Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
According to the Reddit thread, one of the train operators was on her first day alone. Sunday Night Football is a terrible day to send a trainee out on their first day.
It's RTA ''management'', of course this happened. First shift as a sole train operator, Sunday Night Football no less. Surprised India Birdsong didn't get stuck wearing a conductor's cap lol...as I bet RTA couldn't get enough veterans to take this shift or, simply, no one at RTA thought about it....leaning towards the latter of these two.
as I bet RTA couldn't get enough veterans to take this shift or, simply, no one at RTA thought about it....leaning towards the latter of these two.
Probably a combination of both. It wouldn't surprise me if "Sunday night" is the typical shift to assign to first time operators, as it is generally going to see very light ridership. And nobody in management put 2 and 2 together with the Browns game.
I bet some relatively cheap incentive pay for event days would attract the veterans.
Probably a combination of both. It wouldn't surprise me if "Sunday night" is the typical shift to assign to first time operators, as it is generally going to see very light ridership. And nobody in management put 2 and 2 together with the Browns game.
I bet some relatively cheap incentive pay for event days would attract the veterans.
I was in the rapid earlier Sunday. everything was fine all day until the evening I guess. they ran 2 cars on blue and green, 3 cars red all day basically. They knew there was a game.
Used it this weekend and LOVED it. Redline to bus 26 to Lakewood Park. It was timed perfectly. My brother came this trip for the first time in 20 years and was FLOORED by the friendly nature of everyone he met and said, "I would only need my bike and the RTA pass, coffee shop, et." He is already looking at another visit.
Most traffic we had.... walking out of First Energy Stadium back to the condo on St Clair. LOL
Probably a combination of both. It wouldn't surprise me if "Sunday night" is the typical shift to assign to first time operators, as it is generally going to see very light ridership. And nobody in management put 2 and 2 together with the Browns game.
I bet some relatively cheap incentive pay for event days would attract the veterans.
Does the WFL even run on Sunday nights otherwise? It makes sense then to let first time going solo conductors to run the slow to dead shifts but not when there's a special event that makes a normally slow period into one of large crowds with an Indians game at 6:30 and a Browns kickoff at 8:20.
Give the crap shifts ie. Browns games, to the low on the ladder conductors...but this is what you get: conductors that don't realize there's a ''dead man's zone'' on the electric overhead wires and this nitwit conductor on Sunday night not only found the dead zone but became stuck in it. Embarrassing for RTA.
At least it wasn't faulty equipment etc that many on social media were blaming with the usual lack of funding in maintaining RTA and suburbanites complaining about paying taxes default schtick. This Sunday night incident is just plain old ordinary incompetence on many levels. Far from being an issue of lack of funding, more so a lack of common sense, or simply one of not caring who is running the trains at Browns stadium.
Does the WFL even run on Sunday nights otherwise? It makes sense then to let first time going solo conductors to run the slow to dead shifts but not when there's a special event that makes a normally slow period into one of large crowds with an Indians game at 6:30 and a Browns kickoff at 8:20.
Give the crap shifts ie. Browns games, to the low on the ladder conductors...but this is what you get: conductors that don't realize there's a ''dead man's zone'' on the electric overhead wires and this nitwit conductor on Sunday night not only found the dead zone but became stuck in it. Embarrassing for RTA.
At least it wasn't faulty equipment etc that many on social media were blaming with the usual lack of funding in maintaining RTA and suburbanites complaining about paying taxes default schtick. This Sunday night incident is just plain old ordinary incompetence on many levels. Far from being an issue of lack of funding, more so a lack of common sense, or simply one of not caring who is running the trains at Browns stadium.
Apparently the blame must be shared by the doofuses (doofi?) in the "tower" -- train control from the HQ building a few blocks away in the WHD, that ordered the train to back up and pick up missed passengers, knowing that the driver was inexperienced. How this driver picked up a disabled passenger from the ADA high platform then drove away leaving hundreds of passengers is beyond me. Of course RTA is extremely foolish to allow an inexperienced driver handle the crush loads following a Browns game at Midnight, no less. This is really asking for a disaster...
... speaking of which, I'm not sure how many of you realize that, literally, the deadliest rapid transit accident in American history happened under very similar circumstances to the post-Browns, WFL incident 1.5 days ago .... Google: Malbone disaster...in 1918 during WWI in New York City -- Brooklyn to be exact -- one of the subway companies (this was the pre-MTA days when private companies ran various parts of the young and still growing NYC subway network) was struck by the train engineer's union so a young man with no experience driving commercial runs (I believe he parked trains in one of the yards) was forced into driving a rush hour run as a "scab" worker. The result was he was speeding to make his schedule due to getting side-tracked, literally, on a wrong route; he had to back up and switch to the correct route -- again, sound like the Waterfront Line post Browns the other night? The hustling train was going way too fast (about 60 mph in a section restricted to about 20 mph) downhill off an elevated portion and into a tunnel, when one of the cars jumped the track on a curve at the tunnel entrance... most of the cars, save the first one the young engineer was driving, crashed into the entrance portal, and because the cars were wooden in those days, they were completely obliterated and nearly 100 commuters died instantly; many mangled bodies were beyond recognition ... So horrible was this tragedy, that City officials later actually changed the name from Malbone (British pronunciation: mall-bun) street where the tunnel entrance was (and still is today -- the line has been reduced to a lightly used, 1-track shuttle line nowadays) to Empire Blvd just to distance the city from this transit apocalypse.... The Brooklyn Rapid Transit went bankrupt as a result and was usurped by the newly-organized Brooklyn Manhattan Transit (BMT is still used for these Brooklyn routes by old-timers to this day)... btw, the panicked young motorman escaped amongst the morbid stench, smoke and splintered railcars and the sudden crowd of frenzied rescuers rushing from street level, and ran home, scared and bloodied; later arrested, put on trial; he was either acquitted or spent a short time in jail before being paroled; don't recall which.
...
The moral of this horrible story is: you would think, 101 years after the Malbone tragedy that a transit agency would not press inexperienced drivers into service handling huge crush-load commuting crowds... guess some transit agencies exist with their collective heads in the sand (or up their hind parts, you decide). Thank God no one was seriously hurt on the Waterfront Line in those wee Monday morning hours. You would hope somebody, or bodies, would lose their job(s) for this, but hey, it's RTA...
Apparently the blame must be shared by the doofuses (doofi?) in the "tower" -- train control from the HQ building a few blocks away in the WHD, that ordered the train to back up and pick up missed passengers, knowing that the driver was inexperienced. How this driver picked up a disabled passenger from the ADA high platform then drove away leaving hundreds of passengers is beyond me. Of course RTA is extremely foolish to allow an inexperienced driver handle the crush loads following a Browns game at Midnight, no less. This is really asking for a disaster...
... speaking of which, I'm not sure how many of you realize that, literally, the deadliest rapid transit accident in American history happened under very similar circumstances to the post-Browns, WFL incident 1.5 days ago .... Google: Malbone disaster...in 1918 during WWI in New York City -- Brooklyn to be exact -- one of the subway companies (this was the pre-MTA days when private companies ran various parts of the young and still growing NYC subway network) was struck by the train engineer's union so a young man with no experience driving commercial runs (I believe he parked trains in one of the yards) was forced into driving a rush hour run as a "scab" worker. The result was he was speeding to make his schedule due to getting side-tracked, literally, on a wrong route; he had to back up and switch to the correct route -- again, sound like the Waterfront Line post Browns the other night? The hustling train was going way too fast (about 60 mph in a section restricted to about 20 mph) downhill off an elevated portion and into a tunnel, when one of the cars jumped the track on a curve at the tunnel entrance... most of the cars, save the first one the young engineer was driving, crashed into the entrance portal, and because the cars were wooden in those days, they were completely obliterated and nearly 100 commuters died instantly; many mangled bodies were beyond recognition ... So horrible was this tragedy, that City officials later actually changed the name from Malbone (British pronunciation: mal-bun) street where the tunnel entrance was (and still is today -- the line has been reduced to a lightly used, 1-track shuttle line nowadays) to Empire Avenue just to distance the city from this transit apocalypse.... The Brooklyn Rapid Transit went bankrupt as a result and was usurped by the newly-organized Brooklyn Manhattan Transit (BMT is still used for these Brooklyn routes by old-timers to this day)... btw, the panicked young train operator escaped amongst the sudden crowd of rescuers and ran home, bloodied; later arrested, put on trial and did some time in jail before given clemency...
The moral of this horrible story is: you would think, 101 years after the Malbone tragedy that a transit agency would not press inexperienced drivers into service handling huge crush-load commuting crowds... guess some transit agencies exist with their collective heads in the sand (or up their hind parts, you decide). Thank God no one was seriously hurt on the Waterfront Line in those wee Monday morning hours. You would hope somebody, or bodies, would lose their job(s) for this, but hey, it's RTA...
Interesting especially because I was going to mention the safety aspect of this inexperienced RTA WFL conductor on Sunday night. As much as we think people, or in this case the RTA, do the right thing, we also have to remember they oftentimes don’t and, yes, we’re lucky no one was hurt or killed. Just exposure that RTA has a first time solo conductor handling a post game browns crowd, which common sense for those post age 8 would know better.
Didn’t know the “tower” ordered the driver back to w3rd station; it’s even worse than driver acting on his or her own doing this. How did the driver “miss” all those browns fans yet pick up the the a lone disabled passenger?
Yes... hard to say exactly how this debacle occurred. We all just attribute it to RTA's collective incompetence which is not only sad, but intolerable...
... btw I may have under-spoke. The Malbone crash may have been the largest railroad loss of life ... period.
Apparently the blame must be shared by the doofuses (doofi?) in the "tower" -- train control from the HQ building a few blocks away in the WHD, that ordered the train to back up and pick up missed passengers, knowing that the driver was inexperienced. How this driver picked up a disabled passenger from the ADA high platform then drove away leaving hundreds of passengers is beyond me. Of course RTA is extremely foolish to allow an inexperienced driver handle the crush loads following a Browns game at Midnight, no less. This is really asking for a disaster...
... speaking of which, I'm not sure how many of you realize that, literally, the deadliest rapid transit accident in American history happened under very similar circumstances to the post-Browns, WFL incident 1.5 days ago .... Google: Malbone disaster...in 1918 during WWI in New York City -- Brooklyn to be exact -- one of the subway companies (this was the pre-MTA days when private companies ran various parts of the young and still growing NYC subway network) was struck by the train engineer's union so a young man with no experience driving commercial runs (I believe he parked trains in one of the yards) was forced into driving a rush hour run as a "scab" worker. The result was he was speeding to make his schedule due to getting side-tracked, literally, on a wrong route; he had to back up and switch to the correct route -- again, sound like the Waterfront Line post Browns the other night? The hustling train was going way too fast (about 60 mph in a section restricted to about 20 mph) downhill off an elevated portion and into a tunnel, when one of the cars jumped the track on a curve at the tunnel entrance... most of the cars, save the first one the young engineer was driving, crashed into the entrance portal, and because the cars were wooden in those days, they were completely obliterated and nearly 100 commuters died instantly; many mangled bodies were beyond recognition ... So horrible was this tragedy, that City officials later actually changed the name from Malbone (British pronunciation: mall-bun) street where the tunnel entrance was (and still is today -- the line has been reduced to a lightly used, 1-track shuttle line nowadays) to Empire Blvd just to distance the city from this transit apocalypse.... The Brooklyn Rapid Transit went bankrupt as a result and was usurped by the newly-organized Brooklyn Manhattan Transit (BMT is still used for these Brooklyn routes by old-timers to this day)... btw, the panicked young motorman escaped amongst the morbid stench, smoke and splintered railcars and the sudden crowd of frenzied rescuers rushing from street level, and ran home, scared and bloodied; later arrested, put on trial; he was either acquitted or spent a short time in jail before being paroled; don't recall which.
...
The moral of this horrible story is: you would think, 101 years after the Malbone tragedy that a transit agency would not press inexperienced drivers into service handling huge crush-load commuting crowds... guess some transit agencies exist with their collective heads in the sand (or up their hind parts, you decide). Thank God no one was seriously hurt on the Waterfront Line in those wee Monday morning hours. You would hope somebody, or bodies, would lose their job(s) for this, but hey, it's RTA...
My dad was a young boy when that happened, and ran to the scene shortly after it happened. Inexperienced operators, back in the day, could get you killed.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
