After decade of delays, rail safety system still not ready
CAYCE, S.C. — As they begin to probe the circumstances of the fatal wreck in South Carolina, officials have already settled on one thing: that the crash between a passenger train and a freight car could have been prevented with technology already installed in parts of the U.S.
It’s been a decade since Congress approved a law mandating the GPS-based system called “positive train control,” which is designed to prevent two trains from traveling on the same track at the same time. That’s what happened early Sunday in Cayce, South Carolina, when a locked switch sent a New York-to-Miami Amtrak passenger train onto a side track where an empty CSX Corp. freight train was parked.
Two Amtrak employees, a conductor and an engineer, were killed and more than 100 passengers were treated at hospitals for injuries. It was the third fatal Amtrak train crash in less than two months.
“An operational PTC is designed to prevent this type of incident,” National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt said Sunday, of positive train control technology.
So why hasn’t the system been widely implemented? Both industry experts and rail companies say in large part it comes down to costs and the sheer size of the nation’s rail system.
Following a collision between a commuter train and a freight train in Chatsworth, California, that killed 25 people, Congress in 2008 passed a law requiring railroads to adopt the technology on all tracks that carry passenger trains.