Rail riders would see Amtrak crews on the trains starting next July, after Metrolink’s existing contract with a company called Connex Railroad LLC expires.
A Connex engineer, Robert Sanchez, was at the controls of a Metrolink train that crashed head-on into a freight train in Chatsworth last September. Federal investigators later determined that Sanchez was text-messaging on his cell phone and failed to stop at a red light just before the crash.
Sanchez and 24 other people died and more than 130 people were injured.
Connex employees have been running Metrolink trains since 2005, and the company defended its safety record after the Chatsworth crash. It said earlier this year that it would not seek an extension of its contract with Metrolink.
Metrolink’s board approved a memorandum of understanding with Amtrak on Friday, a move that spokesman Francisco Oaxaca described as “one more step along the way.” The memorandum outlines the main points of the proposed contract, he said, but is far from a final agreement.
The tentative deal would cover at least four years, but Metrolink has not yet established how much it would be worth after the first year. The current contract with Connex is worth $24 million a year.
Oaxaca said he does not anticipate a final contract vote by Metrolink’s board until the end of this year.
Amtrak – which operated Metrolink trains from 1992 to 2005 – trumpeted the tentative agreement in a press release. Its president, Joseph H. Boardman, said in the release that he appreciates “the confidence and trust Metrolink has placed in us to provide their passengers the highest standards of safety, efficiency and reliability.”
Three of Metrolink’s seven rail lines cross Orange County, with service to Los Angeles, San Diego County and the Inland Empire. Those three lines see an average of 15,000 boardings every weekday, according to the Orange County Transportation Authority.
The OCTA paid $12.78 million for Metrolink service in the most recent fiscal year.
Also on Friday, Metrolink announced that it was activating an “Automatic Train Stop” system at 49 new locations in Orange County and elsewhere on its lines. The system sounds an alarm and flashes an alert on the engineer’s control panel as the train approaches a curve or speed change.
The train brakes automatically if the engineer does not push a button acknowledging the alert within about 8 seconds. Metrolink now has 105 locations on its routes equipped with magnets that trigger the on-board alerts.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)