In March of 2017, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) issued a Request for Information (RFI) on the “the future of automation in the railroad industry.” FRA spokesman Warren Flatau explained that such information is part of a directive from U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to employ automation technologies across all modes of transportation with the intent to increase the “safety, reliability, and the capacity of the nation’s railroad system.”
Such an inquiry comes at an interesting time, as other modes of transportation have already embraced the idea of automated safety features at a much faster rate. Semi-truck manufacturer Freightliner currently produces the Cascadia with computer-controlled active safety systems such as brake assist, adaptive cruise control and lane departure warnings. And automakers such as Cadillac, Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz are allowing drivers to go “hands free” on the highway thanks to Lane-Keeping Assist technology.
So why is the rail industry lagging in this embrace of futuristic technologies? Well, they’ve had good intentions. In 2008, the U.S. Congress passed the Rail Safety Improvement Act—one that sanctioned the required use of Positive Train Control (PTC) on Class I railroad main lines. The system is intended to protect passengers and communities by preventing derailments and crashes through a complex array of track sensors, GPS and other input devices that can slow and/or reroute trains if danger is eminent. The problem is that the original Act set an industry compliance date of December 2015, which was then extended to December 2018 with an option to push out the date to 2020.
If you’re asking “what’s the rush?” you needn’t look farther than recent headlines—on December 18, 2017 in Washington State, an Amtrak train was making an inaugural passenger run in Washington State when it rounded a curve rated for 30 m.p.h. at a reported speed of 80. The resulting derailment spilled train cars off an overpass bridge and down onto the highway, killing several people. Washington’s DOT has stated that they were in the process of installing PTC along the new route, but that it was not operational at the time of the incident.
Additionally, the PTC debate came up again following the Cayce, South Carolina crash that injured more than 100 people and killed two Amtrak workers in the early morning hours of February 4th. While it’s unclear as to whether some PTC equipment was installed in the area, it certainly was not incorporated into the switch system that caused an Amtrak train to unintentionally divert to a side track and collide with a parked freight train.
One must wonder why the FRA is still looking into new technologies when, 10 years later, our rail systems have yet to fully implement a technology that experts have repeatedly said could prevent derailments and save lives.
While the responses to the RFA’s RFI are due to the regulatory agency by May 7, maybe the more important deadline the RFA should be circling on their calendar is this December—when we will learn the status of PTC implementation or possibly see another extension we can’t afford to take.
