It’s been well known that the major railroads, who often also operate commuter transit railroads under contract, stipulated a 3-year roll out period for PTC and a bill was passed in Congress by voice vote (and signed by Big Ears, FWIW) to authorize this time extension.
I’m a software contractor on a PTC project for a major railroad right now, and even the rate at which this is being hastened out is incurring a lot of teething pains for the system. Thousands of miles of railroad track and hundreds of locomotives have to be equipped with radio service. It has to work seamlessly as locomotives pass from tracks owned by one railroad to another. This is more like putting men on the moon than it is like building another Hoover Dam.
When the system is working right, yes most accidents of the kind that just happened in Hoboken will be headed off. The locomotives will STOP when signals say that they have to stop, no matter what the engineer tries, or fails, to do.
I worked on PTC for NJ Transit for lines into Hoboken. It went into revenue service 11 years. Did they yank it out?
Due to circumstances beyond my control I had to watch the CBS Evening News every night during the week of the Philly train crash. They repeatedly blamed the crash on Republicans refusal to fund infrastructure.
I worked on PTC for NJ Transit for lines into Hoboken. It went into revenue service 11 years ago. Did they yank it out?
Redneck, you’re knowledge of PTC and this post needs to be the story—if the talking heads try to make the story about Chris Christie, Trump’s ally, which is how they will create the narrative.
Bookmark!
Thanks for that helpful information.
As a fellow railroad engineering contractor in the same business as you, thank you very much for a sane post on the subject.