Amtrak is threatening to cut train service if Congress does not extend a deadline to install new train safety equipment.
Amtrak Chairman Joseph Boardman sent a letter to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., outlining efforts to install Positive Train Control to enhance train safety. The technology is an integrated system for controlling train movements, such as emergency breaking, and it has become a priority after an Amtrak derailment in May killed eight people.
The current deadline to install the technology is Dec. 31, and some members of Congress have proposed an extension until 2018. Boardman said without the extension, Amtrak service would be hit hard.
“There will be significant impacts to our service” if Congress doesn’t give railways additional time to install PTC, Boardman wrote in the letter obtained by the Washington Examiner. “The potential impacts would also be substantial since a vast majority of our network would be inoperable without an extension of the deadline.”
The Government Accountability Office told Congress in a September report that it should grant the Federal Railroad Administration the authority to extend past the Dec. 31 deadline, which it said would be unattainable due to high costs and technological glitches, among other factors.
Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said extending past the deadline is important.
“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,” Shuster said in a press release. “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.”
Members of the House Transportation Infrastructure Committee introduced the Positive Train Control Enforcement and Implementation Act on Sept. 30, which would extend the deadline for full Implementation of PTC to the end of 2018.
