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Here's why you shouldn't lean on train doors. Two doors on a JFK Airport AirTrain fell off the shuttle — which had just undergone maintenance work — as it picked up its first load of passengers yesterday, according to the Post.
As the two-car train pulled into the Lefferts Boulevard stop at 3:30 am, one door fell off its hinges onto the tracks, while the other became "embedded into the concrete platform like a knife into a birthday cake." When the incident occurred, no one was aboard the AirTrain, which has no conductor or motorman, and the shuttle completed its route without passengers and was taken out of service. Insiders told the paper the doors may not have been attached properly and that "all indications are that there was a problem in the maintenance yard." An airport source said the incident was "very troubling," but could have been worse. "[Had] it happened when the train was crowded, people would have fallen out — and they'd now be dead."
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And it completed it's round without doors?! Isn't there a safety feature that diallows the train from moving u
til all of the doors are closed? And without a conductor or motorman? Glad someone wasn't hanging from their ankles out the door getting dragged around.
Take the train to the plane...
http://gothamist.com/2009/11/25/flashback_the_jfk_express.php#comments
Expected that it happened.
The Air Train car is very poorly designed and will definitely crash with people on board should it be taken into service without investigation and modification.
I have been on LIRR when the M7 first came out and they had tilt issues. I remember vividly the conductor who said this wasnt good out loud.
I have also taken the LIRR Air Train before and I felt very unsafe in the cars. The cars are just too easy to derail and no significant modifications of the track and cars themselves have been implemented. There was no conductor on board and the cars were leaning way too much.
After this investigation I feel that it could be possible they decide to shut down the Air Train altogether unless they can get significant sums of capital to improve it should the economy rebound.
Being that you think AirTrain is an LIRR service, I'm going to go ahead and presume you don't know what you're talking about. No one is shutting down AirTrain because some schmuck in the maintenance yard failed to screw in the doors.
However there should have been some safety measure in place. The train should have never been allowed to move with a door open.
Presumably the train could not operate with a door open.
A door missing is a completely different issue.
Point well-taken. They may not have thought to include "door missing" sensors. :-)
"The cars are just too easy to derail"
And yet... in six years of operation none of them ever have derailed.
Since when do train doors have hinges? Even the earliest subways and els used pocket doors that have rollers running in tracks.
AirTrain doors push out from the side of the train body and then slide along the sides. I'm guessing this is to allow for the extra large windows...if they slid inside the walls the windows next to each door would have to be much smaller.
I meant sliding doors rather than pocket doors. Regardless, the doors are still on tracks, even if they're external tracks like on vans. Hinges are those things on swinging doors.
I knew those external sliding doors used on other subways/metros seemed a little to vulnerable.
*too
Those things are death traps. Everytime i'm on one they either break down, miss the door stops, or start traveling the wrong way on the track.
Death traps? Statistics fail. Current death rate: 0%.
I hope I'm never on the same one you are, because nothing like that has ever happened when I've used the AirTrain. You have some crazy bad luck.
Someone already died. Statistics show one death before the cars went into revenue service.
So I didn't use the official JFK Airtrain name, sue me. I said LIRR because of its connecting service to the LIRR at Jamaica.
I have been on the LIRR and on the Air Train cars. The LIRR cars have been fixed and needed modifications to reduce the sway. They haven't had the issue anymore.
I was on the LIRR M7 when it first came out and it had serious sway issues and the conductor clearly said "This isn't good." The transit officials were up and up and correctly the inherent issues just like they did with the R46 subway cars which came in defective.
When I took the Air Train cars the train was making weird noises and was not going as straight as it should. It wasn't swaying like the Bombardier M7 cars where you felt tilt considering the Air Train cars are the "Bombardier Advanced Rapid Transit" cars using magnetic forces for propulsion. But I do believe they need some tweaking and improvements just like the M7 cars.
If the issue turns out to be poor maintanence so be it. But the way they ride linearly combined with how they handle when they arrive at a station, and I think some modifications could be in order. Im sure they are on the ball after this incident though. Every incident the MTA has handled has come through quite well I may add.
My concern is that I wouldn't be the one riding these cars till the issue is investigated and the engineers study up on what is happening. I would definitely do a retest and have experts check out the system.
No one will die if LIRR handles the situation right, don't get me wrong. And no one should. But the incident was just too close to call.
Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
"Someone already died. Statistics show one death before the cars went into revenue service."
Irrelevant. It was a three-car test train being operated manually, and the operator who was killed had exceeded the safe speed. In actual operation, they're only two cars and completely automated.
"I was on the LIRR M7 when it first came out and it had serious sway issues"
Which made it somewhat unfortable to ride in, but wasn't a safety concern.
"No one will die if LIRR handles the situation right"
LIRR doesn't operate the AirTrain.
The AirTrain is a Bombardier designed train, however the ALRT system, aside from using rails, is quite different than the tiltable M7 described above. The ALRT AirTrain uses technology in use in Vancouver, B.C. since the mid 80s and it does not tilt. In fact there is very little suspension in the cars due to the car requiring a fixed distance above the reation rail between the rails 3/4 max apparently. The cars do not tilt instead they rely on the guideway to be banked to allow better cornering.
In service since 1985 in Vancouver (albeit with the older train and more recently with the mark IIs in 2001) there have been remarkably few problems. For your info they do have door sensors including the older generation, that work annoyingly well as the door have to keep opening after people block them to squeeze in to the train when it is trying to close the doors. 6 times of this then train holds at the station to have someone look and see if someone has passed out in the doorway.
There has only been one derailment due to someone tossing a steel pole into the guideway on a below grade section despite a nice high fence...turned out to be minor derailment...barely mane the news...
During bad winters here they have override the safety interlock on the doors while they have a driver supervising the train operation due to snow falling on the station track sensor (to prevent jumpers or clutzes from being hit by incoming trains). This has allow for a frozen door not being noticed being open between 2 stations...should have been caught...
Only doors known to have fallen off were from a tree clearing truck lift arm contacting a passing Skytrain trashing the windows and knocking off the doors of one car of the passing train. Train continued to the next station and held there do to "door issues" didn't derail despite causing the lift truck to fall into the tree he was trying to remove...tree saved his life....
Trains Linear induction motor system is reportedly very reliable and works with the substantial grades employed along the 50km(30mi) network. Our system operates about 200 trains (cars) in 4 car pairings (mark I) and 2 or 4 cars (mark II).....The Mark II in vancouver are similar to the airtrain cars and are quite nice....typical speeds are in the neighbourhood of 90kph in the straight stretches.
So in all it is a very reliable system in all, though they age of the trains and track switches cause the odd problem the computer control system works very well.. train every 60-90 seconds during rush hour. Jury is out on the new Canada Line however using older conventional tecnology. They have already had a fire in the guideway after they been open only one week....private operator....cheaped out...
To me it sounds like a bad maintenance error and to boot they seemed to have locked out the sensors to detect it...someone gets to look for a new job....