Positive-train control is an exercise in futility. Almost 900 people were killed in railroad accidents in 2018, and positive-train control wouldn’t have saved more than, perhaps, ten of them. Yet Congress imposed this multi-billion-dollar cost on the nation’s railroads.
Now the Federal Railroad Administration says that all but eight railroads are in compliance with the law. What does it say that five of those eight are government owned? The Alaska Railroad, New Jersey Transit, New Mexico’s Rail Runner, Chicago’s Metra, and TEXRail all “are at risk of not fully implementing a PTC system” by the latest deadline, which is the end of this year.
The passengers that railroads carry lots are exactly the people that the law was written to protect. Congress wrote the law in response to a 2008 collision between a Los Angeles Metrolink passenger train and a freight train that killed 25 people. Continue reading
