But, first, they had to develop it since there was no off-the-shelf solution.
“It’s one of those disruptive technologies that some hate and some love,” said Steve Mazur, director of government sales at Digi International.
Railroads must install PTC on tracks that carry regularly scheduled passenger trains or transport toxic-by-inhalation (TIH) materials. While the idea behind PTC is a simple one — help avert collisions — the execution is incredibly complex, which led Congress to vote in 2015 to extend the deadline for implementing PTC.
“Ten years was a very short period of time when you think through the task and really think through the planning and execution stage to get all this done, which is why it’s been extended,” said Jim McKenney, technical director at NCC Group’s Transportation Assurance Practice.
“We have to do this and keep trains moving and keep our bottom line in order,” McKenney said. “So, yes, it’s a very challenging task. But, when you think of the railroads. They’ve got that frontier spirit where, directionally, they’re going to figure out how to get there. Just give us some time.”
There is no standard timeframe for how long procuring technology should take. For many companies, the multi-stage process includes assessing the need, pricing options and negotiating contracts with suppliers before any system is even implemented.
But, PTC had the added layer of federal oversight.
“Part of the challenges of designing the system have been just to make sure that in the interest of guarding against adverse outcomes that the system is meant to solve, you don’t create other ones,” said Allan Rutter, a former administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). “How do you make sure that this thing meets the safety operational standards that the industry and the regulators would like to have?”
Railroads are installing PTC on 19,912 locomotives, according to the FRA. The nation’s railroads need to install PTC on nearly 57,848 route miles, numbers from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) show.
“It’s a very complex piece of technology with a lot of different moving parts,” McKenney said. “It’s an unfunded mandate, a set of standards, not necessarily a way of doing things.
“When a government has an unfunded mandate, it tells you, ‘You have to do this,’ but not necessarily how to do it,” McKenney said. “Positive train control came along and really was a challenge. I think it still is a challenge. That’s why we’re continuously having to push the deadline back for compliance.”
Given the system’s complexities, it’s hardly a surprise the nation’s Class I railroads spent more than $10.6 billion installing PTC.
“PTC is a significant cost, but it should be figured into any procurement program, no different from any other safety feature railroads have already implemented,” said Michael Barasch, managing partner of Barasch McGarry, a New York-based law firm. In the long run, PTC “will actually save railroads money.”
“It’s a major expense, to be sure, but the risk of liability claims from a crash in which dozens and even hundreds of people are seriously injured or killed is significantly higher,” Barasch said. “From an economic point of view, it makes sense to spend the money now and make the switch. From a moral standpoint, railroads have a responsibility to protect passengers and bystanders from harm. The technology exists to do this, so it’s imperative that they do so.”
There are four different PTC solutions, Mazur said. Even as PTC is more or less up and running, railroads could move away from PTC systems that use wireless radio to systems that operate via cellular networks, Mazur added.
“What Congress asked us to do is make every locomotive work on every piece of track in the United States that has either passenger or TIH traveling along it,” McKenney said. “If you take a step back and think about that, that is just a monumental task — even if it’s been done before. But, it had never been done before.”
“Never been done.” Didn’t the Pennsy have a similar system installed on their electrified lines in the 1930’s? Why there was radio antennas on lcos and cabooses. There is a video by the Pennsy made in the 50’s floating around on the web. Shows an E unit missing a signal and the train stopping all by itself and the dispatcher calling the engineer wanting to know the auto brake application showed up at his end.
It took / still takes a long time because the Federal Government sold off much of the radio spectrum that was needed. The railroads now had to buy back that spectrum while paying for the owners migration to a different spectrum that also had to be purchased. Next both local NIMBY opposition plus Federally controlled lands opposition to the erection of Cell towers blocked / delayed installation. On top of that multiple vendors are still having trouble getting all of the product they sold as working to the railroads to actually “work”.
Donald A. – That only occurred after the mandate – and because of selecting the WABTEC I-ETMS system to implement. If they had gotten started earlier and not chosen a system where every block signal has to transmit all the time, they could have used their voice radio frequencies for data.
It took long because the RRs had to shell out their own, thats all. They were not subsidized like the airlines, plain & simple.
SHANNON STEFFENS – I don’t know much about the technology for PTC, but I have to agree with your comments about building and fire safety. For example, everyone knows sprinklers should be in every building. Have you in your years as a fire marshal ever seen sprinklers in a single family dwelling? What’s the big deal, I’m looking at a sprinkler head right now in my condo, what’s the difference in single-family residential.
As another example, I have a house plan on my desk right now. I’m sketching a circuit for future stair lift. What house have you seen that you can guarantee will never need a stair lift? But I haven’t seen a single house, not one, where a future stair lift was provided for in the electrical plan. It’s like, well we’ll worry about it when someone gets sick then install a circuit for fifty times the price and delay the installation by a few weeks or a month.
Airlines do not pay for their own infrastructure including air traffic control as railways do. PTC would have been fully implemented sooner rather than later had there been similar federal support for railways.
I dare the airlines to build and maintain their own infrastructure and operate air traffic control with no financial help from the federal government!
What are the four different PTC solutions then?
All true. But, RRs were their own worst enemy with respect to PTC. Failure to flesh out ATCS technology which the industry started exploring in the late 1980s ultimately led to the PTC mandate, and heavy Federal oversight.
I fear history will repeat itself with ECP braking.
The same protection could have been accomplished by having a split point derail beyond every signal at end of double track. Lots cheaper. Eliminate the cell phones use which was done.
Also all highway gates on double track RR should display a sign on the down gate that reads: YOU ARE BEING HELD FOR TWO TRAINS. HAVE YOU SEEN THE SECOND ONE? That might save the lives of people that rush around the gates as soon as the train clears, and gets killed by the train from the other direction.
Railfans:
Intelligent comments have been made. To Shannon’s comments, this is an example of WHY we have a nation of regulations and laws. If the private sector of our country does not take care of an critical issue, the government will “eventually” take care of the problem.
The unfortunate issue is the lack of willingness of the railroads to be in the forefront of the technology to provide safety. For the RRs it’s a financial issue, driven by the demands of the RR investors (as with a multitude of public companies), for a better “rate of return” to push their earnings. Money will always win out.
We should remember as this 15+ year of implementation of PTC digital technology was evolving exponentially. This had to have thrown many curves to the RRs in deciding the implementation of PTC. Where was the government in trying to help this effort?
As you wrote, Penelope, it seems our government was playing politics (driven by voters), by financially providing safety and infrastructure to airline companies, highway travelers, trucking companies, and many other profitable non-governmental entities.
Perhaps the government shoud get pouit opf “financing” for-profit companies, eyc.
As a Fire Marshal for 15 years, I saw over and over again how industry (hotel, medical, and retail) would fight new life safety regulations (as job killing, onerous, and wasteful oversight) then see them passed, then drag their feet for years, or even a decade, hoping the laws would either change, or they’d be bought out/out of business before the deadline, making the issue someone else’s to deal with. Then as the deadline approaches, they go to the legislators and complain they just didn’t have the time or money to carry out the changes and beg for another decade to come on line. In one case the only way the changes were made was when our state required sprinkler systems in ALL hotels, and if they didn’t have them installed and operational by a certain date, they’d have to close. Of course, the hotel industry wailed “we can’t make that timeline”, but they’d had a decade to do it, and slept through 9 of them. Suddenly, when their business was going to be closed down, they ALL had sprinklers in a year. AMAZING. We put a man on the moon in less than a decade, virtually from scratch, we surely can keep trains from wrecking too. All it takes is industrial will power.
Correction to my earlier post. .125khz stepping is what they’re moving to.
Branden – Spot on. Test it and roll it in dark territory, then replace – not overly – the existing signal system with a proven, tested system. No having to install all new block signals with radios all over creation.
RRs were too busy merging and the resulting meltdowns to bother with PTC – and it has come to bite them you-know-where.
Now, they are spending extra cash – and even borrowing – to buy back stock and pay dividends when they should be looking at the much greater return they’d get from having a “smart” train build around an intelligent freight car centered on an ECP braking system.
Just dumb.
I second Mr Oltmann. When BN was testing ARES back in the 80’s on the Lakes Sub the system then proved itself. Yet BN couldn’t justify the cost..Here’s an alternate future scenario if BN would’ve continued with ARES development. All wayside signals eliminated.. No need to waste money on 220 mhz spectrum. Existing VHF159-160MHz converted into DTS(Digital Trunking System, RR’s are currently in process of converting to VNB .25khz stepping). Car inventory/tracking built into ARES with customer access to track shipments, possibly even PU/SO cars if need be on the fly. Track missed connections etc. Viewing cars in real time would render the current AEI tag system obsolete. Rear end protection as current PTC lacks this. Throw in ECP. You have a system that’s cost effective, and cheaper than the current implementation of PTC…..
Imagine if $10.4B had been spent on grade crossing elimination how many hundreds of lives could have been saved since 2008.