Fox News is reporting it has obtained a letter sent Monday by Amtrak Chairman Joseph Boardman to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D.
In the letter, Boardman warns lawmakers Amtrak will suspend parts of its national service in December if Congress does not extend a year-end deadline on the installation of advanced safety technology. The letter also outlined the company’s efforts to install Positive Train Control (PTC) that would improve rail safety.
The Rail Safety Improvement Act was passed in 2008 and set a Dec. 31, 2015, deadline for most of the nation’s commuter and freight trains to be outfitted with PTC. Positive Train Control is a GPS monitoring and safety network aimed at preventing deadly accidents.
Train speed is regulated electronically and speed is automatically reduced when a train is approaching a sharp curve or crowded area. The technology is expensive and operationally complex, and railroads actually had to develop the technology from scratch.
Not only that, but because freight railroads sometimes host commuter railroads on the same tracks, and often use other rail competitor’s tracks, the PTC system would have to be used by multiple railroads, adding significant complexity to the picture.
So railroads have been after Congress to give them an extension, and at the same time, lawmakers have said no to the request. In August of this year, only three railroads had submitted required safety plans to the government, a step before PTC is operational.
The three railroads include BNSF Railway, the nation’s second largest freight railroad, and two commuter railroads — Metrolink in the Los Angeles area, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in the Philadelphia area. In August, Amtrak said it would have PTC operational in the northeast corridor by Dec. 31.
The railroads want a five-year extension, but after the May 12 Amtrak crash, which killed eight people and injured about 200 others, investigators determined that if PTC had been operational, the crash could have been avoided. That hardened lawmakers who had been thinking about an extension.
Now, Amtrak is using a different tactic, telling Congress it will be sorry if it doesn’t allow the extension to go through because the disruption of travel during the holiday season could cause a big problem. This is what Boardman’s letter says: “Should Congress fail to pass legislation to extend the PTC deadline beyond December 31, 2015, there will be significant impacts to our service and on our customers and tenant railroads. The potential impacts would also be substantial, since a vast majority of our network would be inoperable without an extension of the deadline.”
Boardman went on to say that the company would start notifying passengers of disruptions beginning Dec. 1, and he pointed out the cuts in service would affect both passenger travel and freight.
