Railroads still years away from critical safety measure, report warns

A new report by the Federal Railroad Administration warns that the vast majority of railroads won’t implement Positive Train Control — a technology that automatically halts speeding trains and prevents accidents — until 2020.

In 2008, Congress mandated that railroads would have until December 31, 2015 to install the accident-prevention technology known as PTC. As previous reports have also indicated, only 29 percent of commuter railroads will meet that deadline.

As of June, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has received three of the 38 PTC safety plans that railroads are required to submit for system certification, the report says. By the end of 2015, only 34 percent of employees will be trained to use the technology.

The administration doesn’t expect PTC to be fully implemented across all railroads until 2020.

The Metro-North commuter railroad has yet to equip any of the 681 locomotives or install any of the 681 radios necessary for PTC. The railroad hasn’t submitted a safety plan, and won’t begin service demos on their PTC systems until 2016.

Metro-North spokesman Aaron Donovan has said the railroad won’t implement PTC across all lines until 2018.

Amtrak is further along in the process. The report indicates that the railroad will meet the deadline on its Northeast Corridor lines, excluding a 56-mile stretch of track owned by Metro-North between New Rochelle, N.Y. and New Haven, as well as a small portion in Queens, N.Y. But the railroad hasn’t submitted a safety plan.

Many other railroads haven’t provided complete information on their plans to the FRA, and a few haven’t provided information at all. Metro-North provided no information on when it would obtain the necessary spectrum to allow the technology to transmit information.

The National Transportation Safety Board has investigated 145 accidents that could have been prevented by PTC. The technology would have saved more than 300 lives and prevented 6,700 injuries.

Railroad companies that aren’t equipped with the technology come Jan. 1 will face fines ranging from $2,500 to $25,000 per violation per day, the report shows.

“As with all enforcement actions, FRA has inherent discretion to ensure penalties imposed are aimed at increasing compliance and raising the level of safety,” reads the report.

But an extension to the deadline could cut those fines short. A provision in a recently passed Senate transportation bill would delay the deadline to the end of 2018. Sen Richard Blumenthal is co-sponsoring a different proposal that would extend the deadline to 2018, but on a case-by-case basis.

Tatiana Cirisano