Rail industry is warned of brake-system deadline

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 and 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 mandate 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, trackside sensors and trained crews to use them. Other big railroads, and some transit systems, lagged well behind.

Chao told the railroad executives of the need “to help create an increased level of urgency to underscore the imperative of meeting existing expectations for rolling out this critical rail-safety technology.”

The FRA said that eight of the 37 railroads required to install the systems have fully complied with the congressional mandate. Congress has granted the FRA leeway to approve extensions to 2020 for railroads who apply, provided that they have the necessary hardware in place.

There have been dozens of train wrecks that might have been avoided were positive train control in place, but the two Amtrak crashes in Washington state and Philadelphia stand in high relief because of the fatalities and mass injuries.