In the Interest of Safety?
Last week a reader emailed me with the following:
Around noon today, the Eads Bridge was shutdown to vehicular traffic while MoDOT investigated a “suspicious package”. At the same time, Metrolink continued to run.
Why is a threat that is considered high enough to warrant vehicular traffic diversion not sufficient to warrant the shutdown of Metrolink?
Back on June 24, 2005, authorities shutdown I-64/40 to traffic because of the threat posed by the explosions at the Praxair facility. Just as today, even though the highway was closed, Metrolink continued to operate. I went through that area on a westbound train at approximately 4:20 that afternoon and can tell you the air was very thick with chemical odors. Yet once I arrived home, you could see from the aerial shots that the trains continued to run.
In both instances, is this a case of transit authorities making an informed decision to continue operations? or is it a communications failure between police/MoDOT and Metro?
I shudder to think its the latter.
Last June I pursued this matter with Metro to no avail. With this latest incident, I’ll be trying again.
Interesting questions posed, I have no answers. I am too am curious why these threats are sufficient to divert motorists in cars yet trains with hundreds of passengers continue as if nothing is going on. None of the explanations are satisfactory:
1) Metro didn’t know about the dangers so they continued to operate as normal.
2) Metro knew about the dangers but didn’t feel they were strong enough to warrant messing up the schedule.
3) Any others?
With vehicular traffic closed in these two cases the Metro bus service would have been impacted, requiring bus drivers to find alternate routes due to the emergency situations. What is Metro’s responsibility in these situations? Should they announce to the passengers that a potential threat exists and give them an opportunity to exit at a station prior to entering the danger zone? I’d certainly like an official response from Metro on their policy relative to safety threats as well as an explanation about how the trains continuing to run during these two incidents relate to said policy. I have sent an email to Metro inquiring about this issue and will relay their response, if any, in a new post.
What are your thoughts on this issue?
– Steve
Life is full of risks. There are plenty of “risks” similar to this one that don’t get reported. If Metro shut down and/or diverted every time one these things happened, there’d be even less incentive to ride than there is now.
Bigger picture, I’m much more concerned about what’s riding on the train with me than with what may be outside (see India, Spain and London for 3 recent examples). Rail-transit infrastructure is pretty robust (as far as construction), and any terrorist would have to be pretty talented or lucky to take out a bridge. It’s a whole lot easier to put the backpack on the train or bus than it is to coordinate the destruction of the supporting infrastructure . . .
It is possible that the decision makers didn’t want to strand people who otherwise had no means to get home. Unlike a car, which can take another route, the trains are confined to set paths by their rails. Those who are dependant upon Metro/Metrolink for transportation often have few alternatives, if any.
life may be full of risks but that still doesn’t explain why this particular risk was large enough to shut down automobile traffic but not metro-link traffic. it may be difficult to take out an entire bridge, but enough rubble falling on a train track is probably sufficient to derail the train and/or kill people in the section impacted. a little inconvenience is better than death.
If Metro shut down and/or diverted every time one these things happened …
i think you may be exaggerating. i don’t think things like this happen all that often around here. but i could be wrong.
While I do not know the details of the Eads Bridge shutdown you reference, Metro’s Police coordinate continuously with City and County police, fire and emergency personnel on incidents every day. We have stopped trains on the Eads bridge for various situations in the past.
The various police agencies are trained about the risks to the trains. They know how to respond to emergencies and contact us immediately. When they ask us to shut down, we shut down.
I would mention that if we shut down due to every lost book bag, box or bag, we would shut down every day. Go look at our lost and found. The New York MTA has hundreds of unattached bags, packages, boxes and brief cases left on trains and buses every day.
We have instituted special procedures for our operators, supervisors, and other staff to deal with these items.
Steve, thanks for the post of my email. Turns out, my confidence that your blog would produce results was indeed well founded.
Todd, many thanks for your informative response. While my example of the Eads Bridge incident was the latest such incident, my primary concern was related to the question:
Is Metro fully engage by the authorities during such incidents?
Your response addressed this.
Thanks!
I haven’t been able to find much info on the Eads bridge closure, but I would venture to guess that safety wasn’t the only concern. Imagine trying to conduct an investigation of the unattended bag on a two lane bridge with traffic zipping by. There’s just not enough room to have both at once.
On their 5:30 news segment, KTVI’s reporter Shawn Lindsey reported on this. Per her report, Metro was “in the dark” and “St. Louis Police never notified Metro” of the incident.
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