The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) recently released status updates on railroads’ self-reported progress as a means of gauging compliance.
The March 31 report examined efforts to move toward fully implementing positive train control (PTC) systems by Dec. 31, 2020, as required by Congress. Based on railroads’ First Quarter 2020 PTC Progress Reports and current PTC Implementation Plans, nearly all railroads subject to the mandate are operating their systems in revenue service or advanced field testing, known as revenue service demonstration (RSD).
PTC technology remains to be activated on approximately 1,100 required route miles. Additionally, the report maintains PTC systems were in RSD or in operation on 56,541 route miles, which represents 98 percent of the nearly 58,000 route miles under the mandate.
“We continue to work directly with all to be complaint railroads — providing technical support and guidance as requested — to enable them to satisfactorily meet the Congressional deadline,” FRA Administrator Ronald L. Batory said. “I’m pleased with the growing number of railroads that have reached critical milestones and continue to encourage all of them to help each other overcome any remaining challenges from their respective lessons learned.”
Batory said the FRA is encouraging railroads to work in a safe, focused, and aggressive manner to meet the year-end deadline.
“FRA has provided nearly $2.6 billion in grants and loans and thousands of hours of technical assistance to help railroads fully implement PTC systems,” he said.