Jennifer Homendy, a National Transportation Safety (NTSB) board member, recently urged U.S. railroads to fully implement Positive Train Control (PTC).
PTC was congressionally mandated in 2008 with a deadline of December 2015. The deadline was extended to 2018, but some railroads have until 2020.
PTC is a safety system designed to prevent train-to-train collisions, switches left in the wrong position, derailments caused by speeding, and incursions into established work zone limits. Fully implementing PTC is on the NTSB 2019-2020 Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements, and the agency has requested no further extensions be granted.
“In the past half century, the NTSB has investigated more than 150 PTC preventable accidents that have taken nearly 300 lives and injured about 6,700 others,” Homendy said. “The NTSB’s message is simple: no more extensions, no more excuses, and no more delays. Finish the job.”
Passenger trains often operate on tracks owned by other railroads. So far, only 29 percent of commuter railroads, 19 percent of intercity passenger railroads, and 16 percent of Class I railroads have made their PTC system interoperable with other systems.
Railroads have spent billions of dollars improving the safety of tracks and trains and on implementing PTC.