There’s an old knock–frequently cited at the expense of Thomas Friedman–about the kind of journalist who quotes his cab driver.
That said: I was in Washington, DC, a few days after the recent Metro accident and my cabbie was complaining about the traffic. He explained that it had suddenly gotten much worse since the accident. All his passengers were afraid to take the train, he said. One after another, they’d sworn they were done forever with the Metro. Business was so good, in fract, he was planning to do several extra hours of work that evening.
It’s anecdotal, of course–but also believable. Something awful and scary happens and people get, well, scared. Naturally, a raft of alarmist rail safety stories followed. The San Francisco crash over the weekend brought this conversation back to mind though–no doubt there are more than a few nervous Muni riders this week and some reporters looking for a “Is Your Commute Safe?” angle.
Of course, intellectually most people know that rail travel is much safer than driving. But do they know how much safer? For instance, what would the headlines look like if rail were only on par with the safety of automobile travel?
In that case, we’d be seeing an accident on the scale of one in DC–9 deaths–about every 10 days. Or, alternatively, one on the scale of the Metrolink crash last year in southern California, which killed 25 people, every month. (This is based on rough calculations of about 5 trillion passenger miles logged in cars–with 38,000 deaths–and about 40 billion miles on our various rail networks, where similar fatality rates would yield about 300 deaths a year.)
But, in fact, such accidents are tremendously rare. The Metrolink was the worst in 15 years. And even though the last year has been been rotten where passenger rail accidents are concerned–and questions do need to be asked–fewer than 40 people have died. That’s fewer than die on the roads in an average morning in this country.
July 20th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Over 40,000 people die EACH YEAR in automobile accidents in this country. I doubt that many people have died TOTAL in the history of mass transit usage in this country.
But the rabid, illogical, anti-transit crowd will jump on any opportunity to distort and lie about public transit.
What these recent transit accidents SHOULD reveal is the need to replace aging rolling stock and control systems.
July 20th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
much suffer than driving?
July 20th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
The other way to look at these numbers that would make public transit even safer would be PER-TRIP per-person. Car drivers make much longer commutes on average, and so the per-mile figure inflates thier safety numbers. If you looked at it per trip, transit would look much safer than the numbers above.
Odds are, the less distance you travel, the less of a chance of a transportation failure (crash, breakdown, whatever). Cites are denser, you move less distance than in ex-burb or rural areas. Therefore each average TRIP on transit generally covers much less distance, and already a urban design is going to be better for distance factors; which makes things safer, less energy intensive, less expensive, etc.
– Chex
July 20th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
This is a perfect example of why you don’t listen to cab drivers…safety is NOT the reason people have been avoiding the Metro recently. As a DC resident and Metro-rider, I can tell you that it’s because the trains have become slow as hell. The whole system is on “manual,” and my trip time has about doubled, and I’m not even on the Red Line (where the accident happened). The train almost always stops between stations, and its stops and starts a lot more often than it used to, which is uncomfortable if you don’t have a seat (by the time you get into the city, this means most people).
I think the delays on the Red Line have calmed somewhat, but for about two weeks after the accident, the crowds on the platforms in the big stations in the center of DC (i.e., the destination it was designed to serve) during the evening rush hour were horrendous – you had to watch more than a few trains pass by before you could get on one of them. Half-hour commutes turned into 60- to 90-minute commutes.
Like I said, the really horrendous stuff has stopped, but the whole system is still noticeably slower than it was before the accident.
July 21st, 2009 at 12:10 am
Sneaking of scary, can we assume you’ve defeated the difficulties you were having with the web host?
July 21st, 2009 at 9:02 am
[...] What If Rail Travel Was Only as Safe as Driving? (Infrastructurist) [...]
July 21st, 2009 at 9:07 am
“suffer” for “safer” — er, unfortunate typo. Need to fire my copy editor.
July 21st, 2009 at 9:11 am
Sean,
Of course investing in new rolling stock is a good thing. I suppose one point though is that I don’t like how it gets framed as an urgent safety issue. It’s *crazy* to have people ever be scared to use rail transit, when it’s at least 1000% safer than driving.
I’m not sure what the alternative way of handling it is, but “unsafe” is just a totally inappropriate way to be framing this.
-Jebediah
July 21st, 2009 at 9:14 am
Omri,
Yes — am planning to post about it later today. Adventures with weird little Canadian internet outfits. I hope everyone seized the opportunity to browse for auto insurance and home loan refinancing deals…
-Jebediah
July 21st, 2009 at 11:07 am
[...] What If Rail Travel Were Only as Safe as Driving? (Infrastructurist) [...]
July 21st, 2009 at 11:27 am
I think one thing (perhaps minor) that factor’s into people’s fears that push them away from mass transit is the lack of control, especially after events like this. When we’re driving, we feel like we’re 100% in control (though driving through any average Northern winter will dispel this myth, as you glide through stop signs on the ice!). When we’re riding any mass transit (or even in a cab), we don’t have control. The worry of their impending doom at the hands of a train conductor (or, heaven forbid, a computer!?!) offsets the stress relief that should accompany a trip on mass transit.
The problem with catastrophic mass transit accidents (and this is absolutely true of plan crashes, perhaps even more so) is the scale. When there is a 4 car pile up on the Interstate, even if it is a terrible accident, then perhaps 2 or 3 people may die. If a loaded Airbus carrying 228 pasengers suddenly plunges into the Atlantic off the coast of Brazil, killing all aboard, it creates a huge international media storm. The amount of media attention is magnified by the number of deaths. Think about how much media attention a single accident death causes. It gets mentioned in the news, but only for a day or two. Essentially, a “huge” disaster like a plane crash or a rail accident it would be the same amount of news coverage for the two days worth of deaths across the nation in highway accidents (averages about 115 deaths per day), combined. It just is magnified by the scale.
July 21st, 2009 at 12:05 pm
[...] What If Rail Travel Was Only as Safe as Driving? (Infrastructurist) [...]
July 21st, 2009 at 1:06 pm
In “The Science of Fear” Daniel Gardner explains that the fear of flying after 9/11 caused a great deal of unnecessary marginal traffic deaths as people turned away from safe flying to dangerous driving. People truly are unable to assess risk in their everyday activities.
July 21st, 2009 at 1:10 pm
@Stephen: Whoa, I didn’t realize things had gotten that bad. I used to take the Red Line daily from Dupont to Union Station, and the crowds even on those rush hour trains were pretty huge.
I can only image what a much slower system would mean for the crowds. Which is a shame, because metro has the opportunity to run so fast.
July 22nd, 2009 at 4:42 am
The issue of “control” is hard to quantify, but it is real. When my first wife was a teenager, she rode the local bus (Southern California, San Gabriel Valley). As soon as she could afford a third-hand used car, she rarely, if ever set foot in a public transit vehicle again. She was one of those “I’d rather die than take a bus to the hospital” and “I will give up my car when the pry my cold, dead hands from the steering wheel” types. My present wife used to work near the Los Angeles Civic Center. Normally, she’d drive in, and park her car in the company parking structure with direct access to the building. Occasionally, when the car needed work, she’d leave it at the service station, which happened to be on the express bus route to her work place. The only problem was, the block or so walk to the building, and running the gantlet of “winos and weirdos that infest that part of town”. It was even worse in the evening, when one had to wait for the bus (at a bus stop that served several lines, so you had to be alert for “your” bus) in the gathering gloom of night. Of course this situation involves social issues that the transit provider can’t do anything about.
Another part of the “control” aspect is the environment. My “mental jukebox” is playing “Another One Rides the Bus”, Weird Al Yankovic’s parody on “Another One Bites the Dust”. It has a line: “There’s a smelly old bum standing next to me, hasn’t showered in a year”, which describes a situation that an automobile driver doesn’t face. It points up the fact that “bus” is short for “omnibus”, which in Latin means “for all”. With a car you choose your traveling companions, or go solo. Your car audio plays what you tell it to play, whether soothing music or vitriolic talk shows.
There was a song about 40 years ago by Roy Clark, “Right or Left at Oak Street”. It was a sad tale of this poor soul: his wife was a nag, his kids were brats, and everybody else seemed to be doing better financially and emotionally than he was. His situation brought to mind a song from the Punk Rock era, “Life Sucks, Then You Die”. Every weekday morning he drove to his crummy job, and every morning he came to Oak St. One way would take him to another eight hours of soul-deadening toil; the other led to an Interstate on-ramp. If this were a real person, he would probably be retired by now, if he hadn’t keeled over from a heart attack or other cause. My guess would be that he would never have taken that on-ramp; he probably had enough smarts to know that his old clunker would probably blow a gasket in the middle of nowhere if he tried. He probably did not have an in-demand skill that could get him a job anywhere in the country without too many questions being asked. And unless he had friends or relatives who could provide him with a place to bunk down at night, even Motel 6 can get expensive after a while. The reason for this dissertation is: The car gave him a choice. If he did decide to go “over the hill”, he could plan ahead by hiding spare clothes and travel supplies in the garage, to be loaded on the fateful morning. Imagine walking to a bus stop or train station with a loaded suitcase (and encountering a nosy/gabby neighbor). Or if he rode a van pool or car pool, greeting his fellow employees and asking, “Could you drop me off at the Greyhound (or Amtrak) station?” Maybe the option, even if never exercised, was all that kept him from going totally bananas over the years…..
July 30th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
[...] asset management capabilities–so, managing the lifecycle of locomotives, cars, and rail. In one of your recent articles, you talked about how much safer rail travel is than car travel and how many rail accidents you [...]