Automatic braking system slowed by cost
Amtrak’s fatal crash in Philadelphia revived calls for a braking system that automatically stops a train exceeding speed limits. But the multibillion-dollar price tag is slowing the installation on all the nation’s trains.
So far, the system is installed in only half the nation’s trains and on a little more than half the tracks.
In 2008, Congress set a deadline of this Dec. 31 for trains and railroads to adopt automatic-braking equipment called positive train control. The goal is to automatically slow down a train if the engineer isn’t responding to lower speed limits or track signals.
The National Transportation Safety Board has urged adoption of positive train control as one of its “most wanted” safety recommendations since 1990. The urgency was revived in December 2013 with a Metro-North crash that killed four in New York, and with Tuesday’s Amtrak crash, which killed eight.
The cause of the Amtrak crash is still under investigation. Robert Sumwalt, an NTSB member, said positive train control is installed throughout the Northeast, but not yet along that section of track where the accident occurred.
Railroads have been upgrading trains and installing electronics for an automated system along the tracks for years. But industry groups have warned since 2010 they will miss this year’s deadline for having the system on an estimated 60,000 miles of track carrying passengers or toxic chemicals that can be inhaled.
Congress set the deadline for positive train control after a head-on collision between Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train that killed 25 and injured 100 in Chatsworth, Calif., in September 2008. The Federal Railroad Administration counted about 300 people injured and 10 killed in train accidents each year from 2003 through 2012.