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Its interesting I would always like to ask why the nanny state is pretty OCD on certain things trying to knee jerk react on some isolated incidents but not others.
Apparently train tracks and grade crossings remain less safe in the US compared to other advanced developed countries as there is not a very strong effort to grade separate them and make crossing gates safer. The plane had wrecked for quite a while on that tracks for officers to show up and six minutes before impact(more than enough time to get trains stopped). yet and tried to warn the railroad there was no communication that reached the approaching train engineer. It could had been much more tragic should the plane and train carried more people and it caused the train to derail or sharp parts of the plane pierced through the train.
Its interesting and a mystery what the priority of government is whether an incident would spark sweeping change or not. There is all the talks about banning drones but drones are much quieter and never caused a fatal incident in the US compared with other types of recreational air traffic. btw its possible to have air traffic to take off, land and fly over water or unpopulated areas. Which will limit noise and pollution as well as eliminate dangers of falling aircraft and aircraft parts to populated areas.
Your talking a lot of infrastructure work, which is a hot and expensive topic in the country. What is the priority? Rail crossings are fairly benign compared to intersections, small roads, freeways, bridges...etc.
As far as this incident, LAPD was on the scene quickly as they have a station (Foothill) less than a block from where the crash was. Notification to the train, is not a quick thing. The officer on the scene has to radio to their station, who calls the metro link dispatch, who then has to contact the appropriate train on the radio. A lot of times, in incidents, the police will post a black and white radio car several intersections away to attempt to make sure the train knows to stop, by using its lights and siren. Works, but not well. The rail lines are also used by freight trains, so add that into the mix.
This airport, you takeoff over unpopulated areas. And by the way, the airport was there long before the houses. You buy a house next to an airport, don't go crying about the noise and stuff.
I hope you understand, that other advanced developed countries infrastructure, especially train tracks, were rebuilt in the late 40's, while we just built onto our existing system, which were probably outdated then.
Your talking a lot of infrastructure work, which is a hot and expensive topic in the country. What is the priority? Rail crossings are fairly benign compared to intersections, small roads, freeways, bridges...etc.
As far as this incident, LAPD was on the scene quickly as they have a station (Foothill) less than a block from where the crash was. Notification to the train, is not a quick thing. The officer on the scene has to radio to their station, who calls the metro link dispatch, who then has to contact the appropriate train on the radio. A lot of times, in incidents, the police will post a black and white radio car several intersections away to attempt to make sure the train knows to stop, by using its lights and siren. Works, but not well. The rail lines are also used by freight trains, so add that into the mix.
This airport, you takeoff over unpopulated areas. And by the way, the airport was there long before the houses. You buy a house next to an airport, don't go crying about the noise and stuff.
I hope you understand, that other advanced developed countries infrastructure, especially train tracks, were rebuilt in the late 40's, while we just built onto our existing system, which were probably outdated then.
The cops didn't even need to use their radios at all. The direct line to the Metrolink dispatch was right in front of them. All they would have had to do was dial the number. Apparently they thought that stringing out yellow police tape was more important.
It’s unclear how much time passed before authorities realized the plane was on the tracks, or exactly when police notified the railroad, but the officers realized there was no time to spare.
This is BS. Every single thing they do is recorded and time stamped. It takes just a few minutes to pull the recording, listen to it and know exactly when everything was done. It's not rocket science. Look how quickly they released the edited video of the "heroic" actions of the officers. But they don't want to release the part of the video when the request to notify Metrolink was made. I wonder why? My bet is that they called Metrolink as soon as they saw the train coming, which was obviously too late.
At any point they could have used the number on the pole to call the Metrolink dispatch directly, and the trains could have been stopped within minutes.
This is BS. Every single thing they do is recorded and time stamped. It takes just a few minutes to pull the recording, listen to it and know exactly when everything was done. It's not rocket science. Look how quickly they released the edited video of the "heroic" actions of the officers. But they don't want to release the part of the video when the request to notify Metrolink was made. I wonder why? My bet is that they called Metrolink as soon as they saw the train coming, which was obviously too late.
At any point they could have used the number on the pole to call the Metrolink dispatch directly, and the trains could have been stopped within minutes.
I am curious, do you have direct knowledge of the time that it takes between a phone call, and the notification to a train?
I do, there is a reason in a prior post I mentioned that the police departments, even after contacting the train dispatch, try to post a police car several intersections away from the incident to try and flag any train, or warn the ones at the incident, until they have confirmation that the trains have been contacted.
Too bad the cops didn't know how to pick up their phones and dial the 800 number on the crossing gate to stop the trains.
They were kinda busy ..... y'know .... saving a life.
According to news, they radioed their dispatcher to stop rail traffic. That's SOP. It's up to the dispatcher to contact the railroad, and we don't know if that happened or not. I'm sure one of the things the NTSB will look at is why the train didn't get notified.
So, don't blame the police for this one.
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