Via train was travelling four times above limit
NDP calls for updates to control systems and mandatory voice recorders on board
OTTAWA – The federal NDP is calling for reforms to rail safety in this country after investigators on Thursday blamed the deadly train derailment in southern Ontario over the weekend on excessive speed.
“How many more tragedies does it take for the Harper government to take action?” NDP transportation critic Olivia Chow said in a statement.
She called for the Safer Railways Act, Bill S-4, to be made into law. She also called for compulsory positive train control systems – a system that’s been mandatory in the U.S. since 2008 – and for voice recorders to be included in train event recorders.
Chow’s comments were made after it emerged Thursday that the Via Rail train that derailed in Burlington, Ont., killing three workers and injuring dozens of passengers, was travelling more than four times the allowable speed as it switched tracks.
The Transportation Safety Board released the results of its preliminary investigation, saying speed was what caused the train to jump the tracks Sunday.
The train’s speed never slowed down after it left the station, said Tom Griffith, the investigator in charge.
A train needs to slow down before switching tracks, Griffith said. On this particular stretch in Burlington, trains are supposed to slow to 24 km/h from 129 km/h.
Passenger Train 92 was going 107 km/h on Sunday as it switched tracks in Burlington, about 60 kilometres southwest of Toronto.
“It revealed that brakes were not applied,” Griffith said of the train’s black box. The brakes and signals were both working, he said.
Chow told reporters a positive train-control system would have prevented the accident, and mandatory voice recorders in trains would have allowed investigators to know exactly what happened.
The Transportation Safety Board has been calling for voice recorders i n trains since 2003.
Chow also called for the cancellation of scheduled cuts to Via Rail.
Three Via Rail employees – two senior locomotive engineers and a trainee – were killed when the locomotive and five cars j umped the tracks as the train switched tracks – a common procedure.
Emergency crews were not able to extract the bodies until 8 p.m., nearly five hours after the crash.
On Monday, Via identified the engineers who died as Ken Simmonds, 56, Peter Snarr, 52, and Patrick Robinson, 40.