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Railroads will miss new 2018 PTC deadline

Posted by Olog-hai on Sun Feb 7 16:47:00 2016

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Major railroad carriers say they won't meet federal safety system deadline, 2 in N.C.

By Lauren K. Ohnesorge, Staff Writer
Feb 4, 2016, 12:33pm EST

When it comes to a new, federally mandated safety system for railroads, the industry isn't meeting its deadlines.

A new report from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Railroad Administration shows at least seven of the nation’s carriers, including CSX Corporation and Norfolk Southern (both companies have operations in North Carolina), won’t meet the 2018 Congressionally-mandated implementation deadline of a system designed to prevent train accidents.

PTC, which stands for positive train control, is a complicated system designed as a failsafe, to slow or stop trains to prevent collisions and derailments. The feds originally wanted it implemented by 2015, but companies ran into technological roadblocks.

“Imagine you have no cellphone, no data system, anything,” Paul Worley, rail division director for the N.C. Department of Transportation, explains. “And then Congress tells you you need to come up with a way of doing it in seven years.”

The Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act of 2015 pushed back that deadline until the end of 2018 and included a provision that allows railroads to seek a waiver for an additional two years. Both CSX and Norfolk Southern have targeted 2020 for implementation, according to the latest report — meaning they'll need waivers.

Worley equates PTC to inventing Google Maps from scratch. PTC requires a plethora of data so that trains can “know” where all the other trains are on the track, meaning radio towers, lengthy permitting procedures and billions of dollars.

North Carolina, all things considered, is ahead, he says.

“We were on target to be able to have [the technology] on our locomotives, even if the system wasn’t ready,” he says, adding that, with the deadline extension, suppliers have moved back their timeline. North Carolina is now on track to outfit its trains in 2017. “But it's like having a cellphone but not having the system.”

The companies expected to miss the 2018 deadline are: CSX, Norfolk Southern, Canadian National Railway, SunRail, Metra, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and Trinity Railway Express.

CSX and Norfolk Southern are the only companies on the list operating in N.C.

According to the Federal Railroad Administration’s Office of Safety Analysis, there were 17 train “accidents” in N.C. in 2015, about half the 25 reported in 2014. Thirteen of those were derailments.

CSX notes on its website that PTC does not prevent track failure-related accidents, equipment failure-related accidents and grade crossing accidents. CSX was not immediately available to comment. Norfolk Southern directed TBJ to a video describing the complexity of PTC implementation.

CSX has made recent headlines for its controversial intermodal terminal plans in Johnston County.

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