New legislation pushes for Positive Train Control deadline extension

A recent confluence of events calling for an extension of the Congressionally-mandated December 31, 2015 Positive Train Control (PTC) deadline saw another development this week, with new legislation introduced by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Entitled the Positive Train Control Enforcement and Implementation Act of 2015, the bill would extend the 2015 PTC implementation deadline to the end of 2018, while also providing limited authority for the United States Department of Transportation Secretary to extend the 2018 deadline beyond 2018 if railroads show they are having continued difficulties in meeting the deadline while making a full effort to install PTC, coupled with requiring railroads to complete progress reports on implementation efforts.

“Completion of the Positive Train Control mandate by the end of the year is not achievable, and extending the deadline is essential to preventing significant disruptions of both passenger and freight rail service across the country,” said Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA), and also one of the sponsors of the legislation, in a statement.  “Railroads must implement this important but complicated safety technology in a responsible manner, and we need to give them the necessary time to do so.”

The objective of PTC systems is to prevent train-to-train collisions, overspeed derailments, and incursions into roadway work limits. PTC sends and receives a continuous stream of data transmitted by wireless signals about the location, speed, and direction of trains, according to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). PTC systems, added the FRA, utilize advanced technologies including digital radio links, global positioning systems and wayside computer control systems that aid dispatchers and train crews in safely managing train movements.

A mandate for PTC systems was included in House and Senate legislation-H.R. 2095/S. 1889, The Rail Safety and Improvement Act of 2008. The legislation was passed shortly after a September 12, 2008 collision between a freight train and a commuter train in Los Angeles. And it calls for passenger and certain hazmat rail lines to take effect by 2015 and authorizes $250 million in Federal grants. PTC has received renewed attention, following a tragic Amrtak accident in the Philadelphia area earlier this year. And as per the mandate, the December 31, 2015 deadline requires freight railroads to install Positive Train Control (PTC) technology on 40 percent of its network.

This introduction of this legislation follows a recently-issued report by the Government Accountability Office, which also called for an extension of the PTC deadline. The Association of American Railroads and the National Industrial Transportation League are also both fully supportive of this bill .

AAR President and CEO explained that immediate action to extend the deadline is needed. 

“The freight rail industry is pleased the House T&I bipartisan leadership has introduced legislation to extend the PTC deadline,” he said. “The committee leadership clearly recognizes the need for immediate action to forestall the looming economic crisis that would result from widespread freight and passenger rail service disruption.  We look forward to working with both the house and senate bipartisan leadership to quickly get the PTC extension across the finish line and to the President’s desk for signature.”

And NITL officials said that the bill appears to be on a fast track for consideration possibly by next week.

In the weeks leading up to the introduction of this legislation, various railroad stakeholders made it clear that rail service shutdowns could be looming if an extension is not granted. 

The AAR said in September that the lack of an extension would have far-reaching impacts on the nation’s freight and passenger rail industries, their customers and the American economy and they have indicated without the certainty of a PTC extension in the very near future, preparatory actions are beginning to suspend service by December 31.

Union Pacific said it expects to issue a TIH TIH embargo notice prior to Thanksgiving if an extension is not reached and BSF said that “the deadline will impact all freight service…on the lines where PTC is not fully installed and implemented.”

In comments in March, FRA Acting Administrator Sarah Feinberg said that she established a new PTC Task Force Team within FRA that is charged with managing and monitoring each individual railroads’ progress, tracking data and ensuring it has the most accurate and up-to-date information.

And she added that based on the information FRA has received from 32 of the 38 railroads it is tracking for PTC “enforcement purposes,” it has found that Class I railroads have: completed or partially completed installments on about 50 percent of locomotives that require PTC equipment; replaced about 50 percent of signals that need replacement and competed most of the required mapping for PTC tracks.

For those railroads not compliant by January 1, 2016, Feinberg said the FRA will impose penalties on railroads that have not fully implemented PTC, with fines based on FRA’s PTC penalty guidelines that establish different penalties based on violation, with one potential violation being a $15,000-$25,000 fine for failure to equip locomotives, which could be assessed per day, per violation and could be raised of lowered depending on mitigating or aggravating factors, with the total amount of penalty each railroad faces depending on the amount of implementation progress the railroad has made.

PTC has been commonly referred to as the “unfunded mandate” in railroad circles. A major concern of freight railroads has been that PTC rules finalized in January 2010 required PTC on sections of tracking where the cost is not justified, according to a March 2011 Wall Street Journal report.

The possibility of the PTC deadline being extended past the December 31 deadline remains possible, as the Senate’s recently-approved six-year transportation bill allows for the deadline to be extended by three years, according to Reuters.