[thasmin]

Positive Train Control is the train safety technology at issue here. It isn't ready. The "attempt at crippling the economy" is to shut down instead of operating in violation of the regulation.

The railroad companies claim to have spent billions on implementation but it's not available yet. As the article says, they're not allowed to collaborate or share implementation costs because of trust regulations. Also keep in mind the scale of the deployment. There's hundreds of thousands of cars on the track today, and putting something on each car isn't something that takes an afternoon.

The government can't make it happen by creating a regulation and a deadline.

edit: Fixed definition of PTC.

[davismwfl]

Ummmmm, having been one of the original architects for GE on their CAD and PTC systems in the late 90's I have to disagree. The technology is pretty solid, the implementations even by competing companies are reasonable as well. The issues are political and liability, but frankly the claims are totally exaggerated on the cost, this is more about limiting future liability and changing a very ingrained old school culture. PTC helps to provide positive proof of negligence (or the lack thereof), which as you can imagine can generate potential liability for a railroad. PTC is not overriding of a train operator in all circumstances, hence the liability. And the train operator and general culture is VERY rooted, even more so than the automotive industry, which means moving these long timers off the ball takes way more than some government deadline.

As for not sharing costs, that is complete crap. The railroads are not developing the technology anyway, companies like GE and others have developed it and are continuing to develop it. Even interoperation between competing implementations is mostly moot. The railroads have to pay for the software, maintenance and on-going updates, but the development is coming from outside the railroads so that political BS claim is just that.

Not saying everything is perfect, but it frustrates me that after 15 years this isn't done and implemented, its 10 years beyond when I thought at least 2 of the biggest railroads would have it deployed at least in some form. Hell in 1998 GE had forms of it in test at 2 of the largest railroads in the country.

[bsder]

Actually, they very much can when it's in their economic interest. See the gauge conversion in the US: http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html

The railroads have been dragging their feet on this and should get fined. A lot.

[a3n]

Or nationalized.

[AnimalMuppet]

I don't think they have to put something on every (railroad) car. I think they have to put something on every engine, and on every switch. What they put on every switch has to talk to a network. There's a lot of switches, and some of those switches are in pretty remote places.

> Positive Track Control is the train safety technology at issue here.

I believe it's Positive Train Control.

> The government can't make it happen by creating a regulation and a deadline.

Very much true, and a big surprise to too many regulators.

[davismwfl]

You are correct, not every car needs to be modified. Generally engines are the primary modification, as is the CAD systems that must accept extra data and pass it to the trains. Things like hotbox detectors that can count trains axels, determine direction plus the switches and track occupation signals need to also be sent from the CAD (which already receives them in controlled territory) to the locomotive itself.

As a point, PTC works in both dark territory and controlled territory, because it focuses on the train itself (but it isn't as reliable in dark territory). Yes in controlled territory it has greater information but it doesn't require every switch to be modified. Even back in the late 90's every controlled switch reported back its status to CAD extremely quickly and CAD could control the switches remotely. Yes, dark territory is different, but PTC had some benefits even in dark territory. It was the long term goal to have near zero dark territory where a switch, siding or other similar factor would be able to cause a collision.

And just as a point, even when a train leaves one CAD controlled territory (say Union Pacific territory) and enters another (say ran by BNSF) the CAD operators hand off control, much like air traffic control. So the issue of interoperability is minimal as it already is in place in at least a fairly common form. Not saying it isn't without fault or couldn't be better, but the world doesn't have to change overnight, just keep making progress on each part making it better and better.

[paddy_m]

I assume by CAD you mean Computer Assisted Driving? What exactly is a dark area?

What are the differences between the US PTC systems and the systems used in Europe?

[davismwfl]

Computer aided dispatch. Essentially all trains are monitored via control centers owned by a few of the larger railroads. Passenger traffic is even handed off through these centers when crossing the territories.

And yes dark territory is what they call the areas that are unmonitored. Usually these are way out in the middle of no where on single track. Most monitoring believe it or not is hard wired and not wireless. For example, hot box detectors which are basically buried on the inside of the tracks monitor a trains bearing/axel temperatures and can report if one is over heating. This is critical because it is a source of derailments. Those boxes though usually are wired directly to lines running along the track and back to a common point. In many cases a number of lines terminate at one location and are fed to radio towers that beam that data back. In other cases it follows the fiber all the way to a rail yard or dispatch center.

I can't say now what the differences are with PTC in Europe, but I know when I was at GE we looked a lot at what they were doing because in most cases they are far more serious about their railroads.

[lstamour]

I think dark territory means unmonitored sections of track or switches (to be more precise, I guess), that which isn't yet hooked up to the system to watch for speed and other issues that would cause accidents? New to me too :)

[ascagnel_]

Also, there's no off-the-shelf version you can buy (this is all new technology), and it has to integrate with other railroads. For example, in the NY Metro area alone, you'd have to integrate the Long Island Railroad, MetroNorth, Conrail, Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, and possibly other industrial rail lines I'm not aware of. That alone will take a while to get right.

[debacle]

It seems incredibly unlikely to me that the government pulled the deadline out of their ass.