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U.S. sees small number of railroads meeting safety deadline

Published 2015-08-07, 03:12 p/m
© Reuters. U.S. sees small number of railroads meeting safety deadline

(Recasts throughout with new details and background)
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Only a small number of U.S.
railroads will meet the Dec. 31 deadline for implementing new
train safety technology that experts say would have prevented
the deadly May 12 Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia, officials
said on Friday.
A report to Congress by the Federal Railroad Administration
showed that just three out of 38 inter-city passenger, commuter
and freight railroads have submitted the plans necessary for
regulators to certify advanced technology systems known as
positive train control, or PTC.
Barely four months before the congressionally mandated
deadline, only 11 railroads have told regulators that they
expect to begin demonstrating PTC systems in 2015. Others have
said PTC demonstrations could start as late as 2020.
Meeting the deadline to install PTC, a complex system of
sensors and automated controls that can slow or stop a train,
poses a major challenge because of technological difficulties
and its high costs, which run into the billions of dollars.
Regulators have long said that most railroads will not hit
the year-end deadline that Congress imposed in 2008, while
railroads face the possibility of fines or service suspension if
lawmakers fail to extend the deadline this fall , the report said.
After the Philadelphia derailment that killed eight people
and injured more than 200 others, Amtrak said it expects to have
PTC technology operating along segments of the busy Northeast
Corridor that it owns or controls.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which has been
calling for PTC since the 1960s, says the technology would have
prevented 300 deaths and more than 6,700 injuries over nearly
five decades.

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