NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s commuter railroads, the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North, may miss the deadline for positive train control installation, a consultant told an MTA committee meeting on Monday.
Nabil Ghaly, a retired MTA chief signal engineer, estimated there was a 60% to 65% chance PTC would be fully implemented by the Dec. 31, 2020 deadline at the MTA board of directors’ joint Long Island and Metro-North Committees Meeting. He cited problems with co-ordinating software with Amtrak, interoperability functions, and transponders on M-8 railcars as ongoing issues.
Ghaly made that estimate during questioning following the announcement of an agreement between the two railroads and the Siemens/Bombardier consortium installing PTC. Under a new contract modification, those companies will be responsible for damages sustained if the railroads miss the PTC deadline, with a cap of $2 million per month per railroad up to a total of $100 million. The full MTA board will vote on that agreement at its Wednesday meeting.
MTA Board Member Neal Zuckerman noted that revenue service demonstration testing between New York Penn Station and Harold Interlocking in Queens has been pushed back from July 2020 to October 2020, significantly reducing project contingency. An MTA official said the delay involved integration of Amtrak software into the MTA database. While most needed forward had been received from Amtrak, he said, a small portion did not, affecting a lab test scheduled for this November.
Long Island Rail Road President Phil Eng told Trains News Wire after the meeting that the LIRR remains “confident” problems will be resolved by the end of 2020, but that MTA needs to stay on top of the situation. Both railroads are dealing with vendors, Amtrak, and the Federal Railroad Administration in a close and timely fashion, he said.
— Updated Oct. 22 at 5:40 p.m. to correct new date for testing between Penn Station and Harold Interlocking to October 2020.
I’ve yet to get an explanation as to why Automatic Speed Control was worse than PTC?
When Amtrak installed ACSES on the NEC: NJ Transit, SEPTA, LIRR, and Metro North where were you guys at???
J Robert Wayman,
It would help if you also read the prior sentence, I will quote the necessary part and then decipher for you.
Quote: “An MTA official said the delay involved integration of Amtrak software into the MTA database. While most needed forward had been received from Amtrak, he said, a small portion did not, affecting a lab test scheduled for this November.”
Deciphered; According to an MTA official, the delay involved integration of Amtrak software into the MTA database, most of the software needed had been /forwarded/received, but a small portion did not get forwarded/received, thereby affecting a lab test scheduled for this November.
Can someone decode this. While most needed forward had been received from Amtrak, he said, a small portion did not, affecting a lab test scheduled for this November.