NOVA

NARRATOR

Travel by train can be efficient, hands-free, even relaxing. But is it safe enough? Devastating train accidents raise this question. (horn blaring) Trains have collided head on with deadly force.

WOMAN

People are bleeding and hurt here.

NARRATOR

Or gone so fast, they've derailed on curves, leaving mangled metal and broken bodies. Crashes at road crossings kill scores of people every year. And tanker cars filled with crude oil can bring instant catastrophe... (explosion roars)...like this one in a small Canadian town. Some of the most serious train wrecks are caused by human error. Yet there's a failsafe system that can eliminate most of these. The maximum speed that I'm allowed to operate right now is 80 miles per hour. But after years of waiting, it's still not fully operational, leaving passengers at risk. If you don't take action, people are going to die. What can we do to make our trains safer? Will we ever develop sleek, fast, ultra-safe trains like those in Europe and Japan? And will we ever see the end of these? "Why Trains Crash"-- up next on NOVA. Major funding for NOVA is provided by the following... (train whistle blows) They may seem like blasts from the past, great metal behemoths seemingly lost in time. But trains are still one of the most prodigious movers of freight and people the world has ever seen, and were once the catalysts for turning lands into nations. In Europe and Asia, trains have remained central to the transportation needs of society. And in America, after a period of decline, trains are making a comeback. The freight industry is resurgent and commuter rail is attracting more passengers tired of traffic jams. Statistically, trains are far safer than automobiles, but are they safe enough? The history of train travel is replete with spectacular, terrifying, and deadly crashes. What lessons have we learned from past accidents? And can we make our modern trains safer? Ironically, a way to increase train safety would emerge in a place where the car is king. It's a typical afternoon at Union Train Station in Los Angeles. On September 12, 2008, commuters are beginning to board Metrolink trains to go home, happily avoiding the notorious L.A. freeways already becoming parking lots.

At a little after 4

00 p.m., Metrolink train #111 reaches Chatsworth Station, about 30 miles west of L.A. Some passengers disembark, while about 200 remain onboard as #111 continues on to stops west. (horn blows)

It's now about 4

15. Everything is normal. But a few miles away, a Union Pacific freight train out of San Francisco is headed in the opposite direction. It's about to go through a series of one-track tunnels that will put it on the same track as the Metrolink train, headed straight for it. But dispatchers are following both trains on their screens.

MAN

There's a Metrolink that's here.

NARRATOR

And have a clear protocol for handling these potentially dangerous situations.

SERGIO MARQUEZ

If you have a single-track territory and you have two trains opposing, or going in the opposite direction, you have to have one train wait someplace where there is a siding.

NARRATOR

Here, a train on the main track has a red signal telling it another train is approaching. It will stop next to the siding on its left. The dispatchers remotely shift a section of rail called a switch that aligns the track for the oncoming train to go onto the siding and around the stopped train. After it passes, it will re-enter the main track down the line. Once the moving train has fully passed onto the siding, the switch is reset for the stopped train to proceed. This is how single-tracking is supposed to work. But on September 12, 2008, something went terribly wrong. What we know now is, just after the Chatsworth signal, the two trains entered the same single-track curve. Unable to see each other coming,

at 4

22 p.m., they crashed head on.

MAN

We had a collision with something. We have a whole bunch of people bleeding...

NARRATOR

The Chatsworth collision is still the worst rail disaster in recent U.S. history, with 25 deaths and over a hundred injuries. A National Transportation Safety Board investigator happened to be living near Chatsworth and rushed to the scene.

TED TURPIN

Seldom does this really happen for me as an investigator. Usually I'm flying clear across the country and this part of the accident has already been completed.

NARRATOR

Ted Turpin has investigated many rail crashes for NTSB, but nothing prepared him for Chatsworth.

TURPIN

I could see the freight train, but I couldn't find the Metrolink locomotive. And until I looked at it even closer, I realized that the Metrolink locomotive had been shoved inside the first car.

NARRATOR

The shoved-back locomotive accounted for 23 of the 25 deaths, including the Metrolink engineer. But Turpin needed to focus on how this disaster happened and why. I could tell that the Metrolink train had gone past the signal location, but I couldn't tell which train had violated a signal rule. He looked for the answer at the track switch and siding a few hundred yards from the crash. He found the switch rail aligned like this, meaning the dispatchers had set it for the freight train to proceed without stopping onto the siding, while the Metrolink train was supposed to wait for it to pass. That told us the Metrolink train was the one that had violated the signal. But why did Metrolink engineer Robert Sanchez ignore a stop signal? That answer would come a few days later. As a normal course of all of our accident investigations, we get cell phone records. And in this case the engineer was engaged in texting on his cell phone from when he left Chatsworth Station until the collision. The texts-- to teenage train enthusiasts promising rides in the cab-- were an unlawful breach of train rules and criminally negligent.

CHERYL WHITNEY

To find out that somebody was texting, it's pretty disgusting.

NARRATOR

At a memorial garden for those who died, Cheryl Whitney remembers her son Curtis. He was just 22 and taking his first train ride. Curtis survived, but with severe back injuries that would finally take their toll.

WHITNEY

Curtis was on quite a bit of pain medication. One night he had taken some morphine and unfortunately it took his life. The coroner said that his body was just too fragile from the train accident. He didn't survive. There isn't an hour in the day that goes by that I don't think about this accident. The accident happened...

NARRATOR

Jim Paulson, a former railroad worker himself, also survived but is still haunted by visions of the crash.

PAULSON

All the people that were killed, and all the people that were injured, these memories are just... they just keep coming, keep coming, and keep coming, and keep coming. It's just hard to keep collecting my thoughts. It's just...

NARRATOR

Suffering a head injury in the crash, Jim began having memory lapses that eventually forced him to retire. But the Chatsworth tragedy did produce a positive result. It compelled Congress to act. Chatsworth was the last straw that caused Congress to enact the Rail Safety Improvement Act to mandate the implementation of positive train control. Positive Train Control, or PTC, is an automatic failsafe system that can prevent crashes like Chatsworth. First, a train's route with speed restrictions is preprogrammed onto a computer located in the locomotive. Trackside signals or GPS satellites tell the computer where the train is on its route and display the speed limits on a dashboard screen. And dispatchers tell the computers if there are work zone slow downs or red signals ahead. Now, if an engineer exceeds a speed limit or goes through a red signal, the computer will stop the train.

LUIS CARRASQUERO

Currently the PTC is telling me that the maximum speed that I'm allowed to operate right now is 80 miles per hour.

NARRATOR

In development for decades, it took Chatsworth to bring the system closer to operational. Luis Carrasquero is operating a PTC training simulator. We have where the train is currently located. This is exactly what it would be like in the real train.

CARRASQUERO

Currently we are being warned right now that there is a speed reductionto 20 miles per hour and it is giving me a warning of 19 and 18 seconds. If I were to ignore that, PTC will put the train into a penalty, meaning it will put the train into a stop. (beeping) PTC is a technology that basically takes over operations of the locomotive. No longer will a single person be able to cause an accident. (train horn blaring)

NARRATOR

After Chatsworth, Congress gave the rail industry-- passenger and freight-- seven years, until 2015, to install PTC. But they didn't. Citing technical challenges requiring more time, Congress extended the deadline three more years, thereby prolonging the possibility of other deadly crashes.

CHRISTOPHER HART

As long as we don't have it, every day it could happen again.

NARRATOR

On May 12, 2015, it did happen again. Amtrak regional train #188 was headed north from Washington, DC, on its way to New York. It passed downtown Philadelphia,

and at 9

21 p.m. was traveling 106 miles an hour when it entered this long curve at Frankford Junction. Unfortunately, the speed limit was only 50. #188 derailed so violently, it lit up the sky. In the mangled and overturned cars, eight passengers lay dead and nearly 200 were injured. Was this the result of a mechanical failure, or did another preventable human error cause a devastating train disaster? Within minutes of the crash, rescuers began a frantic search for trapped passengers, while inside the overturned dining car, an ex-Iraq war veteran and former Pennsylvania congressman was coming to.

PATRICK MURPHY

The force was so violent that I was thrown like a rag doll across, head-first into the other side of the car and I was knocked unconscious.

MAN

Got to move that out.

MURPHY

When I came to, I saw that my arms and legs were okay, and then I started to push myself up. I could tell we were upside-down. I could hear screams and cries and I remember just some people trying to get out. I had to pull myself up and get myself on the one table to rip open the window and just help people get out.

NARRATOR

Patrick Murphy stayed inside until first responders could attend to the seriously injured, and then he grabbed his cell phone. I took a quick picture and immediately put it up on Twitter and I think I said, "Please pray for the wounded." The #188 crash would not only bring renewed urgency to install PTC, it also raised questions about passenger protection. Could we design safer cars, and should passengers wear seatbelts? Experts see evidence both for and against seatbelts. In this crash test, unrestrained dummies would have been helped by seatbelts. But the smaller, restrained passenger might have risked a neck injury because of the placement of his shoulder belt. Lap belts, too, can help prevent or cause injuries. So lap belts themselves, if they're not over the hips appropriately, you can get abdominal injuries, which are not good things. And since moving around unrestrained is one of the benefits of train travel, safety experts look for other ways to protect passengers.

DAVID TYRELL

We've done a lot

in order to make trains safer

look at the accidents, look at how people get hurt, and figure out what are the features needed to prevent those injuries. So, you know, one big area for this has been people seated at tables. They hit the table and the table causes internal abdominal injury. Basically the table imparts too much force to the abdomen.

NARRATOR

Some trains now have tables that can flex or break apart to reduce the possibility of internal injuries. And seat rows with people either facing backward or forward can also be better designed to absorb collisions.

TYRELL

What we have striven to do is to make sure that the seat remains attached and also that the seat back is high enough to kind of act like a catcher's mitt. And we've been able to show that these seats are much more effective in limiting the loads that are imparted to the occupants. during a train collision.

NARRATOR

#188 did have the safer seats, not the safer tables. Nor did it have a new generation of crash energy management cars that strengthen the spaces people occupy, but have shock absorbing crumple zones at the ends of cars and push back couplers.

TYRELL

What happens with a conventional coupler system is that it can tend to act like a vaulting mechanism and bring the strong underframe of one car up to the weaker end frame of another car. This would wipe out the upper part here. And we now have a push-back coupler and also have an end structure that can gracefully deform and absorb energy. But if you're much above, say, 40 miles per hour... It won't save you if you've got a hundred-mile-an-hour train collision.

NARRATOR

Since #188 was going over a hundred and overturned violently, additional safety features may not have helped very much. Investigators could find no mechanical reasons for the crash, but data recorders showed #188 inexplicably speeding up before entering a big curve. Where he should have been decelerating to 50 is where he was accelerating to 106. Only engineer Brian Bostian could shed light on this. He survived, but said he couldn't remember what happened. Did he black out in the crash, or was he hiding something?

HART

We looked at our usual list of suspects for that. We started with cell phones-- was this person on a cell phone? We looked at impairment, we looked at fatigue. The usual suspects did not play a role in this. He was not impaired. He was not on a cell phone, he was not fatigued.

NARRATOR

But after several interviews with Bostian, investigators believed they finally had their answer. On the night of the crash, a Southeastern Pennsylvania commuter train was about six minutes ahead of #188 when it suddenly came to an emergency stop. Someone had thrown a rock, shattering the SEPTA train windshield, spraying glass in the engineer's face. As #188 drew closer to the stopped train, Bostian began listening intently to calls between the SEPTA engineer and the Philadelphia dispatch office.

STEVEN JENNER

And the SEPTA engineer said, "Yes, I have glass on my face. "I'm concerned about it-- can you send someone?" And over the next six minutes, there was a conversation between a SEPTA engineer and the train dispatcher. And the Amtrak engineer, he has a concern for this other engineer.

NARRATOR

He was also concerned that the SEPTA train was stopped on track one while he was fast approaching on track two.

JENNER

He knew that he was going to be passing this stopped SEPTA train. What he didn't know is if there were workers on the tracks inspecting the damage. He knew he needed to be extra vigilant.

NARRATOR

The SEPTA train was stopped before this big curve at Frankford Junction, where the speed limit is 50. Farther on, there's a gentler curve, then a long straightaway, where the speed limit jumps to 110. What we think happened was, his attention was focused elsewhere, behind him, at the SEPTA situation, and he lost what we call situation awareness. A distracted Bostian passes the SEPTA train, but thinks he's reached the gentle curve and straightaway and speeds up. But he's actually just entering the big Frankford curve. He hit the brakes, but it was too late. Although the crash was the result of a mistake-- not negligence, like Chatsworth-- once again PTC would have prevented a fatal accident. Yet Congress has again extended full implementation, now to 2020.

FEINBERG

So five years beyond the original deadline. Thousands of people get on passenger trains every day. They shouldn't have to count on the fact that that engineer will not make one mistake, whether it's intentional or unintentional, or have a medical event. We have technology that can take that off the table.

NARRATOR

The good news is, several railroads now have PTC up and running. Now I passed the speed restriction. Now it's going to start counting down to the next restriction, which is five mile an hour over to Byberry Road. Philadelphia's commuter system is nearly complete. Amtrak has PTC on virtually all of the Northeast Corridor. And the very first commuter train to come online was L.A.'s Metrolink. But since trains can use different PTC systems, even if they share the same track, getting these systems to operate together has been a challenge, especially between passenger and freight trains.

KEITH MILLHOUSE

The interoperability of the system basically means that our system works with other people's systems, because when you have large freight railroads that can have 8,000 locomotives anywhere in the country, you know, they have to work in all different territories.

NARRATOR

And freight trains don't run on fixed commuter-like schedules. So they can pop up almost any time on a dispatcher's screen.

MARQUEZ

We're PTC-active on our track today. Where we need to get to is when we have other railroads come on to us. We run freight trains, we run Amtrak. We want those trains to be PTC-active on our territory as soon as possible.

NARRATOR

So all PTC systems have to coordinate safely with each other, and this has accounted for some of the delay.

MILLHOUSE

It's expensive and it's challenging, but if you don't take action, people are going to die. (horn blaring)

NARRATOR

Unfortunately, PTC on its own will not prevent all dangerous accidents, including these. (horn blaring) The Federal Railroad Administration reports that on average, every three hours in the U.S., a person or a vehicle is struck by a train in large part because people have no idea how much momentum a moving train has.

FEINBERG

It can sometimes take a train up to a mile or more to come to a complete stop. The heavier the train is, the longer it takes to slow it down.

NARRATOR

Bill Keppen is a former locomotive engineer, who was always wary of what the industry calls grade crossings. One of the things that scared the heck out of me was approaching grade crossings, particularly ones that aren't equipped with electronic warning devices. There are crossings where there are no gates or bells or flashing lights, and these are especially dangerous. And so too are crossings where traffic backups can sometimes trap drivers between gates. This happened to an S.U.V. in Valhalla, New York, killing the driver and five train passengers. The Valhalla driver may not have known, as this driver does, that crossing gates can flex or break away in an emergency. (train horn blaring) But crossing accidents can also be caused by individuals doing dumb things. And when these happen, few people realize how deeply they can affect engineers.

KEPPEN

One unfortunate case, I had a trespasser, because they're on the tracks where they're not supposed to be, walking away from my train. And by the time I saw the individual, I was too close to stop, even by putting the train in emergency. I struck the individual probably at 20, 25 miles an hour and killed her. I mean, you take that around with you for the rest of your life. You just never forget it.

NARRATOR

The foolproof way to eliminate grade crossing accidents is to separate the grade-- where trains go above or below street level. But building costly over- and underpasses everywhere trains travel would hugely expensive. By campaigning for more gates and better signage, the Federal Railroad Administration has reduced the number of crossing accidents and is now looking at technologies that can reduce them even more.

FEINBERG

I would like to see the tech companies take grade crossing location data and integrate it into their mapping applications, so that drivers and passengers that are using things like Google Maps will be alerted to the fact that they're approaching a railroad crossing.

NARRATOR

Because trains are hard to stop, and some drivers will always test fate, it's unlikely crossing accidents will ever go away completely.

MAN

What did I tell you? Lookit, there's an idiot. (horn blaring)

NARRATOR

And neither will accidents due to wear and tear. There are about 200,000 miles of track in the U.S., and freight railroads own and use most of it. Long and heavy, freight trains run day and night and put enormous pressure on moving parts. And the rail below. So things break. The freight industry is constantly testing new tenologies, like trackside scanners, to detect defects in wheels and brakes, and mobile laser scanners for finding minute flaws in track. These technologies have helped reduce equipment-related problems, but not entirely. And a recent development has made rail and equipment failure more dangerous than ever before. These massive tanker trains are carrying crude oil from North Dakota to refineries across America. Their weight can stress everything from wheels to track, increasing the potential for explosive consequences. (explosion) A broken rail caused this blast in Mount Carbon, West Virginia. (explosions) A broken axle caused a two-train collision and explosion in Casselton, North Dakota. Initially these oil train blasts caught regulators by surprise. Most people who were involved with crude oil said crude oil doesn't explode. What they didn't realize was that the crude oil coming out of North Dakota contained a lot of propane and butane, highly volatile material, and that crude oil did explode. Most of these explosions have occurred in remote areas, so there have been few injuries or deaths. But oil trains do go through cities and towns, and it may just be a matter of time for a disaster to take place here, like the one across the border in Canada. This is the town of Lac-Mgantic, a lakeside community in rural Quebec, near the border with Maine. At first glance, Lac-Mgantic seems perfectly unremarkable, until you realize the center of town is completely gone. This empty space was the main street, which once looked like this. Lac-Mgantic was a pleasant, picturesque community until disaster rode in on these rails. It began on July 5, 2013, when an oil train parked for the night near a siding seven miles from town so its lone engineer could take his required sleep break. The train's engine was smoking badly, and this worried the engineer. But after consulting the main office, he left the engine running to keep pressure supplied to the air brakes, since the train was on a slight downward grade. He then manually set handbrakes on seven of the 74 cars-- two less than the requirements-- and left for the night. An hour and a half later,

at 1

15 a.m.... (owl hooting) Lac-Mgantic became like a war zone. (loud explosion, people screaming) (sirens blaring) At first, startled residents couldn't understand why hell had broken loose in their town.

PIERRE LEBEAU

I was in the bed and I heard noise. But I didn't know at this time what, what's happening. I saw the lots of people running in the street trying to save people.

NARRATOR

A photographer, Lebeau grabbed his camera and captured these harrowing images.

LEBEAU

I saw the firemen trying to do something. But there were nothing to do because the heat was too hot.

NARRATOR

The flaming oil spread everywhere, even underground.

LEBEAU

And I was really surprised, but I saw lots of fire coming out the sewers.

NARRATOR

And by morning, the fires were still burning.

LEBEAU

That stayed three days to extinguish the fire-- three days.

The damage was horrific

47 dead, dozens injured, 27 children orphaned. The town center in ruins, crude oil contamination everywhere. Although it was obvious an oil train had caused the destruction, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada had to figure out how and why this tragedy occurred. The lead investigator was Donald Ross. This is actually the location where the derailment occurred and we're standing right about the middle of where the, most of the destruction was. You can see what's left. They're still working and trying to do remediation on the site here in the downtown. So it was all kinds of destruction. (horn blaring)

NARRATOR

This freight train slowly entering town is doing about ten miles an hour, and has brakes and a driver. But on the night of the disaster, the train entering Lac-Mgantic was a driverless, brakeless, speeding runaway. After the engineer left for the night, the smoking engine began to flame. Nervous passersby called the fire department, and the department shut down the engine to stop the fire spreading. But shutting the engine off powered down a compressor supplying pressure to the train's air brake system.

ROSS

The air system then started to leak off. As it leaked off, the hand brake system on its own wasn't enough to hold it on the hill. The engineer had incorrectly set the handbrakes when there was still pressure in the system. So when the pressure dropped, the train started to move. Without anything to stop it, it rolled inexorably toward town. Amazingly, it passed crash-free through two street crossings. As it got closer to town, it picked up speed. Reaching 65 miles an hour, it derailed violently. So with the train derailing, there were sparks and so on from all that friction as everything is derailing and coming apart. More than 90 percent of those cars breached and lost their petroleum crude oil. Of the 6.7 million liters that were on these cars, six million liters were released almost instantly.

NARRATOR

Sparks from the derailment ignited the massive spill, and intact tanker cars exploded in the heat. Of the 47 people who died, 27 were in the MusiCaf, a popular nightspot. This is the new MusiCaf, recently rebuilt. Owner Yannick Gagne had left about 20 minutes before he lost friends, co-workers, and his business. Like many here, Yannick is still struggling to put the disaster behind him.

GAGNE (translated)

There are still people who are traumatized, people who still aren't back at work. There are people who lost their families. They'll never be the same. Me, I've restarted my business. There are days that are tougher, when I feel worse, and other days when I feel better.

NARRATOR

Fearful of another disaster, some people have left the town for good. And after a hiatus, the trains have come rolling back.

LEBEAU

The train is still coming here in the town because we need the train. Our industry need that train. And that's traumatized a lots of people again.

GAGNE (translated)

Until the end of my days, every time I see a train, I always think, like you say in English, "(bleep) train." C'est a, c'est a-- every time.

NARRATOR

But as trains roll through town again, what are the lessons here? Was this terrible accident an anomaly or could it have been prevented?

FEINBERG

The rail industry will tell you that Lac-Mgantic happened because there was a confluence of wrong turns or missed steps or tiny mistakes. And because they all came together in the perfect way, we had this horrible accident. But the way I look at it, the way regulators look at it, is, there were so many opportunities to have avoided Lac-Mgantic.

NARRATOR

There are clearer regulations now, prohibiting trains from parking on hills; for crews to set more hand brakes; and for never leaving dangerous cargo trains unattended for very long. And rail companies must now phase in puncture-resistant tanker cars that tests have shown will be less likely to rupture in a crash. Making tanker cars and passenger cars safer will surely reduce fatalities. But the ultimate goal is to avoid crashes in the first place. (horn blaring) So besides installing PTC, what else can we do to make our trains safer? Maybe the answer is to emulate a country where train travel and train safety are among society's highest priorities. In Japan, 30 million people-- a quarter of the entire population-- ride trains every day. Trains and stations can become so crowded, they give new meaning to the phrase "go with the flow." In every major city, there are several local lines delivering passengers to different parts of town. And for longer distances, there's the iconic high-speed Bullet Train, or Shinkansen. The Shinkansen is one of the most successful rail lines ever built. It also happens to be the safest. (translated): Tokaido Shinkansen opened about 50 years ago, and in that time we have continuously operated without any accidents or any injuries to passengers. Japan's regular trains do have accidents, but fewer serious ones than the U.S. or Europe, and fewer deaths. And no other country has the unblemished record of the Shinkansen. Central Japan Railway operates the Shinkansen in the densely populated area between Tokyo and Osaka. Here, 400,000 passengers board 350 Shinkansens a day that at rush hour leave every three to seven minutes. This dizzying schedule is managed by scores of specialists in Central Japan Railway's giant control room. On one level, the Shinkansen is like most trains, and runs on a collision-avoidance block system. Once a train enters a block, the train behind cannot enter the same block until the train in front clears its block, and so on down the line. This sounds fairly simple. But with bullet trains hitting 175 miles per hour and coming in quick succession all day long, there is no margin for error. (translated): We have been operating from the beginning with a special system to know the exact distance between trains. So far we have no rear-end collisions and no frontal collisions at all. The Shinkansen does have safety advantages

few non-high-speed trains have

it does not share track with other trains, its long, electric locomotives are quite light and put minimal pressure on the track, and most importantly, they are separated from car traffic. From their inception in the 1960s, it was clear high-speed trains in Japan and elsewhere could not go very fast if they had to slow down for road crossings. So in every country that has them, these trains are elevated or on tracks isolated from roads. It was also clear that at high speed, the slightest track defect, equipment flaw or human error could bring instant catastrophe, as this driving-too-fast mistake in Spain unfortunately demonstrates. (sirens blaring) But the first and worst modern high-speed crash occurred in Eschede, Germany, in 1998, when a passenger car derailed, struck a bridge abutment, and caused the trailing cars to compress hideously behind it. 101 people died and scores of survivors suffered crippling injuries, mainly because a single wheel on one of the cars failed.

TYRELL

The lesson of Eschede is a lesson of equipment maintenance, that if you're going to be running at high speed, you have to be extremely diligent about maintenance. Small things can cause very large problems.

NARRATOR

That lesson was not lost on the operators of the Shinkansen. At midnight, the system entirely shuts down, and 3,000 workers come out. It's time for major repairs-- for splicing and stringing fresh wiring in the overhead catenary, for cutting and removing bad rail, and replacing it with fresh rail. Cars, locomotives, and train components are constantly cycled through regular and exacting maintenance. The most visible symbol of Shinkansen care and safety is Dr. Yellow, a colorful maintenance vehicle that has become a pop culture star. Capable of assessing the wires above and the track below while traveling at full Shinkansen speed, Dr. Yellow helps facilitate Shinkansen's stellar safety record.

TYRELL

Oh yeah, the Shinkansen's really impressive, how they maintain it, but they've got the ridership which gives them the money that allows them to, to have, you know, this extremely diligent maintenance. That's a large part of how they get the whole system to work is, you know, it all feeds into each other.

NARRATOR

To keep its exacting schedule and the money flowing, everything on the platforms must be orderly and run like clockwork. After incoming passengers exit, cleaners enter and finish very quickly. Outgoing passengers, who have been waiting in designated lines, enter their assigned doors. Conductors check departure time, and once the platform clears, gates close and the train leaves. All this takes place in five minutes or less, hundreds of times a day. Rarely is a train late. And this could only happen with rigorous training.(speaking Japanese) In this training simulator, the engineer has to stop the train precisely so passenger doors line up perfectly with platform gates. If he does not, valuable seconds will be lost repositioning the train. (speaking Japanese) Conductors-in-training are taught how to help drivers confirm platform alignment (speaking Japanese) (alarm blaring) and how to signal the driver when things are clear and it's time to depart. (speaking Japanese) For all train operations, the finger-pointing and verbalization of steps to follow underpin a "see it, say it, do it" system that may look somewhat comical, but has proven to be extremely effective in avoiding errors and for keeping trains safe and on time. (translated): In Japan, it is said this method of pointing with a finger and looking to confirm the completion of the act, is effective even at other work sites. (speaking Japanese) All Japanese railroads operate efficiently and appear to make safety a priority. A recent push to upgrade warning systems at grade crossings has reduced crossing accidents from 5,000 to 300 a year. And West Japan Railway is experimenting with 3-D lasers that can detect people in crossings after gates close and send a signal in time for trains to stop. (beeping) Japan's major train companies are constantly updating train control systems and redesigning locomotives and passenger cars to improve comfort and safety.

FEINBERG

The difference is, Japan puts a really significant amount of funding towards their infrastructure. They have for many years, and they seem to be focused on doing that in the future.

NARRATOR

That's because trains have become embedded in Japanese culture. Children are encouraged to trainspot at crossings. Major stations are designed as vibrant, multifaceted centers of urban life. And train employees act like ambassadors, welcoming all to their trains. Despite Shinkansen's success, Japan Central Railway is already planning its successor. This is a magnetic levitation train, or Maglev. It's currently in a testing phase where it recently hit 375 miles an hour, a world record. Japan Central will eventually expand this test track to a line connecting Osaka and Tokyo, where the Maglev would do the 250-mile trip in about an hour. People travel here for an opportunity to take a brief ride on the test train... (cheering)...and to visit this museum, where games and demonstrations help explain how the Maglev works. Using magnetic force for lift and propulsion, these sleek vehicles eliminate friction by replacing metal wheels with superconducting magnets kept at super-cold temperatures. As the train's magnets pass electric coils lining the guideway, a magnetic field of alternating north and south poles creates attracting forces and repulsing forces that push the train forward. Another set of coils also uses alternating polarity to lift and guide the train. (translated): The Maglev system is running by levitation, not friction. Therefore, it is possible to have such speed. There is a moment during the test ride where passengers can feel the train rise above the track as the Maglev zooms along on a cushion of air. It's almost like being part of a video game, and people love it. (speaking

NARRATOR

The Maglev's route will run through Japan's mountainous interior, about the only place left with space enough to build it, and will cost around $5 trillion and take 20 years to complete. (speaking

NARRATOR

So with Japan's population aging and shrinking, will this massive financial gamble actually pay off? (translated): I think in any country, it is the same. Everyone who loves something will pay the price. Right now, China and South Korea have the only commercial Maglevs. But many countries are increasing and upgrading high-speed train service. In Europe alone, about eight billion people ride mainline and commuter trains every year. In the U.S., that figure is only about 600 million, since most people commute by car. So what lies ahead for rail service in America? Will our grandchildren ride the same basic trains we've seemingly had forever? Or will they see more and better trains in the future? After decades of advocacy, California has finally broken ground on a high-speed line projected to run from San Francisco to San Diego. Texas is also approaching high-speed take-off. And there are other signs that things might be changing. After years of economic stagnation, freight companies are now doing well.

DITMEYER

We're carrying near-record levels of freight now. We have the most efficient railroad freight network of anyplace in the world. And it's profitable.

NARRATOR

And passenger service is on the rise, especially among younger urbanites that want to avoid the expense and hassles of commuting by car. Increasing passenger service nationwide could bring multiple benefits for everyone.

FEINBERG

If we had more passenger service in this country, we would have more efficient travel from city center to city center. We would be improving the environment because we would be cutting down on emissions. We would be bringing so many more cars off the road. I mean, passenger trains can move 16 lanes of traffic at one time.

NARRATOR

And while there is plenty of room for improvement, trains are safer than cars-- fewer than 1,000 deaths per year compared to 30,000 traffic fatalities. Passenger trains are really quite safe these days. The riskiest part of the trip is the drive to and from the station. And new technologies like PTC and better grade crossing designs will surely make trains even safer. But ultimately, do Americans really want more passenger rail? Are we ready to reduce our dependence on cars and willing to commit valuable urban landscape for tracks and stations? Because if we do make these commitments, trains could once again become engines of change, helping to reshape the country for a new tomorrow. This NOVA program is available on DVD. To order, visit shopPBS.org, or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS. NOVA is also available for download on iTunes.