In a letter to New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Metro-North Railroad President Joseph Giulietti, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal urged the railroad to stop delaying Positive Train Control (PTC) implementation on its system and to confirm that they will meet the federal government's December 2018 PTC deadline. The Senator addressed the issue due to a recent Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) progress report that revealed Metro-North has made almost no progress in implementing PTC.
Blumenthal states in his letter that PTC technology would have prevented the death of four Metro-North passengers at Spuyten Duyvil in December 2013, and saved more than 300 other lives nationwide since 1970 when the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) first urged railroads to implement PTC. Currently PTC is not in operation on any of Metro-North’s track, and the railroad has made little progress over the past year towards installing the system.
“Metro-North should be leading the way – a model of timely, sound investment, not safety delay,” wrote Blumenthal. “The Spuyten Duyvil disaster was a red flag for this railroad, but Metro-North seems to have missed the signal, and it apparently will miss another timetable.”
Blumenthal's letter stated that he wrote to Metro-North in August of 2015 asking for a date that the agency would complete installation of PTC on its lines. “Metro-North responded that it would be “irresponsible” to project a completion date,” noted the Senator. “At that point, Metro-North had failed to equip any locomotives, install any radios or obtain the necessary spectrum for a PTC system to operate.”
“I urge you to take the PTC mandate seriously and provide me with your assurance that PTC will be operational and fully effective by the December 2018 deadline,” stated Blumenthal in his letter to MTA.
Senator Blumenthal is member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. He opposed a blanket extension of the PTC deadline from 2015 to 2018 because possible extensions could lead to a five-year delay to 2020.