Lawmakers, railroads say 2015 positive-train-control (PTC) deadline should be extended by several years

Leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee said they would support legislation to extend this year’s deadline for railroads to implement positive-train-control (PTC) systems, because railroads are still several years from implementing the technology, according to testimony during last week’s hearing on the matter.

Under the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, many railroads are required to implement PTC, which is a system that monitors the location of trains and automatically stops them when there is a potential for a crash. Although railroads have invested more than $5 billion on PTC during the past six years, the Dec. 31, 2015 implementation deadline “remains unattainable,” according Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.).

“[Railroads] have begun installation of the radio towers, locomotive technology, and other PTC infrastructure, but full compliance with the statutory requirements cannot be achieved by the end of this year,” Thune said during the hearing. “The FRA [Federal Rail Administration] and the Government Accountability Office have documented the immense technical and programmatic challenges with implementing PTC.

“As a result of these challenges, the DOT [U.S. Department of Transportation] has reported that the deadline will not be met and has offered a proposal to ensure the benefits of PTC are realized. I look forward to working with my colleagues on a legislative fix to ensure that we can set a more realistic implementation timeline for this important safety improvement.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) asked whether extending the PTC deadline would be unfair to railroads that made the efforts and investments necessary to meet the 2015 date. Frank Lonegro, vice president of service design for CSX Transportation—a large Class II freight-rail company that operates in 23 eastern states and the District of Columbia—said he does not believe that will be an issue.

“With all due respect, I would be surprised if any railroad makes the 2015 deadline,” Lonegro said.

The mandate for implementing positive train control was passed in the aftermath of the tragic September 2008 collision of a Union Pacific freight train and a Metrolink commuter train in the Chatsworth district of Los Angeles. At that time, California rail officials expressed a desire to implement PTC by 2012, even though the legal deadline was in 2015; despite this focus, Metrolink recently announced that it only will be in the testing phase of its PTC implementation in 2016, Lonegro said.

When asked how much additional time his railroad would need to implement PTC, Lonegro said it would take at least five more years.

“If everything goes well—and that’s a huge caveat to the answer—our plans take us to 2020,” Lonegro testified, later specifying that his company’s PTC implementation plans call for work as late as “the end of 2020.”