December 2013 Spuyten Duyvil derailment

On the morning of December 1, 2013, a Metro-North RailroadHudson Line passenger train derailed near the Spuyten Duyvil station in the New York City borough of the Bronx. Four of the 115 passengers were killed and another 61 injured; the accident caused $9 million worth of damage. It was the deadliest train accident within New York City since a 1991 subway derailment in Manhattan, and the first accident in Metro-North's history to result in passenger fatalities. The additional $60 million in legal claims paid out as of 2020 have also made it the costliest accident in Metro-North's history.

Early investigations found that the train had gone into the curve where it derailed at almost three times the posted speed limit. The engineer, William Rockefeller, later admitted that before reaching the curve he had gone into a "daze", a sort of highway hypnosis.

The leader of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) team investigating said it was likely that the accident would have been prevented had positive train control (PTC) been installed per a prior federal mandate requiring its installation by 2015. Due to a number of other recent accidents involving Metro-North trains and tracks, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) demanded improved safety measures, which Metro-North began implementing within a week of the accident.

In late 2014, almost a year after the accident, the NTSB released its final report on the accident. After reiterating its earlier conclusion that PTC would have prevented the accident entirely, it found the most direct cause was Rockefeller's inattention as the train entered the curve. There were other contributing factors. A medical examination following the accident diagnosed sleep apnea, which had hampered his ability to fully adjust his sleep patterns to the morning shift which he had begun working two weeks earlier. The report faulted both Metro-North for not screening its employees in sensitive positions for sleep disorders, and the FRA for not requiring railroads to do such screening.

The train involved in the accident was the second southbound Hudson Line train of the day, leaving Poughkeepsie, the line's northern terminus, at its scheduled departure time of 5:54 a.m. EST.^[2] It was powered by a GE P32AC-DMlocomotive,^[3] capable of running on either diesel fuel or electricity from a third rail. Since Metro-North uses push-pull trains, it was situated at the northern, or rear, end of the train to minimize noise on the underground platforms at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, its final destination,^[4] where it was scheduled to arrive at 7:43.^[2] It carried about 115 passengers.^[1]

Engineer William Rockefeller, a 15-year Metro-North veteran who had started as a clerk in the stationmaster's office at Grand Central and then spent 10 years as an engineer, was operating the train from the cab car, at the front of a consist of seven Bombardier-made Shoreliner passenger coaches,^[3] in a mix of Metro-North and Connecticut Department of Transportation livery,^[a] two of which were closed off and used only for deadheading by employees.^[6] He had recently begun working the morning shift after working afternoons, a change he later told investigators he had made reluctantly,^[7] requiring that he leave his home in Germantown, approximately 27 miles (43 km) north of Poughkeepsie, at 3:30 a.m. for work. To make sure he had adequate rest before his shift, he had gone to bed at 8:30 p.m. the night before following a nine-hour shift the preceding day.^[8] He had arrived at work on time after a 43-minute drive, after which he bought a cup of coffee and a hard roll, filled out paperwork and attended a standard safety briefing, followed by tests of the train's safety equipment.^[9] Another veteran employee, Michael Hermann, who in his limited time working with Rockefeller had praised the engineer's "very smooth" train handling to other Metro-North employees,^[10] was the conductor; his one assistant leaving Poughkeepsie was Maria Herbert, with whom he regularly worked.^[11]

Once underway in predawn darkness that gradually lightened to civil twilight,^[12][13] the train proceeded south along the two-track main line, also used by Amtrak for its Empire Service trains. From Poughkeepsie it continued through the mid- and lower Hudson Valley, often right next to the river. Under electromotor diesel power, it made all six of its scheduled stops in the upper, non-electrified portion of the Hudson Line in Dutchess, Putnam and Westchester counties without incident. After Croton-Harmon, the northern end of the line's electrification, where it picked up another assistant conductor, Chris Kelly, it was held up briefly.^[14] The next stop was Ossining, where it became an express, continuing under diesel power.^[b] Between Ossining and the last stop, Tarrytown,^[2] just after dawn,^[17] Hermann and Herbert swept toward the center of the train, where they met briefly. After Tarrytown, with the train running only a minute behind schedule,^[18] they began returning to opposite ends of the train, taking seat checks from any passengers who might have boarded there. They were positioning themselves for where Metro-North's rules required them to be, so Herbert could join Rockefeller in the cab and call out signals after the last stop, Harlem–125th Street. Hermann, in the rear deadhead car with what he estimated to be six other employees, including Kelly, whom he had instructed to do so as the train's light passenger load did not require a third conductor, began doing his paperwork for the trip and preparing for his next.^[11]

The train continued south over the next 14 miles (23 km)^[1] on a straight set of four tracks next to the river, all with third rails, past the four stations along the line in the city of Yonkers, a permanent speed restriction of 50 miles per hour (80 km/h) through downtown was augmented by a temporary 60 mph (97 km/h) limit around Ludlow due to construction.^[19] South of that station the train entered the Bronx. About 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south of the Riverdale station, Rockefeller should have begun to slow the train down in anticipation of the curve^[20] immediately before Spuyten Duyvil station, below the Henry Hudson Bridge where the Harlem River Ship Canal flows into the Hudson across from the northern tip of Manhattan Island. Instead, he later said:

I [don]'t know how to explain it ... it was sort of like I was dazed, you know, looking straight ahead, almost like mesmerized. And I don't know if anybody's ever experienced like driving a long period of time in a car and staring at the taillights in front of them, and you get almost like that hypnotic feeling staring straight ahead ... I was just staring straight ahead ... [it was] that hypnotized feeling, dazed, that's what I was [feeling].^[19]

It was interrupted when, he felt, "something wasn't right with [the train]."^[19] Linda Smith, of Newburgh, who had boarded the train at Beacon with her sister Donna to see a choral performance at Lincoln Center, recalled that although she, too, was not fully awake, something seemed wrong. "It was bumpy and just seemed really at that point I was aware of going very fast."^[21] In the cab, Rockefeller initiated an emergency application of the brakes in an attempt to slow the train down, but it was already taking the curve.^[20]

午前7 時 19 分、 列車はグランド セントラルから11.4 マイル (18.3 km)北にあるスパイテン ダイビル駅の北100 ヤード (91 m)の地点で脱線した。 ^{[ 1 ]}列車は、アムトラックの列車がペン ステーションに向かうために分岐するスパイテン ダイビル橋を渡る西側線との分岐点を通過した直後だった。乗客車両に乗っていたリンダ スミスは、感じていた揺れが跳ね返りに変わり、座席のクッションが空中に飛び散るにつれて列車が横向きになったことを思い出した。「まるで私の周りで映画が起こっているようでした。」^{[ 21 ]}破片は割れた窓から車両内に入り込んだ。^{[ 8 ]}会議に向かっていたラ グランジビルの歯科医ジョエル ザリツキーは、「飛行機の激しい乱気流のようだった」と語った。^{[ 22 ]}  

後部回送車で、ヘルマンは最初に「金属がカタカタ鳴るような音」を聞いた。それ自体は珍しい音ではなかったが、少し奇妙に聞こえた。翌日、捜査官に「次に気づいたときには、車が蹴られて、4番目の座席から、あるいは客車の反対側の天井まで投げ飛ばされた…私は落ちた。また上に上がり、天井に激突し、それから床に激突した」と回想した。^{[ 23 ]}前部では、ハーバートは運転席の後ろの助手席に座っていたが、「ただ自分の用事を済ませようと顔を上げた途端、ほんの一瞬後に床に転がり落ちた…天井に何度もぶつかったと思う。反応する時間も、自分が何をしているのか考える時間もなかった」^{[ 24 ]}

列車が停止すると、ヘルマンは頭部負傷と打撲傷を負いながらも指揮を執り、脱線を指令員に報告した。その後、ケリーと協力して乗客と緊急対応要員の調整を行った。^{[ 23 ]}前方では、ほとんど無傷だったロックフェラーが、意識はあったものの頭部負傷を負っていたハーバートを、彼女の上に積み重なった座席クッションから解放した。ヘルマンとケリーが状況を指揮しているのを見て、彼は病院に運ばれて検査を受けるまで彼女のそばにいた。^{[ 25 ]}

All seven cars and the locomotive left the tracks. Those in the rear remained next to the tracks; in the front, the cab came to rest just short of the Harlem River. Rockefeller, largely unhurt, got out and began aiding passengers. Linda Smith was one of the 61^[1] injured^[26][27] in the accident, after she became trapped under seat cushions and unable to move. Her sister, whom she was travelling with, was thrown from the train and was one of the four killed in the accident.^[21]

The derailment was the first accident involving passenger fatalities in Metro-North's 30-year history,^[43] and its first accident in New York involving any fatalities since a 1988 collision in Mount Vernon that killed one crew member.^[44] It was the deadliest train accident within New York City since a 1991 subway derailment in Manhattan.^[45] Two days later, Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) director Joseph Szabo sent MTA head Thomas Prendergast a letter highly critical of the transit agency. Earlier that year, he observed, there had been a derailment on the New Haven Line serving Connecticut and Westchester County suburbs along Long Island Sound, a CSX freight derailment on the Hudson Line on the very next curve to the south of where the Spuyten Duyvil wreck had occurred,^[46] on the other side of the Spuyten Duyvil station, and an accident on the New Haven Line that killed a track worker. These had led to five deaths and 129 injuries. "The specific causes of each of these accidents may vary," Szabo wrote, "but regardless of the reasons, four serious accidents in less than seven months is simply unacceptable."^[47]

Szabo asked the MTA for "a serious, good faith commitment to the safe operation of the system." He said it needed to tell employees what, specifically, it would do to improve safety. He requested an answer in two days.^[47] "Immediate corrective action is imperative." Metro-North announced the day afterwards that it would institute a telephone line where employees could confidentially report "close calls."^[4] Prendergast later replied to Szabo that the railroad had held mandatory safety discussions for 4,000 employees at 20 locations since the accident.^[48]

The accident spurred further discussion of positive train control (PTC), which might have prevented it. After a 2008 wreck in Los Angeles, the FRA mandated all American railroads implement PTC by 2015. Many resisted, complaining about the cost of the technology. Among those railroads were both MTA commuter railroads, Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road, which have sought to have that deadline extended until 2018. In the wake of the Spuyten Duyvil derailment, U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a resident of Cold Spring whose neighbor James Lovell was one of those killed, introduced legislation to make low-interest loans and guarantees available so that commuter railroads like Metro-North could implement PTC.^[47] Eventually other congressmembers from the lower Hudson Valley joined as cosponsors.^[49] The deadline was later extended to the end of 2020.^[50] On December 23, 2020, the MTA completed its implementation, with all trains operating in positive train control.^[51]

MTA officials denied that money was the problem, noting that they had budgeted $600 million of the total $900 million estimated cost of PTC installation. Instead they pointed to doubts about the technology's efficacy for large commuter rail networks. On a radio talk show following the crash, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo conceded that PTC is "controversial ... [some people say] it's not what it's cracked up to be." The MTA itself said it was "untested and unproven for commuter railroads [of our] size and complexity."^[4]

Several days later The New York Times reported that the train had a device known as an alerter. It sounds an alarm when the train exceeds speed limits for 25 seconds and shuts it down after an additional 15 seconds if no action is taken by the engineer. It might have been able to prevent the accident; however it was in the locomotive, at the rear of the train, not the cab where Rockefeller was located.^[4]

While Metro-North used it only to prevent collisions, rail safety experts said it could easily be configured to force trains to slow down at curves such as Spuyten Duyvil, since it relied on signals sent through the rails themselves. It was also preferable to the traditional dead man's switch the cab was equipped with, which requires constant action and attention from the engineer. The MTA said it was considering doing so at 30 sites on the Metro-North and LIRR networks.^[4] On December 6, the FRA issued an emergency order requiring Metro-North to have two qualified crew members in the cab at any point where the speed limit drops by more than 20 miles per hour (32 km/h) until it installs that technology in cabs and at those sites.^[48] The next day Metro-North announced it was upgrading the signals at the Spuyten Duyvil curve and several others in the system; it would also lower the speed limit going into the curve so that it would be a less-than-20-mph drop and thus the extra engineer would not be necessary.^[52] U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Charles Schumer of New York called on Metro-North to install cameras to monitor both the track and the engineers.^[53]

On December 12, the FRA went further. It ordered "Operation Deep Dive,"^[49] a full safety review of Metro-North, in which every aspect of its corporate culture would be evaluated by a panel of rail safety experts. This was the first time the agency had taken this extreme step since 2006, following a series of accidents involving CSX freights.^[54]

In mid-March 2014, the agency released its report to Congress on the results of Deep Dive. Metro-North, it said, had a "deficient safety culture." The FRA identified "three overarching safety concerns:

• An overemphasis on on-time performance;
• An ineffective Safety Department and poor safety culture; and
• An ineffective training program."^[55]

It directed Metro-North to submit a plan for addressing these issues to it within 60 days. That many of the railroad's employees had cooperated thoroughly with investigators was encouraging.^[55]:17

Investigation

A team from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was dispatched to the scene of the accident to investigate.^[27] It found that the train's brakes had been deployed seconds prior to the crash and that the tracks had no problems. From the train event recorders, the NTSB determined that the train was traveling at 82 miles per hour (132 km/h); the speed limit for the section of track involved is 30 miles per hour (48 km/h).^[56] The brakes had indeed been deployed, but had reached their maximum level five seconds after the train entered the curve.^[31]

After being lifted from where they had come to rest and restored to the track, the cars involved were impounded by the NTSB and taken to Metro-North's yards at Croton-Harmon and Highbridge. Rockefeller surrendered his cell phone and submitted samples for drug and alcohol tests. When it was reported that his attention had lapsed prior to the accident, investigators announced that they would be assembling a timeline of his 72 hours preceding the accident to see whether they could find any explanation.^[8]

Cause

Early reports suggested that Rockefeller had claimed the brakes failed,^[57] although experts pointed out that that was unlikely since the brakes were equipped with a fail safe device that activates them should it detect a pressure drop. The NTSB soon determined that there was no problem with the tracks or the signals. Rockefeller's blood tests came back negative for both alcohol and drugs; his cellphone similarly was out of use at the time of the accident. But, he admitted when investigators were able to interview him, he had drifted into a "daze" until just before the accident when he tried to stop at the last minute.^[58]

Two days after the accident, Anthony Bottalico, head of the Association of Commuter Railroad Employees (ACRE), the Metro-North union, said that engineer William Rockefeller had "nodded off" before the accident. He likened it to white-line fever experienced by truckers. Rockefeller had recently started working the early shift instead of in the afternoons; however on the day of the accident he had apparently had adequate sleep and arrived at work on time from his home in Germantown, where he was seen to be alert and vivacious. Rockefeller's attorney confirmed the remarks. Shortly after Bottalico's comments, the NTSB barred ACRE from further participation in the investigation for disclosing too much information.^[59] A day later Rockefeller was suspended without pay.^[60]

In early April, federal investigators revealed that after the accident, Rockefeller had been diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea, a complication of his obesity,^[61] which may have contributed to his loss of attention. His blood had also been found to have a small amount of chlorpheniramine, an anti-histamine commonly found in over-the-countercold medications. Possible sedative effects require that those medications be contraindicated for use while driving or operating heavy machinery and include a warning to that effect on their packaging. While Rockefeller had initially denied taking any such medications to investigators, his lawyer said that would not justify a criminal charge, a step the district attorney's office said it was still considering at that point.^[62]

The NTSB's final report, issued almost 11 months after the accident, reiterated many of its earlier conclusions that positive train control (PTC) would have prevented the accident by automatically applying the brakes in the curve, and that Rockefeller's sleep disorder was the likely reason for his loss of attention. It went on to fault Metro-North for not routinely screening for sleep disorders employees in positions defined by federal regulations as safety-sensitive, and the FRA for not requiring railroads to do so. Lastly, it said that the failure of the glazings, or the windows on the cars, contributed to the loss of life and severity of injury.^[1]

By 2020 Metro-North had installed PTC on the Hudson Line, as well as the Harlem Line in eastern Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess counties, accounting for 68 percent of its trackage. The railroad blamed the delays on difficulties experienced by the private contractors installing it.^[63]

• List of American railroad accidents
• List of rail accidents (2010–2019)
• 1882 Spuyten Duyvil train wreck, collision that killed eight a mile down the line

• Metro North Derailment - Bronx, NY - NTSB
• NTSB Railroad Accident Brief: Metro-North Railroad Derailment - October 28, 2014