Along with others, we mourn the tragic loss of River Line operator Jessica Haley, and express concern for the many passengers injured in the October 14th accident when the train hit a “chunk of tree“ on the tracks. The event raises safety concerns in terms of both equipment and operations, and we will be watching for agency reports expected soon. Though our main area of concern is northern New Jersey, as an organizational member of the Rail Users’ Network, we do support, and some members use, transit throughout the country, and especially in our home state.
As the line returns to everyday scheduling (though still with too many cancellations), we want to know how and why this happened, and if there is a bigger safety problem here. We know that light rail is separated from freight by the FRA because it does not meet the same crash-safety standards. Thus, the River Line shuts down early so that freight can run overnight, with a temporal separation ensuring that they do not share the tracks. We’d like to see that passenger time extended, but only if the equipment is strong enough to share the tracks.
