NEWARK, N.J. — NJ Transit’s challenges in implementing positive train controls have hit another snag, pushing back planned Revenue Service Demonstrations on both the Morris and Essex and Montclair-Boonton lines from November until March.
NJ.com reports that at Wednesday’s NJ Transit board meeting, William Krull, the vice president at contractor Parsons Inc. assigned to monitor the transit agency’s PTC project, said software issues led to the delay. Krull said that the problem had been resolved and tested as of Tuesday, after Alstom, software developer for the project, made Parsons aware of the issue.
“In September, Alstom notified us the software exhibited anomalies,” Krull said, “which didn’t allow complete certification for testing in revenue service. That’s a major shift in schedule. The good news is it allowed us to catch it in a timely manner to come to a resolution.”
The Morris and Essex and Montclair-Boonton are to be the first for Revenue Service Demonstration testing, meaning other lines will follow under a shrinking window to have the technology in service by Dec. 31, 2020. Last month, the Federal Railroad Adminstration’s report on PTC statistics for the second quarter of 2019 showed that that NJ Transit is one of nine railroads where zero miles of track equipped with PTC are in regular service.
Parsons said it will submit a PTC safety plan to the FRA by June to make sure that installation is completed by the end of next year. Its contract with NJ Transit dictates non-compliance penalties.
NJT is using, and has been for some time, a scaled-down version (for lower speeds) of Amtrak’s ACSES system on the NEC and NJCL. Does anyone know what system(s) they are using on the diesel lines?