Trump ups pressure for braking system
The Trump administration has fired a warning shot to the nation’s railroads, saying it plans to hold them to a December deadline to install an automatic braking system that might have prevented last month’s fatal Amtrak accident in Washington state, the Philadelphia derailment that killed eight passengers in 2015 and scores of other train wrecks.
The implementation of the system known as positive train control was postponed by Congress, which extended a deadline to have the systems in place from 2015 until December of this year, then left open the possibility of an additional extension to 2020.
But Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has warned the railroad industry that they are expected to meet the deadline at the end of this year.
“We are concerned that many of the nation’s railroads must greatly accelerate their efforts to achieve the congressionally mandated requirements,” Chao said in a letter addressed to the executive officer of each railroad.
A progress report released by the Federal Railroad Administration in September showed that some major railroads — notably BNSF Railway — had completed installation of onboard hardware and trackside sensors, and trained crews to use them. Other big railroads, and some transit systems, lagged well behind.
The FRA said that eight of the 37 railroads required to install the systems have fully complied with the congressional mandate.
Positive train control might have prevented Amtrak crashes in Washington state and Philadelphia, which caused fatalities and mass injury. In both cases, an engineer allowed the train to enter a curve at more than twice the posted speed limit.
Installing positive train control is a daunting task for the railroads, requiring that hardware be added in 25,000 locomotives and sensing trackers be place along the railway beds. When the industry appealed to Congress for relief from the looming deadline in 2015, it said it had already invested more than $6.5 billion and anticipated a total price tag of $10.6 billion.