At least one has died, according to NBC4 NewYork.
The train had about 250 passengers and crew members onboard at the time, said Jennifer Nelson, the spokeswoman. It had just traveled the Pascack Valley line, which originates in Spring Valley, N.Y, and passes through the heart of Bergen County. Hoboken is the last stop on the line.
The crash caused heavy structural damage to the terminal, Nelson said. Heavy steel beams that support the roof collapsed onto the train and platform, according to videos and photos from the scene. The station was closed to the public and all NJ Transit train and bus service, PATH trains and NY Waterway ferries were canceled.
“Obviously this is an ongoing investigation,” Nelson said. “We are looking at all the things that could have caused this accident.”
The train crashed with such force it “sounded like an explosion,” according to an eyewitness, who said the train “was going relatively fast” when it hit.
“By the time I turned around and registered the train was coming, it had already completely crossed to the pedestrian walkway,” said Chris Mann, 34, who was less than 100 feet away from the train when it derailed. “It all seemed to be very fast.”
Mann ran downstairs into the underground PATH station to escape the oncoming train. After the train stopped, he went back upstairs to find passengers climbing out of the train’s windows to get to safety. The scene was confusing, as many commuters continued walking to trains unaware that an accident had just taken place.
“People were crying and one woman … was bleeding but a lot of people were still filing in unaware,” Mann said. “The first responders were here very fast.”
An hour after the crash some passengers were still trapped inside the train, and observers worried whether the station’s damaged roof might collapse on them, Steve Capus, a producer for CBS News who lives close to the station, told CBS News from the scene.
As injured passengers continued to leave the train, others gathered in a parking lot near the station and waited for medical attention, according to video from the scene posted on the CBS News website.
“Rescue crews are in the middle of removing victims,” Capus said. “Crews are still bringing people out.
Josh Crandall runs Clever Commute, a website and app for commuters. He began receiving messages about the crash almost as soon as it happened, he said.
“What I know is it’s a scary mess,” Crandall said. “People are checking in with family and friends and making sure everyone is OK.”
The Federal Railroad Administration, which oversees NJ Transit, was sending inspectors to the scene.
The cause of the accident is not known, but if it turns out to be the fault of the operator, it is the kind of mishap that could have been prevented by a safety system called positive train control that NJ Transit has been slow to adopt.
Congress mandated the safety features, which include sensors on tracks and radio connections between locomotives and controllers, after a fatal accident in California in 2008. Implementation was to have been completed by 2015, but railroads successfully lobbied for more time and last year Congress gave them until 2020.
A scorecard released by the Federal Railroad Administration in the past month showed zeroes next to NJ Transit for seven categories involved in PTC: locomotives equipped, track segments completed, radio towers installed, training completed, route miles in operation, PTC safety plan and radio spectrum assigned.
NJ Transit has been working to install the system, and has said it expects to have it completed by 2018.
The railroad said in May that it had made two prototype vehicles, a locomotive and a train car, to test equipment on eight miles of track along the Morristown line. It also purchased more than 600 radios and more than half of the equipment it needs to go onboard locomotives and along the track, and crews have begun installing fiber optic cable along the Bergen and North Jersey Coast lines.
But left to do would be to equip 440 locomotives with receivers, install 124 radio towers and train 1,100 employees, according to NJ Transit’s annual report to the Federal Railroad Administration. The total price tag is expected to be $250 million to $275 million.
Other commuter railroads in the region, such as Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road, are even further behind.
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