CHICAGO — State regulators examining the plan to bring high-speed passenger trains to Illinois say safety could be jeopardized in the name of saving money because of rail improvements under way on miles of track Downstate, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The Illinois Commerce Commission said the method being used to join different size rails, necessary to accommodate the high-speed trains, could increase the possibility of the faster trains derailing because of ruptures in the rail joints.
The Union Pacific Railroad has been modernizing the rails and signals on the 120-mile section of the track between Springfield and Mazonia in Grundy County in preparation for the first tests later this year running Amtrak passenger trains at speeds of more than 100 m.p.h. The upgrades would eventually be made on the entire high-speed rail corridor stretching from Chicago to St. Louis.
“We believe the prospect of passenger trains operating in the corridor at speeds up to 110 m.p.h. requires a closer look be taken at the rail welding process,” Michael Stead, administrator of the rail safety program at the ICC, wrote recently to George Gavalla, an associate administrator for safety at the Federal Railroad Administration.
Before any additional changes are made to the tracks, ICC officials say the weld should be examined to ensure it can handle the high-speed trains.
The ICC and the FRA share responsibility for overseeing rail safety in Illinois, although the FRA has opposed launching engineering tests to settle the controversy, saying it doesn’t believe such tests are immediately necessary.
Stead and ICC track inspectors say they also believe that Union Pacific–which defends the practice of welding together rails of different heights and weights as completely safe–has underreported the number of defective weld joints found. In documents to the regulators, the railroad described the number of bad welds discovered on the 120-mile section of track as “minimal.” The FRA does not require the railroad industry to keep records of the number or locations of weld failures.
The Illinois Department of Transportation is supervising the Union Pacific project, which marks an initial step toward creating a nine-state high-speed passenger rail network in the Midwest.
`There is no concern’
IDOT officials said they have been assured by Union Pacific that welding together different types of rail–some of it newly made, other pieces more than 60 years old–is acceptable. But the officials acknowledged they are not the experts in the field.
“My department is not responsible for the rules and regulations that pertain to this,” said Gary Williams, chief of the Bureau of Railroads at IDOT.
“There is no concern with any of these joints,” he said.
Rail safety officials at the ICC said they directed their concerns to IDOT, Union Pacific and the FRA about the absence of testing and documentation showing that so-called “compromise welds” are appropriate for high-speed passenger trains.
The fixes are being made at 133 highway-rail grade crossings. The ICC estimates that 1,000 compromise weld joints will be installed as part of Union Pacific’s move to save money by retaining as much of the older track as possible during the modernization.
Although Union Pacific owns the tracks, the improvements are being paid for mostly with federal and state funds.
Compromise welds are commonly used in the railroad industry to align rails that have height differences of a half-inch or more, but so far only freight trains and slower-moving passenger trains have rolled over them, officials said.
Amtrak’s high-speed Acela trains in the Northeast operate on track that was specially built for trains running at 150 m.p.h.
Stead said other options are available that would create stronger and more consistent weld sections.
In the letter to the FRA, Stead wrote that “it is our understanding that cost was a contributing factor in the decision” to use the compromise welds.
Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis said the railroad would not carry out the fix if it were unsafe.
“Why spend more taxpayer dollars replacing rail that is sufficiently strong?” Davis added.
Evidence requested
Gavalla responded to Stead’s letter by saying the FRA “at present takes no exception to using the compromise welds,” said FRA spokesman Warren Flatau. The agency declined to conduct a further examination but asked the ICC to provide it with specific information showing the welds perform poorly.
Chris Barkan, director of the railroad engineering program at the University of Illinois, said the emergence of high-speed rail as a new form of transportation in the U.S., and the heavy financial investment required to build such a network of routes, warranted further examination of safety-related issues.
“It’s appropriate that people are asking these questions,” Barkan said. “All the parties involved ought to at least sit down at a table and decide what they are going to do to allay concerns that [the compromise welds] might be unsafe. It is in none of their interests to proceed with an unsound practice.”