Wednesday, July 31, 2019
WASHINGTON (AP) — The railroad industry has installed safety technology on nearly 90 percent of tracks where it is required, federal officials said Wednesday, but "significant work" is needed to ensure the technology is completely installed by a December 2020 deadline.
Federal Railroad Administration chief Ronald Batory told a Senate committee that technology known as positive train control, or PTC, is in operation on more than 50,000 route miles of the nearly 58,000 miles where it is required. The GPS-based technology is intended to prevent deadly crashes by automatically stopping or slowing a train before a collision or derailment.
Congress required in 2008 that railroads adopt PTC and gave them seven years to do the job. When it became clear that wasn't enough, Congress extended the deadline through 2018 and again through Dec. 31, 2020. No more extensions are expected.
At a hearing today before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Batory praised the railroad industry for "its significant progress" toward fully putting PTC systems in place nationwide, despite a series of delays that pushed the current deadline to 12 years after Congress initially adopted the law.
"Nonetheless, railroads must still complete significant work to fully implement their PTC systems by Dec. 31, 2020," he said, adding the railroad agency "will continue to hold railroads accountable for timely implementation of PTC systems and will enforce the statutory mandate."
The industry expects to spend nearly $15 billion implementing the technology on Amtrak and freight and commuter railroads throughout the country. An additional $80 million to $130 million a year will be spent on maintenance and operation, according to the American Public Transportation Association, an industry group.
Forty-two railroads are subject to the PTC mandate, including 30 commuter railroads, Amtrak and 11 freight railroads. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, 22 rail accidents it investigated since the 2008 law could have been prevented by PTC, including the December 2017 derailment of an Amtrak passenger train in Washington state that killed three passengers and injured 57 people.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the committee chairman, said after the hearing he was "mindful there's some challenges" in implementing PTC, but said he was confident most or all of the required installation would be completed ahead of the 2020 deadline.