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Regulators proposed a streamlined process for American Indian tribes to complete reviews that railroads have said make it difficult to meet deadlines for finishing the biggest rail-safety project in U.S. history.

Tribes would get less time to review, for historic significance, proposed locations for 22,000 U.S. communications antennae and would need to accept bulk applications for all equipment proposed in a county, the Federal Communications Commission said in a notice posted on its website yesterday.

Read the complete story at Bloomberg Businessweek.

Last month, a Metro-North Railroad train plunged off the track while taking a sharp curve at 82 miles per hour, killing four and seriously injuring 20. In the aftermath, some experts said the disastrous results could have been prevented by positive train control (PTC). An automatic braking system built to slow down dangerous trains, PTC has been available since 1990. But the lifesaving tech remains widely unadopted.

“The Metro-North accident claimed four lives,” says Robert Sumwalt, a vice chairman at the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB). “We looked at the situation and said, had PTC been implemented, it would have prevented the accident, more than likely.”

Read the complete story at Popular Mechanics.

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Joe Boardman

We talk a lot about our national debt. But the largest debt we owe is to those who will come after us in this nation. Our fulfillment of that debt should underpin the actions we take right now.

Our national infrastructure forms the bedrock foundation upon which our economic future is built as America competes in the global marketplace. Railroads — both passenger and freight — are essential elements in the national transportation network that will help deliver future economic growth to communities across the country.

But for the rail network to function at its best, the rail industry must further improve safety.

Read more at USA Today.

U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) has proposed the Commuter Rail Passenger Safety Act to help commuter railroads, such as MTA Metro-North Railroad, fund and implement positive train control (PTC) systems.
Maloney announced he would introduce the legislation earlier this week after touring the site of Metro-North’s deadly derailment in the Bronx, N.Y. On Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) confirmed that PTC would have prevented the crash, Maloney said in a press release.
Read the complete story at Progressive Railroading.

U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) has proposed the Commuter Rail Passenger Safety Act to help commuter railroads, such as MTA Metro-North Railroad, fund and implement positive train control (PTC) systems.

Maloney announced he would introduce the legislation earlier this week after touring the site of Metro-North’s deadly derailment in the Bronx, N.Y. On Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) confirmed that PTC would have prevented the crash, Maloney said in a press release.

Read the complete story at Progressive Railroading.

Two years probably wasn’t going to be enough time for railroads to install crash-avoidance technology on 23,000 locomotives and 60,000 miles of tracks, in the biggest rail-safety project in U.S. history.

Then they encountered the Choctaw Nation, Muscogee and Navajo.

In May, the railroads and their regulators learned 565 American Indian tribes had the right to review, one by one, whether 22,000 antennae required for the system to work might be built on sacred ground. That’s as many wireless tower applications as the U.S. Federal Communications Commission approves in two years.

Read the complete story at Bloomberg Businessweek.

WASHINGTON – Spurred by a deadly train crash in Los Angeles, Congress in 2008 passed with great fanfare legislation requiring the nation’s railroads to install a sophisticated collision-avoidance system by the end of 2015.

Five years later, an industry move to extend the deadline to 2020 is picking up steam on Capitol Hill.

Read the complete story at the Los Angeles Times.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) made public its report on positive train control (PTC) implementation and issued a trio of recommendations including extending the deadline, approving alternative safety technologies and granting provisional certification of PTC systems.

The report said three out of four freight railroads included in its review will not meet the Dec. 31, 2015, deadline and won’t have PTC implemented until 2017 or later. GAO interviewed representatives from Amtrak, the four largest freight railroads and seven commuter railroads, selected to represent a mix of locations, ridership levels and PTC implementation status. GAO also interviewed PTC experts and suppliers and reviewed FRA’s PTC regulatory impact analyses.

Read the complete story at Railway Track & Structures.

WASHINGTON – It was an accident investigators say didn’t have to happen: Five years ago a commuter train collided head-on with a freight train near Los Angeles, killing 25 and injuring more than 100.

Technology is available to prevent the most catastrophic collisions, but the railroad industry and its allies in Congress are trying to push back a deadline for installing the systems until at least 2020.

Read the complete story at the Associated Press.

After the recent disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) is looking at possibly implementing positive train control (PTC) systems on its railroads.

In 2010 and 2012, two major train derailments have been linked to trainmen not following signal indications. The incident in 2010 at Saint-Charles-de-Bellechase, Quebec, only caused injuries and property damage, while the 2012 incident in Burlington, Ont., caused the deaths of three engineers.

In both cases, it was found that the trains were traveling at excessive speeds while switching tracks, having missed or misinterpreted signals.

Director of TSB rail and pipeline investigations Kirby Jang explains, “In Canada, we have a system called centralized traffic control, which provides visual signals, but there is no automated stopping or slowing of trains if the train crew were to exceed the limits of their authority.

“We believe that there’s a risk of serious train collisions and derailments if rail signals are not consistently recognized and followed. Really, what we’re trying to advocate is that further safety defenses should be implemented to ensure that signal indications of operating speed or operating limits are consistently recognized and followed. That’s a key finding and recommendation out of Burlington,” Jang said.

According to Jang, there are ongoing discussions about PTC systems, which would automatically reduce a train’s speed if it were moving too fast. The TSB is also looking at placing video and voice recording systems inside the cabs of locomotives as a source of data in the event of another derailment or train disaster like the one in Lac-Mégantic.

The TSB can only make recommendations to Transport Canada; it is then up to Transport Canada to decide whether or not they want to act on the recommendations made by the TSB.