PTC Months Away in Washington State Despite Derailment
The section of track where Monday’s deadly Amtrak crash occurred near Tacoma, Washington, likely won’t have operational positive train control before mid-2018, a spokesman for Sound Transit, which own the tracks, told us Wednesday. Amtrak Co-CEO Richard Anderson told reporters…
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the deaths were “unacceptable” and Amtrak is committed to PTC. The National Transportation Safety Board said earlier the train was traveling at 80 mph on a 30-mph stretch when it derailed. PTC can prevent speeding, through automatic breaking. It was installed along the tracks as part of the rebuilding of the bypass, a seven-year, $181 million project, but turning systems on is complicated, the Sound Transit spokesman said. PTC “is a fairly complex endeavor that involves equipment installed on the track, equipment installed on trains,” he said. “It involves equipment in the control center or so-called back office. It involves networking it all together.” The federal deadline for PTC on the track is December 2018, and Sound Transit expects to beat that by about six months. The NTSB was studying whether the lack of PTC was a contributing factor (see 1712190049). The original deadline for installing PTC was December 2015, but Congress granted a three-year extension (see 1510290069), NTSB board member Bella Dinh-Zarr noted on CNN. NTSB has urged PTC “for decades,” she said. “Every year that we wait to implement PTC to its fullest extent means that more people are going to be killed and injured.” “Everybody is talking about PTC,” but it isn’t required on the line for another year, Anderson said in a news conference Tuesday. Amtrak is working with its partners to get PTC online on the track, he said. “We have to keep this as a wakeup call,” he said: “You can count on Amtrak following through on NTSB recommendations” on safety. The parts of the Northeast Corridor owned by Amtrak and some other lines have PTC, Anderson said.