Brightline provides transportation between West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale with plans to extend service to Miami, and ultimately, through to Orlando. Yet the company’s expansion could come to an abrupt halt as the clock counts down to a deadline that will might require the installation of safety upgrades after numerous injuries and deaths have occured since the passenger service started in December 2017.
Capable of reaching speeds up to 79-miles-per-hour, this high speed passenger rail service runs along tracks operated owned by Florida East Coast Railway—a route that, along with other railway lines across the country, is under a Congressional order to install new safety upgrades called “positive train control” (PTC) by the end of 2018.
More than two years ago when Florida East Coast first submitted a plan to the Federal Railroad Administration for implementing PTC, they promised the high tech safety measures would be in place by the time Brightline began service in early 2018, according to local news outlets.
Despite this agreement, the owner of the tracks has lagged behind in implementing the PTC upgrades. In fact, no PTC track improvements had been completed and only 24 of 347 employees had received PTC training—the company may not even be eligible for an extension due to its inability to implement this new technology.
While the track owners continue to fall short of federally mandated safety standards, Train operator Brightline continues to have its own safety issues—as I discussed in detail in a previous posting. To date though, the company has yet to make any safety efforts beyond a handful of community ambassadors and a signage campaign. Even in three languages, are warning signs enough to ensure our pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers within our community remain safe?
Positive train control is futuristic technology that’s widely available today, put simply the technology is able to automatically activate a trains’ brakes to either enforce speed restrictions or when an eminent threat to safety exists. As the Brightline trains could be reaching speeds of 110 miles per hour on certain segments of track, it’s vital that the company comply with the new federal safety standards. To that end, the company recently made this statement: “We are currently coordinating the implementation of PTC with the Federal Railroad Administration in anticipation that it will be operational in advance of the 2018 deadline. When Brightline launches service to Orlando, PTC will be operational for the entire corridor.” For the safety of neighboring communities, we must hope that they hold true to such a promise and remain on track with the federal deadline—because there are literally individual lives riding on the use of such technology.
