Safety on the trains
It’s a familiar story to those in Southern California who commute by train: After a major derailment (like the Amtrak crash in Philadelphia on Tuesday), questions about the technology that could have prevented the accident are raised in earnest. That technology, positive train control, was mandated by Congress in 2008 to go online for much of nation’s rail system by December 2015.
Since 2008, some rail advocates and industry insiders have written letters to The Times explaining why meeting Congress’ 2015 deadline would be difficult. Here are two of those letters.
In a letter published Sept. 18, 2013, responding to an op-ed article critical of the industry’s safety efforts, Edward R. Hamberger, president and chief executive of the Assn. of American Railroads, said implementing the technology would be daunting:
Robert Sumwalt, a National Transportation Safety Board member, is right that implementing positive train control, or PTC, is a daunting task. The Class I freight railroads have spent almost $3 billion to develop and begin deploying PTC, and will spend another $5 billion before it can be safely used across the country.
But significant obstacles make meeting the 2015 implementation deadline impossible. And contrary to what Sumwalt stated, the nation’s railroads have been specific and public about this.
To make PTC work, freight railroads will use advanced signaling systems that require the installation of about 22,000 antennas, which requires Federal Communications Commission approval. However, the FCC recently directed the railroads to suspend antenna installations while it develops a procedure for addressing possible historic preservation and environmental review issues.
Until the FCC develops a workable procedure, installation of the PTC antennas is at a standstill.
Those who say that PTC must be implemented by the legal deadline ignore the technical, operational and regulatory issues that must be addressed first.
Hamberger wrote on Sept. 18, 2008, that the key to effective PTC is getting freight rail on board:
Your article was right to point out that if positive train control technology is to work, the anti-collision technology must be used by freight and passenger rail.
That is not the case today. In California, there are roughly 5,000 miles of rail track, over which more than 20 freight railroads, five regional and commuter operators, as well as Amtrak, run trains. All those railroads need to be equipped with collision avoidance systems that communicate with one another if we are to reduce the likelihood of accidents.
We look forward to working with passenger rail and commuter agencies, as well as the Federal Railroad Administration, to implement a standardized anticollision system.