Transportation Safety Board calls for interim fail-safe measures after Montreal crash

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MONTREAL — A 2023 train crash in Montreal that injured six people highlights the immediate need for backup safety mechanisms that can prevent collisions or derailments, the Transportation Safety Board said in an incident report Tuesday.

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Safety board chair Yoan Marier told an Ottawa news conference that trains must be equipped as soon as possible with interim fail-safe devices until a more robust system can be implemented.

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The board’s recommendation to Transport Canada is the result of its investigation into a collision in Montreal between an exo commuter rail train and a Canadian National Railway freight train that injured four passengers and two exo employees.

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On Nov. 21, 2023, the CN train passed a signal at the St-Leonard_Montreal-Nord station indicating it needed to keep its speed at 15 miles per hour.

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“In railway operations, signals work in sequence, meaning that each one provides an indication based on what the next signal is expected to display,” investigator Luc Regis told reporters.

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The two-person CN crew likely assumed that the path ahead was clear and that the next signal would let them go faster, so they accelerated the train to 41 miles per hour, Regis said. They did not notice the commuter train until it was just 150 metres away — and slammed into the back of it.

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“The locomotive engineer initiated an emergency brake application; however, at that distance and speed, the collision was unavoidable,” Regis said.

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Marier noted that in the United States, a 2008 collision in California led to the imposition of a fail-safe train control system on high-hazard routes. The technology — called positive train control, or PTC — kicks in during certain situations, for example when a crew doesn’t respond to signals. It can guard against incidents like speed-related derailments, incursions into work zones and main track switch errors.

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Canadian trains working in the U.S. must be equipped with the technology and adhere to those safety rules.

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“Yet here in Canada, the industry continues to rely solely on administrative defences, such as regulations, instructions, and procedures, leaving safety dependent on human performance,” Marier said.

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“Without strong physical safeguards, the risk of collisions remains alarmingly high.”

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The safety board said the collision was partly the result of a systemic problem going back more than two decades. In 2022, Transport Canada announced it would require fail-safe technology but progress has been slow and many of the key steps have not been completed. That’s why Marier said the board is asking for immediate interim safety measures while the government fully implements an adequate fail-safe system.

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Even if Transport Canada started implementing the PTC or the Canadian equivalent of it tomorrow, we would still be many years away before the system is fully operational,” Marier said.

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“Which is why we’re coming out today with the recommendation to have interim measures in place until the system is fully operational, because it is going to take a number of years before it is operational.”