Christmas at
the Grotto
Enjoying the
sights and sounds
of the season
‘City
of
Roses’
Volume XLVI • Number 51
See Metro, page 9
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • December 20, 2017
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
On its first ever run along a faster new route, an Amtrak Cascades train bound for Portland derailed on a curve and plunged off an overpass onto I-5 south of Seattle
Monday, killing three people and injuring more than 70 others. (AP photo)
Going Too Fast
Amtrak Cascades crashes on inaugural run
The Amtrak train bound for Portland
and Seattle making its first ever run along a
faster new route was hurtling 50 mph over
the speed limit when it jumped the track
and plunged off an overpass south of Se-
attle Monday, killing at least three people,
injuring dozens more and crushing two ve-
hicles.
Bella Dinh-Zarr, a National Transporta-
tion Safety Board member, reported sever-
al hours after the crash that the data record-
er in the rear locomotive showed the train
was going 80 mph in a 30 mph zone when
it derailed along a curve, spilling some of
its cars onto I-5 below.
Dinh-Zarr said it is not yet known what
caused the train to run off the rails and too
early to say why it was going so fast. In-
vestigators were looking into whether the
engineer was distracted by the presence of
an employee-in-training in the locomotive,
a federal official said Tuesday. In previous
wrecks, investigators looked at whether the
engineer was distracted or disabled.
The train, with 85 passengers and crew
members, was making the inaugural run
along a fast new bypass route that was cre-
ated by refurbishing freight tracks along-
side I-5. The 15-mile, $180.7 million proj-
ect was aimed at speeding up service by
bypassing a route with a number of curves,
single-track tunnels and freight traffic.
Positive train control - technology that
can automatically slow or stop a speeding
train - wasn’t in use on this stretch of track,
according to Amtrak President Richard
Anderson.
Regulators have pressing railroads for
C ontinued on P age 4