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Add concrete ties to the list of things to worry about on commuter rail
By adamg on Tue, 07/28/2009 - 9:53am
Over at CommonWealth, Jack Sullivan reports the ties that keep MBTA commuter-rail trains on the tracks south of Boston are falling apart:
... The concrete ties were supposed to last 50 years, but many are falling apart after less than 10. ... MBTA officials say they have identified defects in about 4,000 concrete ties on the two Old Colony commuter rail lines to Boston and on the Providence-to-Boston line, but they admit the problem could affect as many as 150,000 ties, equal to more than 56 miles of track. The cost of repairing the ties is unclear, but projections using numbers from similar projects elsewhere yield an estimate that could run as high as $100 million. ...
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Comments
Why is the MBTA liable for
Why is the MBTA liable for replacing someone's defective product? Shouldn't the supplier be liable for replacing a product which didn't remotely live up to the promised lifespan?
As we say on Fark...
RTFA.
Full of FAIL.
Then let's force them into bankruptcy
I'm not a fan of companies holding a gun to their own head and hollering "any man makes a move, the negro gets it." If they're bankrupt, they're bankrupt, and the MBTA can get in line with all the other creditors for a chance to loot the corpse.
The old shell game
Rocla Tie is a subsidiary of Rocla Industries. Australian company (not to be confused with the Finnish forklift maker), itself a part of the Fletcher Building group in NZ.
Overseas subsidiaries are the best way to offer substandard products with bogus guarantees. Repatriate the profits, bankrupt the subsidiary, laugh all the way to the bank. If they're bankrupt, they won't have to answer all the other lawsuits from other rail agencies who bought their ties.
And who were the contractors
And who were the contractors and sub-contractors that made and installed them?
Go after them ASAP.
Why do we allow shoody work to be preformed, then say, oops that sucks and spend more money?
tough spot
The article suggests that it wasn't the installation that is causing the ties to deteriorate. The ties were faulty to begin with and if the T files a claim against the manufacturer they have treatened to file bankruptcy, so the T is in a tough spot on this one.
Jobs creation
.
Concrete
A plausible theory. If the ties are really in that bad a shape, then the story would have first mentioned litigation plans on the concrete supplier.
I was just pointing out an
I was just pointing out an upside. I automatically took their word for it that the ties were in bad shape.
broken window fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken...
That money is money that CSX (NOT the MBTA or MBCR, who don't own the lines) could have spent in more productive ways.
The Old Colony and
The Old Colony and Providence Lines?
These are both owned by the Commonwealth.
No, the Commonwealth owns
No, the Commonwealth owns both of these lines.
Amtrak owns and operates Providence Line
I'm not sure about the Old Colony like, but Amtrak owns the Providence Line
The Providence line is owned
The Providence line is owned by the MBTA as far as the Mass/R.I. border, but Amtrak maintains and dispatches the line per an agreement with the MBTA.
That's the last time I wedge my tongue into my cheek here
.
Unfortunately, this is nothing new.
Amtrak has been dogging concrete tie problems since they first started the Northeast Corridor project in the late 1970s. While the failure rate for ties has gone down in the past 30 years, it still remains a problem that needs to be addressed.
ditto
Indeed - Amtrak is right now replacing a few thousand ties on the CT shoreline that suffer the same problem - so (this time) the problem isn't an MBTA blunder
Yes and No
The MBTA is being very defensive about this, probably because it specified something for these lines that had known problems with climate and salt use:
Not that Joe P would have any farking clue what their customers ever ask about.
Who Said 50 years?
Was that theoretical? Or did the manufacturer say they should last that long.
If these were purchased and used based on such claims, I don't see why we all have to pay for it.
Looks like a good article
I don't see a mention of "insurance" in there, though.
Not Unique to Boston
From one of my railfan friends who travels on trains around the world -sounds like concrete may not be as good as the old stuff known as wood:
That's happening all over the world. When I was in Guatemala, they had the same story. Also Mexico when I went thru the Copper Canyon.
Seems nobody recognized the "flexing" of the ties under train weight. Wood has a normal flexibility. In case you haven't noticed concrete ties reverberate a great deal of noise too, unlike wood which absorbs it.
Gentleman's bet that they recognized flexing
Engineers (the pocket protector kind, not the steam engine driving kind) think all about things like whether a structure will hold up under various conditions, and have tools for analyzing these things.
My layperson's impression has been that a project to use concrete ties in the US would require engineers to analyze and sign off on various things, and that factors like "flexing" would be considered in the process.
Engineers
Think about things like flexing.
Then they get shot down by their managers, to whom technical details present an unwelcome threat to bookings and sales.
Will a Rocla engineer whistleblower please come to the courtesy phone?
The fascinating part in this is that it seems like concrete ties are failing worldwide. They don't just crack, but they wear unevenly and the rails separate from them, causing derailment. There's an interesting NTSB report here (.pdf) about a derailment in Washington caused by concrete ties.
It's just amazing that these darn things were supposed to last 50 years and haven't lasted 10.
When engineers are involved...
...there will probably be a paper trail of who guarantees what.
Paper trail
The Amazing Kreskin foresees that the paper trail leads to:
A) An offshore holding company;
B) A retired executive; and
C) An engineer who works for another company now.
See S-P's comment
Don't you read Dilbert? :-)
These things have been around for decades and you'd think they have the engineering figured out - my guess is a manufacturing issue related to the engineering (substituting a cheaper or unapproved product in the mix?) - but purely a guess.