Railroaders place to shoot the shit.

Members Login
Username 
 
Password 
    Remember Me  
Post Info TOPIC: Chicago Metra PTC to cost $100 million


500 - Internal Server Error

Status: Offline
Posts: 36507
Date:
Chicago Metra PTC to cost $100 million
Permalink  
 


Chicago Metra PTC to cost $100 million
CHICAGO - Metra plans to spend $100 million to install a high-tech system that would keep trains from colliding or prevent a distracted engineer from speeding through a warning signal to slow down or stop, the Tribune reports.

Such a safety system would have overridden the engineer's error that caused the September 2005 derailment of a Metra train, killing two women and injuring 117 others on Chicago's South Side, federal officials said.

The technology, they say, also could have prevented a 2008 commuter-freight train collision in Los Angeles that killed 25 people. The Metrolink commuter train's engineer was text-messaging when he ran a red signal and the train collided with a freight train at a combined speed of more than 80 m.p.h.

That crash prompted Congress a month later to pass a law requiring large railroads to install the system, known as positive train control, or PTC, by 2015.

PTC is a complex system of computers, GPS devices, radios and other communications equipment intended to take over when a train is approaching another train.

In an emergency, the system also could override an engineer who may be distracted or otherwise miss or ignore a warning signal to slow down, such as when a train crosses a switch or a track crossover, or when it exceeds the speed limit.

Metra officials said Friday that they expect to have the system running sooner than 2015.

"I think we're ahead of the curve," Metra Executive Director Phil Pagano said.

Critics say, however, that rail lines should have installed such systems long ago. The National Transportation Safety Board called for positive train control as far back as 1990.

The NTSB cited the lack of such a system in the deadly crash on Metra's Rock Island line in 2005, the second such derailment on the same line. In December 2006, the safety agency issued an urgent recommendation to Metra to install an automatic system to warn engineers.

Metra began installing the similar, but less-advanced, Electronic Train Management System on the Rock Island line. That system will be replaced by PTC, officials said.

The $100 million to pay for the PTC system will come from the state's capital program, officials said.

Installing PTC throughout the Chicago area faces enormous technical challenges, officials said. "We have the most complicated freight/commuter system in the United States," Pagano said.

Each day, the region handles more than 1,300 trains, 800 passenger and 500 freight. Six of the continent's seven largest railroads operate here.

"Everybody's locomotives need to work with each other," said Bill Tupper, Metra's director of operations.

The BNSF Railway Co. got federal approval to install the high-tech system in its locomotives in January 2007.

Amtrak has spent $20 million over the last 10 years installing PTC on its high-speed rail line from Porter, Ind., to Kalamazoo, Mich., spokesman Marc Magliari said.

The "next generation" of PTC holds the potential for stopping trains when a school bus is halted on railroad tracks, Pagano said.

Seven students died and 24 were injured on Oct. 25, 1995, when a Metra train struck their school bus at Algonquin Road near U.S. Highway 14 in Fox River Grove.

"We know that the technology is there" to one day improve the system, Pagano said.

(This item appeared March 22, 2010, in the Tribune.)

March 22, 2010


__________________

© Equal Opportunity Annoyer

Troll The Anti-Fast Freight Freddie

 

 

 

 

Page 1 of 1  sorted by
 
Quick Reply

Please log in to post quick replies.

Chatbox
Please log in to join the chat!