NTSB: Workers died after entering right of way prior to track closure

The National Transportation Safety Board has determined that a 2022 fatal accident involving a Port Authority Transit Corp. (PATCO) train in New Jersey was the result of two workers being on a track's right of way when they were struck and killed by the train.

The accident occurred Oct. 14, 2022. The PATCO train struck the subcontractor employees who had entered the right of way of Main Track 2 on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Camden, New Jersey. The train was traveling west at 33 mph and had a train operator and 68 passengers aboard; eight passengers were in the lead car, according to the NTSB's final report.

Main Track 2 was scheduled to be placed out of service so a crew of the contractor and subcontractor employees could install new caulking on bridge columns near the track’s third rail. Skanska Koch Inc. was the contractor and JPC Group Inc. was the subcontractor.

The subcontractor employees were in a close-clearance area on the track before it was placed out of service when the train entered their work area. The train operator initiated the emergency brake before the train hit the workers.

NTSB members determined that the accident’s probable cause was the subcontractor employees being on the track right of way before the track outage began. Contributing to the accident was the exclusion of right-of-way information from the preshift job briefing, NTSB officials said.