Posted on 09/29/2016 9:04:32 AM PDT by bryan999
The commuter train that crashed into New Jersey Transit's Hoboken terminal during the Thursday morning rush was not equipped with the positive train control technology that could have prevented it from roaring off the rails.
What's more, not a single New Jersey Transit employee has been trained how to use the PTC technology, according to the most recent U.S. Department of Transportation progress report, which is dated Sept. 13.
The agency has a Dec. 31, 2018 deadline for putting this technology in place. The report states that "NJT has had a contractor on board for several years." The report also says NJT has done "partial testing over the course of the past year" on a locomotive and a cab car.
The absence of PTC, which automatically slows down trains when they exceed the speed limit on a stretch of track, was blamed by the National Transportation Safety Board for the 2015 derailment of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia that left eight people dead.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
They’ll say it’s because Republicans oppose infrastructure.
No human is needed now to drive a train — anywhere in the country. This is all union crap and I will speculate that the driver of this train was drugged out.
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.
The Dead mans switch has been in existence for how many years?
And these trains don’t have one? How Sad. We don’t know yet what caused this. But just to think that there is no protection against an operator having a heart attack near the end of the run.
Yes, this is is pure agitprop, designed to rile people up. One of my more liberal Facebook “friends’ posted this and I immediately smelled a rat.
So I took it to the only place on the Internet where it can be neatly unpacked, examined and discarded appropriately - Free Republic! We’re like a bomb-defusing service for BS news articles.
Yeah, the train crash was a result of someone was not paying attention - or something worse.
Also on Metro North near Spuyten Duyvil - same thing with at least one fatality. My daughter took a different train the night before but had considered that one; that is why I remember it.
Trump is right once again! Our infrastructure is third world. Also I still would not be surprised that we find out that it was terrorist sabotage - time will tell - unless the media suppresses the truth as they did in the Pulse nightclub motive.
The broke taxpayers obviously did not pay enough/s
Yes but Trump wants to rebuild trains and roads with American parts and jobs. Not your father’s republican.
Possible in principle — trains can be utterly automated. But I seriously doubt that this means they will cease to be staffed. The calamities guarded against by PTC are not the only ones that locomotives can face. PTC won’t see an obstruction or other abnormal condition of a track.
This is video of a civil alert yesterday from a WKTV Channel 2 Utica, NY.
They later posted on their twitter feed to ignore the alert.
Just seeing news—accident or terrorism?
I was on the last train out of Hoboken for NY before the crash. I almost didn’t get on because it was so crowded, almost waited for the next train.
But I got on and missed the crash. Missed being in the terminal when the train crashed.
What the -—?
“never let a serious crisis go to waste”... the Dem playbook (Rahm Emanuel)
I built locomotives in the 1980s.
They all had a dead man switch.
And it was old technology then...
Wow, glad you were safe. I know a few people that take that train into Hoboken
How does a train “roar off the tracks”? Sounds like ignorant writer.
I was never in danger, except of being stuck in a crowded station with no place to go. I was not on the train that crashed.
I feel for all the victims. Are 3 people dead or not? I am seeing conflicting reports.
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