Feds: Railroads Slow to Make Progress on Train Technology
Source: Associated Press
Feds: Railroads Slow to Make Progress on Train Technology
By MICHAEL R. SISAK, ASSOCIATED PRESS PHILADELPHIA Nov 28, 2016, 1:27 PM ET
The nation's three busiest commuter railroads - which together serve nearly 1 million riders in the New York City area each day - continue to lag behind their smaller West Coast counterparts in installing sophisticated train-control technology that's seen as an antidote to crashes involving speeding and other human factors, federal regulators said Monday.
The Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit and Metro-North all made scant progress on implementing GPS-based positive-train control in the quarter ending Sept. 30, according to new Federal Railroad Administration data. Over the last three months, the LIRR and Metro-North have trained more employees on the system, the data shows, but neither they nor NJ Transit installed it on any tracks.
The railroads say the federal data doesn't fully reflect their progress and that they are still on track to meet a December 2018 deadline to install the technology, which is designed to automatically slow or stop trains that are going too fast.
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The LIRR and Metro-North say they've installed PTC equipment on more than 300 train cars and placed more than 2,000 transponders along their tracks. NJ Transit says it's awaiting federal approval to acquire a slice of required radio spectrum and has testing scheduled for next year on a 6-mile stretch of track.
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