WASHINGTON, D.C. — Train accidents have increased 15 percent in the past three years, and federal rail safety experts suspect that lax maintenance is a factor, a wire service reported.
Derailments caused by faulty tracks — suspected in the recent Amtrak Auto Train derailment in Florida — have increased sharply. The Florida accident, the recent fatal collision of two trains in California, and plans to ship nuclear waste by rail to Yucca Mountain, Nev., are focusing attention on rail safety.
According to federal figures analyzed by Knight Ridder Newspapers, the number of train derailments in 2001 was the highest since 1985.
The figures also show that Kansas ranked ninth in the number of train accidents, not including highway grade crossings, from 1995 through 2001, with 545. Missouri ranked 12th, with 503.
Historically, Kansas has a high amount of rail activity because it has thousands of miles of track, more than most states.
Overall, 2001 was the worst safety year in at least a decade in 14 categories, including rear-end collisions, accidents caused by faulty equipment, and crashes with automobiles. The year 2000 was the worst in five categories.
“Is it a concern to this industry? Of course it is,” said Charles E. Dettmann, executive vice president for safety of the Association of American Railroads, the industry’s Washington lobbying organization.
Dettmann described the recent accident increases as small compared with dramatic declines in rail accidents over the past 25 years.
“Yes, we have inched up (in accidents and derailments), albeit from the lowest point in history from 1996 to 1997,” Dettmann said. “Three or four innings doesn’t make a game.”
Dramatic increases in rail traffic help explain the recent surge in accidents, especially derailments, which are up 32 percent since 1998. But after adjusting for added traffic, derailments are still up sharply. Accidents — a category that comprises collisions, explosions, auto crashes and other problems — are up, too.
To explain the increases, Warren Flatau, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration in Washington, and others suggested maintenance problems.
“We’ve seen evidence in some cases that some railroads have done exactly that — that they have deferred maintenance,” Flatau said. He concurred with Dettmann that there had been improvement in rail safety since the 1970s.
Bob Halstead, a transportation consultant for Nevada, which is fighting the nuclear waste shipments, also noted economic squeezes.
“The railroads have tried to put the pressure on their unions,” he said. “They’ve cut back personnel. They’ve basically overloaded people.”
Unions say the number of union rail maintenance workers is half what it was 20 years ago.
“The reality is that our forces are stretched pretty thin,” said Rick Inclima, director of safety for the Brotherhood of Maintenance Way Employees, a national union based in Southfield, Mich.
Workers are being replaced by high-tech sensors and equipment that do the job better, Dettmann said.
Most accidents are minor, he said, and occur in side yards and at slow speeds. Statistics show, however, that accidents on main lines and at higher speeds in 2001 were the worst in a decade.
The big safety improvements in the 1980s followed deregulations that made owning railroads more profitable. That freed the industry to invest more money in new track, training, equipment and technology, Dettmann said.
Now there are no easy safety improvements left, he said, no “low-hanging fruit.”
Accidents by states
States with the most train accidents (not including highway grade crossings) from 1995 through 2001, according to the Federal Railroad Administration:
— Texas: 1,805
— Illinois: 1,694
— California: 992
— New York: 787
— Pennsylvania: 710
— Iowa: 604
— Ohio: 601
— Nebraska: 589
— Kansas: 556
— Minnesota: 545
— Louisiana: 510
— Missouri: 503