As the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee held the latest in a growing collection of hearings on Positive Train Control, the Association of American Railroads reiterated its oft-repeated message that the industry is fully committed to PTC, despite facing a year-end deadline that many—including some key members of Congress—agree cannot be met.
“America's freight rail industry is making progress on PTC each and every day and remains steadfast in its commitment to ensure all is being done to safely reach the goal of nationwide interoperability,” said AAR President and CEO Edward R. Hamberger, at the same time emphasizing said that “it’s absolutely impossible to meet the Congressionally mandated 2015 deadline for a fully functioning PTC system given the sheer size and scope of the order. Freight railroads have a team of 10,000 employees, manufacturers, software designers and safety experts devoted full time to developing, installing and testing the safe creation of PTC.”
In its most recent PTC progress report to the Federal Railroad Administration, AAR said the following would be completed by the end of 2015:
• More than 11,000 railroad route-miles equipped with PTC.
• About 9,000 locomotives will be PTC ready.
• 76% of the 34,000 required wayside units will be installed.
• 67% of base station radios will be in place.
• 32,446 of 95,971 railroad employees will be PTC trained.
“Reaching deadlines is important, but even more important is that when PTC is turned on it is fully operational and enhancing safety,” said Hamberger, who noted that freight railroads “have already invested about $5.7 billion in private capital into PTC and expect to spend billions more by the time it is fully implemented.”
However, “the freight rail industry was transparent early on when it clearly warned policymakers that the arbitrary deadline of 2015 was unachievable, something that has been echoed by former and current FRA officials, as well as others on Capitol Hill,” Hamberger said. “Freight railroads have indicated for some time they require until 2018 to deploy all the necessary equipment and outfit the locomotive fleet, followed by up to two years of testing and validation that the nationwide system is properly working in all regions.”
“The safety of freight rail operations is the industry’s top priority, and the statistics underscore the point: 2014 was the safest year on record for freight rail,” Hamberger said. “Given enough time to ensure that the complicated safety network is working effectively, PTC will make a safe method of transportation even safer. Freight railroads have been moving forward with PTC for years and remain 100% committed to ensuring this complex ‘system of systems’ gets safely installed and thoroughly vetted and tested. Our railroads have 62,000 miles to equip with PTC and getting that safely completed is a top priority.”