Rail safety technology installed before deadline

The rail road industry OMAHA, NEB.— has installed an automatic braking system on nearly 58,000 miles of track where it is required ahead of a yearend deadline, federal regulators said Tuesday.

Federal Railroad Administration chief Ronald Batory said railroads worked together over the past 12 years to develop and install the long-awaited technology known as positive train control, or PTC.

The roughly $15 billion braking system is aimed at reducing human error by automatically stopping trains in certain situations, such as when they’re in danger of colliding, derailing because of excessive speed, entering track under maintenance or traveling the wrong direction because of switching mistakes.

“PTC is a risk reduction system that will make a safe industry even safer, and provide a solid foundation upon which additional safety improvements will be realized,” Batory said.

The National Transportation Safety Board has said more than 150train crashes since 1969 could have been prevented by positive train control, whichwas required in 2008 after a commuter train collided head-on with a freight train near Los Angeles, killing 25 and injuring more than 100. That agency had recommended positive train control for years before Congress mandated it after that crash. Then Congress extended the original 2015 deadline twice and gave railroads until the end of this year to complete the system.

Bob Chipkevich, who oversaw railroad crash investigations for several years at the NTSB, said positive train control is a significant safety improvement for the industry, particularly in areas where commuter trains operate and where hazardous gases are transported, but added that it could have been done years earlier and it is still not required on all tracks nationwide.