February 2006

TRANSIT COOPERATIVE RESEARCH PROGRAM

Sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration

Responsible Senior Program Officer: Dianne S. Schwager

Subject Areas: VI Public Transit, VII Rail

Research Results Digest 74

TRAIN DOOR SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
This digest is the final report for TCRP Project J-6, Task 62, Field Door
Survey Project. Appendixes to this digest are available as TCRP Web-Only
Document 28. This digest is based on research conducted by Transportation
Systems Design, Inc.

Failures of train doors are the biggest

single cause of delay and disruption of rail
transit service; therefore, in-depth study
and analysis of train door problems can
lead to significant increases in the reliability of transit service. This digest describes
(1) the development of a relational database for data on the causes and conditions
of train door failures and (2) some preliminary analyses of the data.
SUMMARY
The American Public Transportation
Association (APTA) Rolling Stock Equipment Technical Forum (RSETF) developed the Train Door Project, whose goal
is to help transit managers resolve door
equipment problems that adversely affect
rail transit reliability and service. The primary output from this work has been the
creation of an on-line questionnaire and
database detailing door failure causes and
conditions.
The Train Door team consisted of volunteer participants from transit agencies,
railcar manufacturers, door equipment manufacturers, and consulting companies. The
project received strong support and participation from chief executives and staff at five
leading U.S. transit agencies: San Francisco

Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART),

the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA),
New York City Transit (NYCT), The Port
Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH), and the
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit
Authority (WMATA). Others have expressed interest in participating.
The Train Door project plan consisted
of six steps: (1) identify door population,
(2) define segment of study, (3) define field
investigation strategy, (4) manage collected
information, (5) formulate problem-solving
actions, and (6) communicate findings to
transit community.
For steps 1, 2, and 3, the Train Door
team created a four-part questionnaire
covering railcar fleets, door equipment,
operations, and maintenance for the five
participating transit agencies. Part I of the
questionnaire covers railcar fleets in service, including car classes in service, number of cars per class, years of service for
each class, average speed, annual miles of
operation, minimum and maximum consist
length, and operating and maintenance responses to door incidents. Part II covers
door equipment and component technical
specifications for each car class, including covered locations, types, manufacturers, models, and original/retrofit condition
for major electrical, electronic, mechanical,

MySQL database that provides a permanent location

for the data, provides tools to enable access, ensures
responses are in the expected format, is easily scaled
to accept input from more transit agencies, and does
not require clerical processing for new transit agency
data to be entered. The website, to be installed at
www.traindoors.com, is implemented in proven commercial and open-source software, including MySQL,
Linux, Apache, PHP, Smarty, and XHMTL. (The
sponsors have delayed public release of the traindoors.com website and database, while they resolve
issues concerning access to the Train Door data.)
The MySQL database consists of 29 tables, structured to parallel the questionnaire data. The website
lets users download selected tables into Excel or
other file management applications.
The website allows the user to display or export
results from the Train Door database; enter new or
modified data for a transit agency, in response to the
two questionnaires; participate in a discussion forum;
access resources including technical papers about train
door technology and database documentation; and get
contact information for the website and database.
The first results obtained from analysis of the information in the Train Door database suggest improvement areas and directions for further research
and analysis. Figure 1 shows the distribution of types
of door failures by car class. Further analysis is needed
to understand how to reduce the number of door incidents, and why a failure type is quite significant at
one transit agency or in one car class but less significant in another.

and switch components. Part III includes train operations, rules governing delays and reliability calculations, and operating procedures. Part IV covers door
maintenance issues and practices for major door
components.
Following collection, review, and public presentation of data from the first questionnaire, the Train
Door team identified seven common door failures
and conditions that affect all the surveyed transit
agencies: (1) door fails to open or close when commanded from the operator location; (2) door status
interlock failures; (3) incorrect door opening; (4) incorrect door operation (operation/wayside error:
wrong side opening or open when not berthed): (5) obstruction detection failures/drags; (6) freewheeling
door panel; and (7) door fails to completely close and
lock and/or to indicate closed and locked.
The Train Door team then created a second questionnaire about component causes of the seven common door failures. For each failure, the questionnaire
lists generic door system components that could cause
the identified door failure. In addition to requesting
information on component causes, the questionnaire
asks for solutions to these common problems, including maintenance procedure changes, operational
changes, and/or equipment design changes.
The resulting data from both questionnaires
includes answers to 34 groups of questions, with
191 data items covering 21 railcar classes. The data,
collected in 2004, were unique, in depth, and of
great value. To permit processing and broad use of
the data, the Train Door team built a web-accessible,

Contribution (%)

100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
A1

A2

A3

A4

B1

C1

C2

D1

D2

D3

D4

D5

D6

Car Class

Opening en Route

Phantom Operation

Sticking

Loss of Operator

No Motion Problem

Other

Rounding caused some totals to add to slightly less than or more than 100%.

Figure 1 Door failures by type.

2

E1

E2

E3

E4

Other initial results showed the following:

Improved door switch reliability could have a
big positive impact on door and transit service.
Certain car classes account for a disproportionate share of door failures, and a focused
effort to address those car classes could have
a big positive impact on service.
Winter weather correlates with increased door
problems, and reliability improvement efforts
related to weather should focus there.
Improved maintenance tools, techniques, training, and design provisions in support of maintenance could have a big positive impact on
service.
Users should be aware that the data in the Train
Door database come from only five transit agencies.
The possibility exists that the sample of data, while
covering a great breadth of topics and detailed technical information, may not be deep enough to provide conclusive evidence of a trend or possibility.
Accordingly, the Train Door database at this stage
should be considered one tool, but not the last word,
in analyzing train door conditions and failures.
Next steps for the Train Door database and traindoors.com are to determine how to handle sensitive
data such as manufacturer details; to use the on-line
questionnaire to guide collection of data in uniform
format; to expand the database to cover maintenance
and other performance aspects; to solicit and encourage participation from other transit agencies; and to
continue to expand the data analysis to understand
the trends shown in the data and investigate problems and possible solutions within and among car
classes and transit agencies.
Next steps for the transit industry are to evaluate
value and utility of traindoors.com and determine
whether the concept should be extended to collect
similar or expanded data on other equipment reliability and performance characteristics.

and suspension, wheels and axles, heating ventilating

and air conditioning, couplers and draft gears, communications, lighting, and train control. Door system
failures stood out because transit managers identified
them as having the greatest negative impact on railcar
reliability and transit service, particularly on heavy
rail rapid transit systems. As a result, the RSETF
selected train door system failures as the recommended project focus.
This digest reports on the results of the RSETF
Train Door Project and its accomplishments to date.
2 DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
2.1 Five Participating Transit Agencies
The RSETF proposed to focus on train doors in a
meeting with the CEOs of leading U.S. rail transit systems at the 2003 APTA Rail Transit Conference. The
chief executives endorsed and supported the proposal,
and they committed key technical and project staff to
support and help implement the Train Door Project.
As a result of this high-level support, the RSETF Train
Door Project team had enthusiastic participation and
cooperation from the transit agencies and their technical and operating staff and from door manufacturers,
railcar builders, and transit industry consultants.
To control the project scope, the team selected
five heavy rail transit agencies as the first group for
analysis and action: BART, CTA, NYCT, PATH,
and WMATA. These agencies were chosen because
of their readiness to participate in the project and because they collectively operate a wide range of railcars, door equipment, and service levels in diverse
regions and climates. The team understood that the
pilot assessment would entail a learning curve, and
the limited volunteer resources of the Train Door
team were matched to the limited initial data sample
provided by the five transit agencies.
2.2 Project Plan

1 INTRODUCTION
Starting in 2002, the APTA RSETF assessed
rolling stock problems that rail transit professionals
considered critical to their operations with the intent
to develop a project to help transit managers resolve
one set of those problems.
Transit industry managers from heavy rail, commuter, and light rail transit agencies identified critical
problems involving railcar body structures, doors,
propulsion and dynamic braking, air braking, trucks

The Train Door Project plan consisted of the following steps:

1. Identify door population: equipment suppliers,
users, and car fleets
2. Define segment of study: door system components, technology, and life cycle phases to be
investigated
3. Define field investigation strategy: create a
questionnaire, perform interviews, and document findings
3

4. Manage collected information: create a database and analyze data

5. Formulate problem-solving actions: investigate problems, plan corrective actions, and
document lessons learned
6. Communicate findings to transit community
An overview of the process is provided in Appendix D.
2.3 First Questionnaire: Fleets, Equipment,
Operations, and Maintenance
The Train Door team created a questionnaire that
addressed four general information categories related to doors: railcar fleets, door equipment, operations, and maintenance.
2.3.1 Part I: Fleet Survey
Part I of the questionnaire covers the particulars
of railcar fleets in service at each of the five participating transit agencies:

The car classes in service

Number of cars per class
Years of service for each class
Average speed
Annual miles of operation
Minimum and maximum consist length

Questions also cover the operating and maintenance responses to door incidents. To provide a visual
perspective of door opening and door operator locations, the questionnaire requests a door schematic
for each car class, showing plan and elevation views
of the car, side door openings (two, three, or four),
and door operator locations (under-seat, wall pocket,
or overhead).
The five participating transit agencies operate a
total of 32 car classes. Responses were provided for
21 of the car classes.
2.3.2 Part II: Door Equipment Survey
Part II covers door equipment and component
technical specifications for each car class. The survey
covers locations, types, manufacturers, models, and
original/retrofit condition for each of the following:
Door operators and master door controllers,
relays, cams, and micro switches
Wiring
Mechanical linkages
4

Door panels, sensitive edges, hangers, threshold plates, and bottom door-panel guides
Microprocessor/electronics equipment (at door
level and at car level)
Inter-car communications, train line wiring,
electric couplers, and electric portions
2.3.3 Part III: Operations
Part III covers train operations, applicable rules,
and standard operating procedures, including the
following:
The definition and calculation of train delays
Railcar performance reliability
Basis for calculating mean distance between
failures (MDBF) or mean time between failures (MTBF)
This part studies the distribution of door failures
in each car class. The questions on operational failures experienced, factors affecting satisfactory operations and reliability, and incidents leading to passenger injuries are rated on a percentile basis for
each, totaling 100%.
2.3.4 Part IV: Maintenance
Part IV covers door maintenance issues and practices for major door components: master door controllers, door operators, mechanical linkages, door
panels, door-panel sensitive edges, door hangers,
micro switches, relays, microprocessors, electronics
equipment, wiring, threshold plates and door guides,
and coupler electric portions and pins. Questions cover
the following:
Repair reporting method
Preventive maintenance (PM) intervals
Average time spent on door equipment during
each PM
Percentage that in-car system components
contribute to door incidents
Most common types of failure associated with
each door component
Percentage that trainline components contribute to door incidents
Details and elements of any car body/door
component interfacing problems that contribute to incidents
2.4 Getting Industry Data
In early 2004, the Train Door team began collecting data. With the full support of the transit

agency CEOs, a volunteer group visited each of the

transit agencies and conducted interviews to complete the questionnaires, working closely with the
key transit agency staff in operations, door maintenance, and engineering with door responsibilities.
The tool used for data collection was a word
processorgenerated questionnaire, and the format
for data collection was entry into the word processor file of the questionnaire, or hand-entry onto a
printed copy of the questionnaire.
With the data in hand, the Train Door team began
to review and assess the data, and develop first results.
The data showed the current state of door system
equipment at the selected transit agencies and pointed
to problem areas related to specific equipment.
During the analysis, the Train Door team realized
that the paper format was limited as a medium to hold,
distribute, manage, and analyze the data and concluded a better tool was needed to enable thorough
analysis of the data. Such a tool would help the team
understand specific door problem causes, pinpoint
critical areas where operational mishaps and equipment failures adversely affect door system performance, and learn how some problems were corrected.
2.5 Communicating with the Industry
At the June 2004 APTA Rail Transit Conference,
the Train Door team presented Hold That Door, a
technical session on its work to date and its plans to
move forward to the transit industry. The session
covered the project purpose, goals, the five participating transit agencies, and the project plan. The panelists represented a transit operator, car manufacturer,
door system manufacturer, and industry consultant.
The session accomplished three things:
Garnered interest within the industry. There
was a lively question and answer period after
presentations were completed. Executives
from several heavy rail, light rail, and commuter rail transit agencies expressed an interest in becoming involved in the Train Door
Project.
Developed the future focus for the project. The
question and answer session provided the Train
Door team with ideas about door problems and
areas where future focus was required.
Initiated the involvement of TCRP. Following
the session, the RSETF and the Train Door
team developed the work plan for TCRP Project J-6, Task 62, Field Door Survey Project,

which enabled the project to develop a database for the collected train door information.
2.6 Second Questionnaire: Common Door
Failures and Component Causes
Following review of data from the first questionnaire and the Hold That Door session, the
Train Door team identified a set of seven common
door failures and conditions that affect all the surveyed transit agencies and contribute to delays and
other door problems. The team realized that further
information was needed to expand the understanding of the causes of these door failures. As a result,
the team created a second questionnaire. The second
questionnaire asks about the component causes of
the following seven common door failures:
Door fails to open or close when commanded from the operator location. The
questionnaire provides 14 choices for items
causing the failure, of which 11 are door
components.
Door status interlock failures. This serious
in-service failure is particularly troubling because door status interlocks are designed to
protect train passengers against other hazardous door open failures or conditions. Because
interlock functions are sensitive to operating
practices and driver actions, operator error was
included as a possible cause.
Incorrect door opening. This door system
failure is safety related and potentially dangerous. In this case, a single door opens without command because of a failure in the door
operator mechanism. This is a safety problem,
since one of the most important safety functions of train doors is to stay closed and locked
except when it is safe to open. As with interlock failures, preventive designs to address incorrect door openings have also gradually increased the complexity of door systems and
possibly reduced reliability.
Incorrect door operation (operation/wayside
error: wrong side opening or open when not
berthed). In this case, all doors on one side of
the train open on the wrong side or when the
train is not safely stopped at a platform. This
condition generally relates to operator, trainlevel, or wayside error. For passenger safety,
doors must open on the correct side at each
station, which poses real design and operational
5

challenges. Human factors, wayside control

variations, and track and platform configurations constantly test both the operators ability and the equipments provisions to open the
correct doors.
Obstruction detection failures/drags. The
second most important safety function of train
doors is to prevent the train from moving with
an object stuck in the doors. The mechanisms
and procedures to achieve this sometimes conflict with consistently keeping doors closed
and locked when the train is moving. Multiple
schemes and processes have been deployed to
reduce the possibility of moving a train with a
person caught in the doors. The performance
and reliability of these systems is the main
focus of this question.
Freewheeling door panel. A door panel that
fails to respond to commands must be manually placed in the closed and locked position
and mechanically locked out. Normally associated with mechanical linkage failures or loss
of power, this type of failure has begun to reemerge. The teams collective experiences
have identified recent occurrences of this failure not caused by the traditional failure mode.
The introduction of microprocessor- and software-controlled door systems has increased
the occurrence of this failure. Latent software
defects and control logic failures in the advanced control systems have been increasingly reported as the root cause of this type of
failure.
Door fails to completely close and lock and/
or to indicate closed and locked. This failure
is by far the most numerous and most frustrating of the seven common door failures.
Measures that prevent unsafe train operations
significantly add to the quantity and complexity of door system equipment. Increased part
counts and complexity provide more opportunities for causing this failure. Along with increased system complexity comes increased
time to identify root causes and carry out corrective repairs. This failure impacts both the
operation of doors and the reliable operation
of the rail system as a whole.
For each of the seven door failures, the questionnaire lists generic door system components that can
cause or contribute to the identified door failure.
Many components can contribute to more than one
6

of the seven common door failures. In addition to

the causes, the questionnaire asks for solutions to
these seven common failures, including maintenance
procedure changes, operational changes, and/or equipment design changes.
Associating the information from the second questionnaire on seven common door failures with the
first questionnaire information on railcar fleets, door
equipment, operations, and maintenance was expected to yield new insights into relationships among
failures and the components and conditions that combine to create them.
3 THE DATABASE TOOL: TRAINDOORS.COM
The five participating transit agencies gave strong
support and extensive responses to the two questionnaires. The resulting data include answers to 34 groups
of questions in the categories of railcar fleets, door
equipment, train and door operations, maintenance,
and common door failures. There are 191 data items
covering 21 car classes. Paper copies of the results
fill a 3-inch notebook. Clearly, there is a lot to learn
from the experience of these five leading transit
agencies.
The collected information was unique, in depth,
and of great value, but also presented a challenge to
the Train Door team regarding how to use the information and make it useful to the broader transit
community. The team decided a database would give
immediate and continuing results.
TCRP Project J-6, Task 62, Field Door Survey
Project, enabled the team to develop and implement a database for the Train Door Project information. The resulting database
Provides a permanent location to record the
collected data;
Provides tools to enable access to and analysis of the recorded data;
Is easily accessible to the world community of
transit professionals;
Ensures that responses to questions are in
the expected format, so that answers to a single question from several transit agencies can
be directly compared;
Is easily scaled to accept added input from
new transit agencies as well as updates from
the original transit agencies; and
Does not require clerical processing of data to
be added for new transit agencies.

The selected structure for the Train Door database

is MySQL, an industry-standard structured query language (SQL) relational database, hosted on a web
server and accessed via website clients. The host
website, to be installed at www.traindoors.com, is
implemented in broadly accepted, proven, commercial and open-source software:
MySQL, the industry-standard SQL relational
database system
Linux, the reliable open-source operating system similar to Unix
Apache, the mature open-source web server
PHP, the broadly used open-source programming language, to interconnect on-line, web
based forms to a web-based server and a database manager
Smarty, an open-source PHP templating engine
XHMTL/CSS, the standard markup language
for web pages and browser-viewable information
The MySQL database currently consists of
32 tables. Of these, 28 tables hold 191 data items for
each of the 21 car classes. Each car class adds an additional 112 pieces of data to the database for that
transit agency. Three other tables contain invariant
data (constants) and one holds computed data. There
are about 2,750 pieces of data in the database collected for the five transit agencies.
A user can retrieve data for a selected question or
topic. The data are presented in the same format as
the survey form, for the selected transit agency or car
class, or for all transit agencies and all car classes.
To aid users who want to explore data relationships within the collected data, the website lets users
download selected tables as a Microsoft Excel file,
which can be ported to Microsoft Access, FileMaker, or other commonly used desktop file management systems. To make user processing easier, the
database tables are not normalized or structured to
minimize redundant data entry; the contents are formatted for display as numbers, dates, etc.; and foreign
keys are not used as is typical with normalized data
tables. Appendix A describes the database design
approach and provides technical information on data
tables, contents, and formats. Appendix B provides
design information on the traindoors.com website.
This open-source, web-based approach chosen
for traindoors.com allows continuing extension, enhancement, and maintenance of the database and the
website without expensive and proprietary software

development tools. Making database access via a

website enabled several other important benefits:
on-line entry of new data using an interactive questionnaire, a technical forum bulletin board service,
and a technical library are all easy to include and
useful for the transit community.
The team considered other approaches such as
an Access database on a standalone PC. However,
these approaches did not offer the same advantages
for enabling broad access to data across the transit
industry and entailed levels of technical complication for end users that were at cross-purposes to the
Train Door teams intentions.
4 TRAINDOORS.COM AND THE TRAIN
DOOR PROJECT DATABASE
4.1 Using traindoors.com
The Train Door Project database will be hosted
at www.traindoors.com. As of the publication of
this digest, the sponsors have delayed public release of the traindoors.com website and database,
while they work to resolve issues concerning access
to the Train Door data. For the same reasons, data
in the following figuressuch as transit agency
names, car classes, door equipment manufacturer
names, and part numbershave been substituted
with alphanumeric identifiers. This substitution
enables understanding of the scope and potential
value of the database, but does not publicly distribute comparison data and the whole database.
The traindoors.com home page is shown in Figure 2. The navigation tabs provide the following
choices:
Home: The page shown in Figure 2.
See Results: These pages allow the display or
export of results from the Train Door database.
Take Survey: These pages enable new or modified data for a transit agency to be entered in response to the two questionnaires.
Discussion Forum: These pages are a set of
linked topic discussions covering train doors
and the website.
Resources: This page links to technical papers about train door technology and provides
technical documentation for the Train Door
database.
About: This page gives contact information
for the website and database.
7

Figure 2 traindoors.com home page.

4.2 Getting Train Door Data

To get data from the Train Door database, a user
chooses the See Results tab on the home page,
shown in Figure 3.
From here, the user can select from three tabs:
One At A Time. This tab displays selected or
complete results for a single transit agency.
Here a user can examine complete survey results by transit agency and use the data to look
at the details of the selected transit agencys
replies to questions on door failures, failure
causes for each type of failure, narrative descriptions and definitions such as door MTBF,
failure rate and impact, the presentation of
operational data, details of door components
and equipment, and fleet descriptions within a
transit agency. Figure 3 shows the page for
choosing these outputs.
Compare Data. This tab displays selected results for equivalent items across all transit
agencies. For example, asking for a display of
causal environmental factors as indicated by
each transit agency will display the responses
for the selected variable by all transit agencies
8

in table form. For a question about door equipment, the table will give the responses for each
car class at each transit agency.
Export Data to Excel. This tab provides data
tables for further off-line analysis and processing by the user. The user can import the data
into a relational database and make combinational queries, bring the data into a spreadsheet
and plot distribution histograms, or undertake
any analysis which uses the base data.
Figure 4 shows typical data output from the Compare Data tab, a comparison of train door sensitiveedge equipment. The output shows, for each car
class, the type of door sensitive-edge equipment, its
basic configuration, and its retrofit status. Appendix
C shows examples of other types of output.
The capability to export data to Excel for offline analysis is an important one. The volume and
detail of data invite explorations of relationships
among equipment, operations, failures, climate, region, and other differences. The Train Door team did
not consider limiting or presetting the combinations
that could be analyzed to be practical or desirable.
Accordingly, the Export Data to Excel tab allows an
interested user direct access to the primary data.

Figure 3 traindoors.com see results page.

For the user who wants to probe deeper into the

Train Door database or to view it in a different form,
the traindoors.com site permits the user to download
selected tables from a drop-down list into an Excel
file. This file or files can be used for manipulation as
a spreadsheet or flat file for sorting, graphing etc., or
in turn be exported to Access or other database
applications for the conditional extraction of data.
Appendix A provides the complete structure of the
MySQL database tables, as well as introductory material describing the database structure.

4.3 Entering New Data

The Train Door team plans to expand the Train
Door database by including more transit agencies.
Therefore, the traindoors.com website allows easy
entry of a new railcar class or an entire new transit
agency and all its railcar classes.
The Take Survey tab on the home page brings the
user to a log-in screen, shown in Appendix C. Once a
new user has an account established by the traindoors.com administrator, the user can access the survey forms on line. Figure 5 shows a typical entry form.
9

Figure 4 Sensitive-edge comparison results.

The on-line data entry form has several key

advantages:
The questionnaire is readily available at all
times.
There is no added work for a clerk to translate
the answers from one form to another.
Each entry is pre-formatted, so each new data
set will be in a data format compatible with all
the other data.
5 FIRST RESULTS
Preliminary analysis of the data collected with
the two questionnaires suggests failure areas requiring improvement and directions for future research
and analysis.
5.1 Component Causes of
Common Door Failures
Figure 6 compiles the frequency of component
causes of the seven common door failures studied in
the second questionnaire. The chart shows the distribu10

tion of tallies of component causes for all of the seven

common door failures, weighted by the frequency with
which the response was given, for all transit agencies,
for all car classes, and for all types of door failures.
For each of the seven door failures, the questionnaire
asks the transit agency to rank the relative frequency
with which each of fourteen possible causal component items contributed to the door failure. Causal
component items reported as having frequency 1,
least often, were not tallied in the totals for Figure 6.
The seven causal componentsswitch/sensor, interlock, local door controller, threshold/bottom guide,
door push button, door operator motor, and unlock
mechanismaccount for 55% of the total door failure incidents reported by the five transit agencies. The
components causing the other 45% of the reported
door failure incidents are trainline, car network, electric coupler, door panel, short or open circuit, design
problem requiring modification, and other.
Figure 6 shows that switches/sensors were the
causal component in 12% of the common door failures. Door push buttons were the causal component in
6% of the common door failures. Because switches/
sensors and door push buttons are switch-type de-

Figure 5 Train Door questionnaire data entry form.

12%
6%
9%

vices, Figure 6 shows that switches of some sort were

identified as the causal component in 18% of all reported door system failures. The figure suggests that
a focused effort to improve door switch reliability
could have a big positive impact on door and transit
service.

45%
6%

9%
7%

switch/sensor
interlock failure
local door controller
threshold/bottom guide

6%

door push buttons

door operator motor
unlock mechanism
others

Figure 6 Distribution of reported causes.

5.2 Door Failures by Railcar Class

In the first questionnaire, question 4 in Part II,
Operations, deals with train delays caused by doors,
reported by car class. Other parts of the questionnaire
divide delays into three levels: Level 1, where the
train operator clears the door fault (e.g., by re-cycling
door open/door close command); Level 2, where the
train operator reports to central control for assistance
(i.e., a service delay is reported); and Level 3, where
the train is removed from service and passengers dis11

embarked (i.e., a significant delay). However, this

question 4 includes any of the delay levels.
The collected data, shown in Figure 7, show
great variation in the impact of doors, depending on
the railcar and transit agency. The figure suggests
that a focused effort to address failures of doors on
certain railcar classes at transit agencies B, C, D, and
E could have a big positive impact on service.
5.3 Door Problems by Season
In the first questionnaire, question 6 in Part II,
Operations, deals with train delay variation by season. The collected data, shown in Figure 8, show
variations in the impact of door problems by season
among transit agencies. Some variations seem correlated to weather and some do not.
For example, transit agency A in a moderate
climate has the least variation in weather, and the
least reported weather effects. The other transit agencies are in four-season climates and show some sign
of seasonal effects. The figure suggests that winter
effects are the most consistent and, therefore, implies
that a design effort concerning weather effects and
door reliability should start with those possible winter effects.
5.4 Types of Door Failures
In the first questionnaire, question 7 in Part II,
Operations, deals with train delay by type of door
failure. The collected data, shown in Figure 9, show
a substantial variation by agency and car class.
Door opening en route is a substantial hazard, as
it exposes riders to the risk of falling out of a moving

train. Phantom operation occurs when doors open or

close under safe conditions but without driver command. Sticking doors do not fully open or fully close
and require driver intervention. Loss of operator
means that the door cannot operate at all and must be
taken out of service.
The A, B, and C transit agencies have
many failures because of no motion indications,
while the other transit agencies show few incidents of this type. All transit agencies and car
classes report substantial problems with sticking,
except the car class B1 at transit agency B.
Phantom operation is a problem in some cars but
not in others.
The variations in these data suggest that further
analysis will be useful to understand why a failure
type is significant at one transit agency or in one car
class but not significant in another.
5.5 Factors Affecting Satisfactory
Operations and Reliability
In the first questionnaire, question 8 in Part II,
Operations, deals with factors affecting satisfactory
operations and reliability, including maintenance, passengers, design, environment, and employee actions.
The collected data, shown in Figure 10, show a substantial variation in effects.
Maintenance affects door operations for every
reporting car class, and at transit agency E it is the
principal effect. Passenger use is a consistent cause
of door incidents, as is to be expected. Most of the
other cases indicate no trouble was found during
maintenance, which often indicates an intermittent

Percentage of All Delays

70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
A1 A2 A3 A4 B1 B2 B3 B4 C1 C2 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 E1 E2 E3 E4 E5

Railcar Class

Figure 7 Train delays due to doors.

12

Relative Impact
(1 = lo, 2 = med, 3 = hi)

0
A

Transit Agency
and Season
Ag
Summer

Spring

Fall

Winter

Figure 8 Door problems by season.

design condition. Environment and design are small

to medium factors.
The data suggest that improved maintenance tools,
techniques, training, and design provisions in support of maintenance could have a big positive impact
on service.

Such data are important to a specialized community. While the transit equipment engineering community is barely known in the broad world, its work
has a big impact on rail transit reliability and safety
and on the daily commuting experience of millions of
people, every day.

6 THE PATH FORWARD

6.1 Recommendations and Next Steps

To the best of the teams knowledge, the collection of data presented on traindoors.com is unique in
the transit world. Nowhere else is it possible to access
detailed, usable, timely data on a rail transit vehicle
subsystem from leading transit agencies.

6.1.1 Next Steps for traindoors.com

Determine how to handle sensitive data such
as manufacturer details.
Use the on-line questionnaire to guide collection of data in uniform format.

Contribution (%)

100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
A1

A2

A3

A4

B1

C1

C2

D1

D2

D3

D4

D5

D6

E1

E2

E3

E4

Car Class

Opening en Route

Phantom Operation

Sticking

Loss of Operator

No Motion Problem

Other

Rounding caused some totals to add to slightly less than or more than 100%.

Figure 9 Door failures by type.

13

100%

Contribution (%)

80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
A1

A2

A3

A4

B1

C1

C2

D1

D2

D3

D4

D5

D6

E1

E2

E3

E4

Car Class
Environmental

Passenger Use

Employee Operations

Design

Maintenance

Other

Rounding caused some totals to add to slightly more than 100%.

Figure 10 Factors affecting satisfactory operations and reliability.

Expand the database to cover maintenance and

other performance aspects.
Solicit and encourage participation from other
transit agencies.
Continue and expand the data analysis. Address
key questions such as
What should I change in the specifications
for my next door equipment procurement?
Im having door switch and sensor problems. Anyone else have this problem?
6.1.2 Next Steps for the Transit Industry
Evaluate value and utility of traindoors.com.
Determine whether the concept should be extended to collect similar or expanded data on
other equipment reliability and performance
characteristics.
6.2 Cautionary Note
Users should be aware that, although there is a
plethora of information in the Train Door database,
it comes from only five transit agencies. The possibility exists that the sample of data, while covering
a great number of topics and including a substantial
amount of detailed technical information, may not be
deep enough to provide conclusive evidence of a trend
or possibility. Accordingly, the Train Door database
at this stage should be considered one tool, but not
the last word, in analyzing train door conditions and
failures.
14

6.3 Conclusions
The general conclusions from the teams collection effort to date have confirmed to the team the
following:
The steps reported here to collect, manage, and
report on train door data are effective in collecting transit industry information that can
provide important and useful results.
The common door failures questionnaire provides a valuable source of data to focus on specific door system components.
The data reported by the transit agencies point
to problems caused by switches, sensors, and
push buttons.
7 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The generous and energetic contributions of
scores of supporters and participants are recognized
and appreciated.
Thanks to the APTA RSETF, whose ranks produced many volunteers and contributors to this project. The team membership grew to include 30 participants, including rail car manufacturers Alstom
Transport and Kawasaki Rail Car; door equipment
manufacturer Faiveley Rail Corporation; engineering consulting firms BoozAllen & Hamilton, LTK
Engineering, Interfleet Technologies, Transportation
Systems Design, and Turner Engineering Company;
and transit agencies BART, CTA, Delaware Area Port
Authority (DRPA), NYCT, PATH, and WMATA.

Thanks to TCRP and to the National Academies,

whose encouragement has been vital to performing the
research, maintaining the momentum, and enabling
the development and building of traindoors.com.
Grateful acknowledgement to the pivotal contributions and hard work of the staff and CEOs of the
five transit agency participants: BART, CTA,
NYCT, PATH, and WMATA. Their data are valuable to the community, and it, collectively, can yield
valuable benefits for the transit agencies and the riding public.
Special thanks to the working group for TCRP
Project J-6, Task 62, for their dedication to this project, in particular Paul Messina, MTA New York
City Transit; Christopher Pacher, LTK Engineering

Services; and Harry Burt, LB Transportation

Consultants. Also for their dedication to this project,
special thanks to Connie Hwang, Aleph Associates,
and David Turner, Turner Engineering Company.
Finally, gratitude and fond remembrances to
Tom Sullivan, whose skills, enthusiasm, technological grasp, courage, and gentle leadership were so
important to starting, guiding, and executing the
work reported here.
APPENDIXES
Appendixes are posted on the TRB website as
TCRP Web-Only Document 28 (www4.trb.org/trb/
onlinepubs.nsf/).

15

These digests are issued in order to increase awareness of research results emanating from projects in the Cooperative Research Programs (CRP). Persons
wanting to pursue the project subject matter in greater depth should contact the CRP Staff, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, 500
Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001.

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001