"We have neglected our infrastructure for the last 50 to 100 years."
Stephen Szegedy
The recent derailment of an Amtrak passenger train in Philadelphia has brought attention across the northeast to safety on the rail lines. A computerized system to slow or stop trains automatically, called Positive Train Control, could help avoid accidents like this in the future.
Speaking on WNPR’sWhere We Live, former Connecticut DOT engineer Stephen Szegedy said Positive Train Control sends an indication of the track condition to the engineer, who can respond, or the computer system may take control of the train.
“Positive Train Control has transponders, and they have a set condition of what the track is in front of it, and it is transmitted either through a GPS location, via satellite or an antenna, along the right-of-way,” Szegedy said. “There are complicated things to it, but the idea is to give the information to the train.”
Lawmakers in Congress must decide whether to extend the deadline of a 2008 act requiring all commuter railways to implement Positive Train Control by the end of 2015. But a Federal Railroad Administration report last year concluded that a full deployment of PTC by the end of this year is unlikely.
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal said there are two main reasons for the delay. One, he said, is a failure of the Federal Railway Administration to order certain recommendations coming from the National Transportation Safety Board.
“The NTSB recommended decades ago that Positive Train Control be instituted, but the FRA has failed to order that recommendation,” Blumenthal said.
The second, he said, is resistance from the railroads on cost.
“Some of the railroads -- ironically, Amtrak being one of them -- have invested in Positive Train Control,” Blumenthal said. “Others are moving forward, like the MTA, which recently received a loan from the federal government to institute Positive Train Control. But most of the railroads in the country, particularly freight, have not done so, and that imperils the entire rail system.”
Even Amtrak, which has PTC installed on some of its railroads, does not have it everywhere, and did not have it installed where the train derailed in Philadelphia.
Metro-North borrowed nearly $1 billion from the Federal Railroad Administration to install Positive Train Control, said Ana Radelat of The Connecticut Mirror. The track in the Bronx where a deadly crash happened in 2013 now has PTC, and the recent loan helps installation on the Long Island Line and other tracks in New York.
Engineer Szegedy said costs to implement PTC could reach $10 billion. “We have neglected our infrastructure for the last 50 to 100 years,” he said, so repairs will be extensive and costly.
Blumenthal sees this as a worthy investment. In Philadelphia, track closures after the derailment resulted in an economic loss of $100 million per day, he said. He compared the U.S. to other regions, saying that the country spends less than two percent of its GDP on infrastructure -- including railways -- compared to five percent in Europe, and nine percent in China.
Blumenthal said that he hopes to build a coalition to push for the safety system to be in place on all railroads by the end of the year.
