
U.S. Federal Railroad Administration Legalizes Lightweight Train Cars - ceejayoz
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/11/23/u-s-finally-legalizes-modern-european-style-train-cars/
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chrisseaton
The first time I saw a Caltrain pulling into a station I thought it was an
armoured Soviet ballistic missile train, rather than a local commuter service.

~~~
MarkSweep
As ugly as it looks now, the previous colors (Peninsula Commute era) looked
worse. It was all dark gray with a red "bloody nose":

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SP_3193_with_Train_1...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SP_3193_with_Train_149_at_San_Mateo,_CA_in_August_1980_\(32938025271\).jpg)

~~~
Miserlou57
That was a systemwide thing for Southern Pacific, not specific to the
peninsula. It was fairly ugly but was a known low-cost transition to deal with
a tightening belt when railroads were still private (and struggling)

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alex_young
Recently moved to Europe.

I have to say the trains are ubiquitous and frequent. They seem very safe.

It's a hugely better experience.

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Scoundreller
Iunno, maybe railcar windows in the US should continue to be able to resist a
.22 round.

Yes, that is a test:

[http://www.hpwhite.com/ballistic-testing/railway-glass-
testi...](http://www.hpwhite.com/ballistic-testing/railway-glass-testing/)

~~~
geofft
Why is that useful? Who is able to shoot at a train without being able to
either board it or spawncamp a station?

Are cars and buses tested against that standard? (Certainly bikes, ferries,
streetcars, and pedestrians are not required to pass this test.)

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hudibras
People take potshots at trains in the Midwest and West all the time. Bored
teenagers with .22 rifles, mostly.

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ryanwaggoner
Passenger trains?

If so, does this happen as often for highways? If not, why not?

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hudibras
No, not passenger trains. Freight trains.

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KamiCrit
Bring on the light rail revolution. North America desperately needs more light
rail options. High speed as well, but one step at a time.

~~~
prolikewh0a
Where's the funding going to come from? USA has no money for infrastructure.
MTA is struggling in NYC. Seattle's light rail is going to be completed in
2041+ and is being paid through a regressive car tab tax. I think it's a pipe
dream that rail or transit will ever be improved other than very modestly in
the USA.

Plenty of money and land for pipelines though
[https://i.imgur.com/IdwIHQB.gif](https://i.imgur.com/IdwIHQB.gif)

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chiefalchemist
In other words, if we can become less dependant on oil / natural gas (i.e.
pipelines for them) we'll have more money for mass transportation. The irony
is, our love of personal transportation is foregoing our transition to trains
and such.

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x220
>if we can become less dependant on oil / natural gas we'll have more money
for mass transportation

how do you figure that?

~~~
chiefalchemist
Bump up to the comment I commented on. That said something along the lines of
"but there's plenty of money for pilelines."

I wasn't figuring. I was summarizing and contexting.

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leroy_masochist
The smooth ride is great, but does anyone know how this is going to affect
speed?

Would be very interesting to hear how much this would affect the Acela time (I
know there are a lot of other issues affecting train speeds in that case, such
as zoning).

Similarly would be cool if the upshot of this is that in 10 years, Metro North
and LIRR are significantly faster.

~~~
gok
The current Acela rolling stock is already slated for replacement with
European-style cars that are lighter and faster. [1]

But you're right. For the most part the bottleneck on Acela speed is the
tracks, grade crossings, overhead wires and lower speed passenger traffic, not
the trains.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avelia_Liberty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avelia_Liberty)

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Simulacra
Is this why so many city metro subways have flat faces? I've always wondered
why so many are not aerodynamic in the slightest.

~~~
kpil
They don't move that fast, so saving space is more important. Not perhaps at
the stations but at rail yards and transfers that might be underground.

~~~
fyfy18
In the UK most trains are fairly flat faced, however trains travel relatively
slowly (compared to Europe) at a typical maximum of 100mph.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_450](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_450)

~~~
Symbiote
That's essentially a local or regional train. Attaching multiple trains
together and still allowing people to walk through is important.

Many local trains in Europe have a similar design, and a similar top speed.

The long distance trains in the UK do go faster and have an angled front.

It's presumable a trade off between aerodynamics and walk-through ability when
connecting trains.

~~~
fyfy18
This specific configuration is for a commuter train, but similar trains (which
can be coupled to other sets) are used on long distance routes in the UK.

As I said, the UK isn't really high speed compared to Europe. Other than the
Eurostar line/HS1, all other lines throughout the UK are limited to 140mph
(225km/h) or less.

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exabrial
I just learned about another three letter federal agency I don't care for...
Sigh

~~~
objectivetruth
I'd bet a lot of the agencies you don't care for have a very important
historical reason for existing. Don't like the FDA? Read "The Jungle." Don't
like the FRA? Then you're leaving the safety of billions of tons of steel and
coal crossing the paths of millions of Americans over 150,000 crossings to the
whims of a half dozen companies.

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baybal2
Can say the same about American automobile crashworthiness standards. American
standards make cars few hundred kilograms heavier in exchange for few percents
higher chance for one to survive a highway collision, but this itself makes
almost every other collision case more lethal, simply because there are more
potential collision megajoules on the road.

~~~
nradov
It's more than a few percent improvement. 2018 car models are far more
survivable than what we had 20 or even 10 years ago. Check out the injury and
death statistics. For a given size the weight increase in that time hasn't
been anywhere near a few hundred kilograms. And with modern high-strength
steel or carbon fiber the weight can actually go down, although that drives up
prices.

~~~
TomK32
At the same time SUVs are killing more pedestrians due to being taller than
previous car models. [https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2018/06/28/suvs-
killi...](https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2018/06/28/suvs-killing-
americas-pedestrians/646139002/)

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mcny
Here is an idea: if there is a side walk, the speed limit is automatically
capped at 25mph (unless there's a sign that says the speed limit is lower).

Thoughts?

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TomK32
I'm sure it's like with cyclists, only when you have a critical mass of
cyclists on the road, the car drivers take notice and caution. The US isn't
gonna reach a critical mass of pedestrians except in dense areas where using a
car isn't economic or a necessity.

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burfog
"modern" doesn't mean better.

Now we get flimsy aluminum cans just like Europe has, so we can die in crashes
just like Europeans do. This is thought to make trains more appealing.

The impact hazards are different. Europe mostly doesn't have freight rail, at
least nothing like the USA does. Here in the USA, our rail is almost
exclusively freight. We even have a train service just for orange juice.
Freight is everywhere.

Europeans take the risk, and it isn't too crazy because there is no freight.
That's nice for them. We have freight.

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tgsovlerkhgsel
Looking at 2017 in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_(2010%E...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_\(2010%E2%80%93present\)),
I count 10 train passengers (not counting the 6 students on board of a school
bus that collided with a train) that died in train accidents that year in
Europe.

I think that is a pretty good example of a risk worth accepting. The US seems
to have ~6 billion rail passenger miles (~10b km) per year based on
[https://www.bts.gov/archive/tet/2016/tables/ch1/fig1_16/text](https://www.bts.gov/archive/tet/2016/tables/ch1/fig1_16/text)

[https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php/Passenger_transport_statistics#Rail_passengers) claims
that "Based on the latest data available (generally for 2016), there were 401
billion passenger-kilometres travelled on national railway networks in the EU
(including 2015 data for Denmark and 2014 data for Hungary; excluding Belgium
and the Netherlands). This figure was considerably higher than the 22 billion
passenger-kilometres travelled on international journeys (based on the same
data availability)"

If a full freight train crashes into a full passenger train at speed, I doubt
armoring the cars is going to help much.

What will help is systems that make collisions less likely, and a system that
makes passenger rail feasible in the first place (not sure if that's possible
in the US, because the typical distances are just so much bigger).

~~~
Symbiote
I actually count 7 (1 LU, 1 BE, 3 GR, 1 FI). If you discount the crew, who
face a higher risk than passengers, it's 3 (0 LU, 1 BE, 1 GR, 1 FI).

There are some worse recent accidents involving head-on collisions at
significant speed [1], [2], but to see whether the resulting investigation
concluded that differently-designed trains would have reduced injuries, the
report (for me) needs to be in English.

For that, since the UK has the safest railway in Europe (the world?) we need
to go back to 2001 [3], with a closing speed collision at 142mph / 229km/h and
10 deaths. The investigation report [4] concludes (12.10) "The crashworthiness
displayed by the passenger coach body shells, when subjected to end impact,
was adequate. The first five coaches had some of their survival space reduced
by roof, floor and side impacts, or penetration by large missiles or other
vehicles. Impact with the underside of the road bridge was responsible for
roof damage. The ability of the vehicles to protect their occupants was
compromised by the loss of some roof sections and window glass."

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andria%E2%80%93Corato_train_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andria%E2%80%93Corato_train_collision)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Aibling_rail_accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Aibling_rail_accident)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Heck_rail_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Heck_rail_crash)

[4]
[https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130904004318/ht...](https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130904004318/http://www.rail-
reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/incident-greatheckfinal-optim.pdf)

