MBTA yet to fully implement rail safety tech
Long-delayed new technology that can automatically stop speeding trains wasn’t installed on the track where a speeding Amtrak train derailed Monday, isn’t being used on 90 percent of commuter railroad track in Massachusetts — and won’t be fully installed until 2020, the MBTA said.
Federal investigators are still trying to determine the cause of Monday’s deadly crash, during which an Amtrak train on its maiden voyage went off the rails while going 80 mph in a 30 mph zone near Tacoma, Wash., killing three people and injuring 70. The stretch of rail did not have positive train control, an automatic system that can determine if a train is going too fast and slow or stop it without a human operator.
National Transportation Safety Board member Bella Dinh-Zarr said it is too soon to say whether positive train control would have prevented the crash. But while lines carrying Amtrak trains in Massachusetts have the system, 90 percent of the state remains without, according to federal data.
After two trains collided head-on in Los Angeles in 2008, killing 25 and injuring more than 100, Congress required all commuter rail lines be equipped with positive train control by 2015. But that was pushed back to 2018, and the MBTA — along with several other rail networks — will be asking the Federal Railway Administration to allow it to complete the project by 2020, which is only allowed if the MBTA shows progress before next year’s deadline.
According to a recent Fiscal and Management Control Board report, the MBTA recently received a $382 million federal loan to complete its positive train control plans and will have the Lowell and Stoughton lines up and running by the end of 2018.
“Safety has always been, and will always be, our number one priority,” MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said in a statement. “Like other rail service providers in the country, the T is making significant progress in the installation of PTC technology, and the work will be completed as scheduled.”
And while the Blue, Orange and Red lines have anti-collision technology, the Green Line — which has seen numerous derailments and a fatal crash in 2008 — still isn’t equipped, despite the NTSB recommending it after the 2008 crash.
Pesaturo said two firms are currently shopping their systems to the MBTA and will submit proposals next year.
Marc Ebuna, president of advocacy group Transit Matters, said the MBTA was hampered by the high costs of adding the system. Upgrading the Green Line, he said, could run more than $700 million.
“The state is doing a great job at what it can right now. All these safety things are at odds with each other in terms of funding,” Ebuna said. “When it’s a federal mandate versus a federal suggestion, the mandate wins out.”