Metro-North safety tech 6 yrs. too late

Six years after four Metro-North passengers died in a derailment that could have been prevented by positive train control, the MTA has fully installed the technology on two of the railroad’s busiest lines.

Trains on the Hudson Line — the site of the tragic December 2013 Spuyten Duyvil accident — are now protected by the technology, which helps track the location and speed of trains to keep them from crashing or derailing. The technology has also been installed on MetroNorth’s Harlem Line.

Positive train control “would have automatically applied the brakes to enforce the speed restriction” on the train line and prevented the Bronx derailment, according to a 2014 report from the National Transportation Safety Board.

Federal law requires the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to install positive train control tech on the entirety of Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road by the end of 2020.

This week’s milestone marks major progress on the project, which has suffered years of delays that MTA officials have attributed to snafus by private contractors. Crews are still working to install the equipment on Metro-North’s New Haven Line and its lines west of the Hudson River.

Train car manufacturer Bombardier and technology giant Siemens were hired to install the tech, and their mismanagement of the project has over the past two years drawn the ire of the MTA board.

The MTA was initially supposed to have implemented positive train control on the commuter lines by the end of 2015 — but the agency got its deadline extended to the end of 2018, and later won another extension to the end of 2020.

The agency is on pace to meet the new deadline, transit officials said.

Some 68% of Metro-North’s tracks are now equipped with positive train control, while 73% of LIRR’s tracks have the tech. Positive train control is designed to keep moving trains a safe distance from each other, and control their speeds through curves and other areas where they must move slowly.