Economy

August 12, 2020

FRA “Highly Pleased” With 98.8% PTC Implementation

Written by Andrew Corselli, Managing Editor



The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)’s second-quarter 2020 update on railroads’ self-reported progress on fully implementing Positive Train Control (PTC) by the Dec. 31, 2020 deadline shows that, as of June 30, 2020, the job is 98.8% complete. Nearly all railroads subject to the statutory mandate are operating their systems in revenue service or in advanced field testing, known as revenue service demonstration (RSD), with PTC technology remaining to be activated on only approximately 700 required route-miles.

As of June 30, PTC systems were in RSD or in operation on approximately 56,846 of the 57,537 route-miles subject to the mandate. This represents a 0.7% point increase since 1Q20 and indicates that PTC technology was activated on an additional 305 miles during 2Q. As previously reported, PTC systems are currently governing operations on all PTC-mandated main lines owned or controlled by Class I railroads and other freight host railroads. As of June 30, 76.1% of commuter railroads’ mandated route miles were governed by PTC technology—a 12.9% point increase since the last quarter.

In addition, as of June 30, host railroads reported that interoperability has been achieved by 65.5% of the 220 applicable, host-tenant railroad relationships—a 17% point increase since 1Q20.



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Infographics depicting railroads’ progress toward fully implementing PTC systems as of June 30 can be found here. The public version of each railroad’s Quarterly PTC Progress Report for 2Q20 can be found here.

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