Belgian rail workers find 2nd black box in fatal train crash; EU officials urge quick upgrades

Belgium: 2nd black box found in fatal train crash

BRUSSELS — Railway workers on Wednesday found the second black box from this week’s deadly train collision in Belgium — a crash that EU officials said shows the need for Europe to quickly install a fail-safe signaling system across its patchwork of rail networks.

The two black box data recorders could shed light on why one commuter train apparently ran a red light Monday and collided laterally with another as it was shifting onto a merging track, shearing off the side of one of the carriages.

The wreck — a rare instance of fatality on European rails — highlighted the lagging efforts by national railroads to stitch together some 20 incompatible systems into a unified computer-driven signaling network with an automatic breaking system.

The stretch of line where Monday’s accident occurred will not be upgraded for another four years, though it is one of the choke points where Europe’s high-speed trains share tracks with local traffic, European officials said.

Eurostar said it is running a reduced service to Brussels until Monday morning and that trains from London will only be running to Lille, France, where passengers are transferred to buses for Brussels. It said other high-speed Thalys and TGV trains from France also are suspended until the track has been cleared.

Two days after the collision, the wreckage remained on the tracks 9 miles (15 kilometers) south of Brussels.

There were 18 known deaths, but more bodies may be found, national railways spokesman Jochen Goovaerts said. Provincial officials said 171 people were injured in the accident.

Goovaerts said police have yet to question the one driver who survived the crash and is recovering from serious injuries.

The high-speed Eurostar and Thalys trains from London and Paris remained suspended to Brussels for a third day Wednesday. Train traffic had been worsened Tuesday by a wildcat strike by Belgian train drivers protesting what they called the premature blaming of one their own for the accident.

The European Union’s 27 nations are gradually replacing their railway signaling systems with the unified European Rail Traffic Management System, or ERTMS, but the project’s €5 billion ($6.8 billion) price tag has led to delays. EU transport safety officials also said some nations were reluctant to replace their systems, even systems that are 50 years old.

“We would like to see more, but there is a distinction to be made between what you would like and what is possible,” said Enrico Grillo Pasquarelli, director of inland transport for the European Commission. “To move progressively, it takes time, it takes money, and it takes a lot of effort and organization.”

When installed on both train and track, the new European system provides voice and data communications, controls train speeds according to track conditions, and displays a train’s location in relation to others.

All of Europe’s high-speed trains are equipped with ERTMS, but thousands of commuter and intercity trains need to be outfitted. Installing the system on trains costs €200,000 ($273,000) per cab. Belgium alone has 1,100 engines, Goovaerts said.

Only 3,000 kilometers (1,865 miles) of track are compatible with ERTMS, with another 17,000 kilometers (10,600 miles) to be converted over the next decade, European Commission safety experts said. The conversion of each kilometer of track costs €150,000 ($205,000).

The head of the European Railway Agency’s safety unit insisted rail travel was still relatively safe compared with other modes of land transport.

“On average there are between 50 and 100 killed a year on European railroads,” compared with about 45,000 killed on the roads, Anders Lundstrom said. Rail travel “is probably 1,000 times safer.”

Monday’s collision was Belgium’s worst train wreck since 1954, when a crash near Leuven killed 20 German soccer fans and seriously injured 40 others. Europe’s worst recent crash occurred in 1998 near the German town of Eschede, where around 100 people were killed when a cracked wheel hurled a train off the tracks.

Associated Press writers Gretchen Mahan and Aoife White contributed to this report.