bullet train accident
 

I'm only seeing a preliminary report, but it doesn't sound good.

Wasn't there some scandal about the way these projects were being financed and constructed?


http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/07...train-derails/

Yes, this news is just popping up all over the international online media, but very little in the Chinese official media so far. Interesting it is a D train not one of the faster G's. I'm not in China now so for those of you who are, let us know what you are hearing (if anything) as to causes. The MoR is not having a good summer so far.

I said before, this CRH project has many flaws. Sooner or later some major disaster will happen.

http://news.qq.com/zt2011/dongchetg/

See this update.

This happened about 2km away from where we are right now.

Saw a huge rush of emergency personnel rushing past our street, we thought it was a fire or something due to the big thunderstorm.

Man, I take that train at least twice a week. It will be shut down for a while for sure.

crazy week so far....

i'm in tianjin....just took the #50 bus the other day....the next day, one of the drivers is stabbed to death

people are killed in a swimming pool nearby after electrical wires fall into the pool

and now this train accident...after i'm made plans to go to wenzhou early next week

First casualty figures are in. There are deaths and injuries with the latter numbering around 90 so far. Well possible that also non-Chinesea are affected in those parts of the country.

As tragic as the accident is, it can hopefully serve as a wake up call for the government to pedantically check the damage left by previous incompetence and corruption in the CRH network.

According to HK meida, at least two cars off the bridge. At least 11 killed. The final number will be a lot higher.

Report I read is that southbound D3115 from Hangzhou to Wenzhou stopped after being a lightning strike. The Beijing-Fuzhou D301 following plowed into the stopped train.

I'll look up the schedule in a few minutes to see how far the trains are supposed to be apart.

Running highspeed or semi-highspeed trains the Japanese and Chinese do - with just a few minutes apart on some routes - require redundant safety systems when it comes to signaling issues. Took the Japanese years to get to run the few-minutes-apart schedule on their Shinkansen in an earthquake-prone area. What kind of experience and backup systems do the Chinese put on their track?

---
Edit: Looking at the schedule, D3115 is Hangzhou to Fuzhou South, D301 is Beijing to Fuzhou South. But D301 is supposed to be about 15 minutes ahead of D3115, arriving at Wenzhou South 19:42 vs 19:57. Perhaps D301 was late, or the media has one or both of the train numbers wrong.

Man, that was close! 2km?

16 pax dead. More to come. Final casualty should be a lot higher.

Wenzhou City is running out of blood.

Looks like several cars fell off the tracks and crashed 50 ft to the ground.

First train lost power and was stalled on track and second train plowed
into it.



http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/...h_1953881c.jpg

This is one of things I was afraid of with the recent spate of power failures. A properly functioning system should have had functional signals for slowdowns and stops for all the trains along the track regardless of high or low speed type. Getting to the root of why that second train was continuing to barrel along is as important as finding why the first one lost power.

Why the second train didn't stop seems more important.

Human Error? i.e. Chatsworth 2008:Metrolink Train Engineer sending text messages while on duty.

To me, it's a more a systematic problem than a human error. I surely hope China's high speed and semi-highspeed trains don't rely on the conductor to look at a red light (trackside or onboard) at 250km/h or 300km/h and have to manually slow the train down when there's a stopped train in front.

up to 22 dead
 

Chinese news report:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english201..._131004925.htm

Very sad. If it's determined the engineer of the train that slammed into the stopped one was at fault through negligence, what will happen to him? Is there any compensation to the victims, at least to pay their medical bills for the injured? How does it work in China when things like this happen?

What will happen to him?

Check out the photo of where the conductor is located.

http://im.rediff.com/money/2011/jun/30train1.jpg

The government will pay compensation to victims and their families.
Unlike the US, PI attorneys won't be taking out full page ads in the
Wenzhou papers.

Just bear in mind that even at half the speeds these trains can go at, it takes a fair distance to stop the train. It is entirely possible that even if the train driver saw a red light, it may not have been far ahead of the stalled train for him/her to stop the train in time. If the driver had seen the stalled train in front of him/her (even in most ideal conditions), he/she'll only have been able to reduce collision speed slightly.

The thunder and lightning show was incredible just when the accident happened. Our building rocked everytime thunder stuck nearby. Our lights were flickering on and off. My computer APC turned on a couple of times. Rain was also very intense. Most intense I have seen thus far in China.

We had friends over and we are in dicussion now if that huge bang was not thunder but maybe it was the crash.

A local friend who was with us exclaimed, "there is something huge happening. The cars that are going passing by are not the normal emergency cars but they are state internal security police cars."

Going to walk to the site of the accident today.

Supposedly, the high-speed trains are all networked together and broadcast their speed & location, so that trains behind the malfunction-train would be notified. Conductor not able to see the problem ahead and slow down is also troubling. Seems combination of human + systemic error.

Terrible news to hear. Wonder if China has a NTSB like entity that will do a public review of the accident. Safety is clearly a concern with HSR but even the slow stuff in the US has problems.

Yesterday afternoon, Amtrak suspended all traffic between Boston and NY. Apparently a truck ran off a road and knocked down power lines serving the NE corridor. No power or signals but fortunately no train accident. So things can happen that the train operators have no control over.

In 47 years of history of Japan High Speed Rail, 新干线， there has not been a single death. ^^

In such a short period time, China CRH sucks, big time. :td::td:

BAD news. (shudder) Healing prayers for the affected.

Terrible tragedy for China for a system that had (and still does have) such promise. Perhaps this will make some question the wisdom of relentlessly pushing to go from nothing to " biggest, tallest, fastest" in the world in the shortest time possible.

It will be interesting to see if ridership drops long term as a result. Will also be interesting to see what official's number is up because of this.

Reports coming in foreigners also lost their lives in this tragedy.

While I find it impossible to defend the MOR at this particular juncture, I'm not sold on your logic (premises don't necessarily support conclusion).

[QUOTE=moondog;16785227] I'm not sold on your logicQUOTE]

Logic is based on published reports.
You have a big mouth...you eat crow!

MOR spokesman, Wang Yongping,

"The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway and Japan's Shinkansen line cannot be mentioned in the same breath, as many of the technological indicators used by China's high-speed railways are far better than those used in Japan's Shinkansen" "The intellectual property rights of China's high-speed railways are undoubtedly mastered by China itself".

Shinkansen with Chinese characteristics = out of power and off the rails?

I'm sure that whatever Intellectual Property the Chinese possess, that allows established and workable foreign high-speed rail technology to be converted into a system of power failures and derailments, will be eagerly copied by other nations....Not. :rolleyes:

Its too much effort to copy.

How much that cost? I need good price.

If its cheap price, there will be buyers.

Chinese companies routinely underbid western/japanese competitors with ~50% prices and low-cost financing to get the export deal. Would not be surprised if China Rail companies do the same for foreign bids, and some countries bite.

Before this accident, all high-speed rail trains were already losing money on every operating schedule (except inaugural Beijing-Shanghai train) because of low ridership due to high prices vs. regular trains. This is a financial blackhole that media reports indicate exceed 2 trillion RMB debt by 2011 (and over 100 billion RMB interest payments annually). With this accident affecting ridership confidence on quality perception, wonder how the rail network will achieve break-even operations.

You are thinking like an American, with everything having to fit a certain financial profile. Wonder no more. China's rail network is not intended to achieve break-even operations--regardless of what might be trotted out for public consumption. Even before the introduction of high-speed rail, the system was always heavily subsidized. Similar to systems in other countries, passenger rail in China is considered an essential public service and subsidies are considered acceptable. If there is a country anywhere with a rail system that pays for itself 100%, I'd like to know about it.

I believe the perception fallout from this accident and recent spate of other troubles on the BJ-SH line will be relatively short-lived. A more long-lasting problem is the perception that the fares are just too high. Chinese won't and can't abandon the rails, as there are also issues (price, convenience, access, etc.) with other long-distance transportation modes. But there is a lot of legitimate griping that high-speed rail is shoving other slower but cost-effective options aside completely on many routes.

It seems to me that some American FTers have, way before this incident, decided that trains and especially highspeed ones are just not a viable transport system and should be bashed at every opportunity.

So would China be able to build up a transport system based only on domestic flights and private cars like in the US? How would that kind of decision affect the Chinrse society?

My relatives in Florida are decidedly "anti-train", and I expect them to use this tragedy to bolster their argument. But, they've never set foot in China, and therefore fail to comprehend the importance of the rail network to the country.

I'm currently planning on taking a train to Shanghai on Tuesday; hopefully, lightening doesn't strike twice.

My point is, there hasn't been a single death during 47 years of operation of Japan high speed rail. ^

Meanwhile, in such short period of time, already 34 pax died on China CRH. :td:

This speaks for volumes about the reliability, safety of China high speed rail.

Dismissal of Shanghai Railway Division Head and Party Secretary won't solve the issue. It's system failure. :mad:

There are some serious flaws especially regarding safety. We haven't seen the worst, yet.

Personally, I like the trains -- and, for Americans, they're somewhat of a novelty given our own avoidance of a modern train network.

That said, they're also a pain in the neck for foreigners to book (especially overnight sleepers), and you sometimes have to rely on others to get them booked (and these reservations sometimes get messed up). Airline tickets are easy these days for foreigners to book, so I often fly instead.

Sorry, I definitely meant "I hope the trains DON'T rely on humans to stop them". It was late last night.

My grandma was struck by lightening and yours wasn't... proves nothing.

Depends on the type of cab signaling system in use.

As the news report indicated, the train driver manually triggered the emergency brake.

Could have been the automatic stop system failed or the system
relies on the driver to stop the train. Didn't appear from the photos
that the train impacted at full speed, the drivers cab was somewhat intact.

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/to...rsrtr2p7lz.jpg

There probably would have been a lot less fatalities if the accident didn't occur
on a 50 ft tall bridge.

From some of videos I viewed on youku.com and photos from news.163.com,
it appeared as though backhoes were burying parts of the train very soon
after the accident happened. Not going to speculate what that could mean.

Most of us here are not anti-trains and not anti-China. And most of us travel to China frequently and understand pretty well how this society works. From what we see, we feel that the Chinese society AT THIS MOMENT may be capable of building lots of stuff in a hurry; but to run the largest high speed and semi-highspeed rail network in the world safely requires more than just money and engineers. It requires a system and a culture.

Seeing how Chinese look at safety - from food production to coal mine to drivers on its brand new expressways - we simply have great doubts, and I think this accident proves, or will prove, us right.

It is way way way way too late if it requires a driver to manually trigger a brake manually on a high speed or semi-highspeed train.

As for the bridge, a lot of the tracks on the high speed rail system are on viaducts or tunnels, so if an accident were to occur, chances of happening on a bridge is not insignificant.

completely agree....it's the people running it that worries me most