Key safety upgrades at LIRR, Metro-North

MTA officials announced Wednesday the completion of key safety upgrades designed to prevent railroad catastrophes like Metro-North’s deadly 2013 Spuyten Duyvil crash.

The technology — called positive train control, or PTC — uses radio signals to automatically stop speeding or runaway trains before they crash or derail. As of Wednesday, it was installed and tested across the more than 500 miles of track used by the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North.

“There is no higher priority at the MTA than safety, and full PTC implementation brings our railroad operations to the next level,” said Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Patrick Foye. “This technology will prevent future collisions and ultimately help save lives.”

All of the country’s regional railroads regulated by the Federal Railroad Administration are required to install the tech under a 2008 law.

The law required transit agencies to fully implement PTC by the end of 2015, but the MTA got five years of extensions due to bungles transit officials blamed on private contractors.

PTC would have prevented the December 2013 derailment in the Bronx on Metro-North’s Hudson Line that killed four people and injured at least 60, the National Transportation Safety Board said.

The train’s operator fell asleep before the crash, investigators found. Positive train control “would have automatically applied the brakes to enforce the speed restriction” before the train, running at 82 mph, jumped the tracks around the tight curve at Spuyten Duyvil, investigators found.

The MTA met the extended deadline to complete its PTC project with just over a week to spare.

Officials were unsure last year whether the work and safety tests would be done in time.

The project hit a roadblock in February 2019 when MTA contractor Siemens reported roughly 4,000 faulty radio antennas installed on trains to run the system had to be replaced.