WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., recently led a bipartisan letter, along with Rep. Mike Quigley, to U.S. House of Representatives leadership urging Congress to extend the deadline for implementing Positive Train Control safety technology and prevent a shutdown of passenger and freight rail systems across the country.
Newhouse, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, and Quigley, a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies, signed the letter with more than 150 members of Congress and addressed to House Speaker John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Congress mandated PTC implementation by December in the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008. PTC, as mandated in the act, must prevent train-to-train collisions, derailments caused by excessive speed, unauthorized “incursions” by trains onto sections of track where maintenance is taking place and movement of trains through a track switch left in the wrong position, according to the Association of American Railroads.
“The statutory language for the full implementation of PTC safety technology is rapidly approaching, and it is clear that our nation’s passenger and freight railroads are unable to meet the deadline,” reads the lawmaker’s letter.
The letter states that even with the investment of billions of dollars by railroads toward PTC implementation, a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that commuter railroads, the freight industry and numerous government agencies have “warned” for years that implementing PTC nationwide by the December deadline is “simply impossible.”
The lawmakers state that the “arbitrary” deadline that Congress set for implementation did not take into account the high costs and technological challenges of developing and deploying the new technology on 60,000 miles of track nation wide.
“To date, the freight industry has invested more than $5 billion with another $4 billion set to be spent to complete installation. Our already cash strapped public commuter railroads have spent over $950 million on PTC and conservative estimates are that $3.48 billion more is needed to get the job done,” reads the letter. “Despite that need, Congress has only appropriated $50 million for this priority safety mandate, and half of the country’s commuter railroads are being forced to defer other safety and capital improvements in order to afford the costs of PTC.”
The lawmakers state that the shutdown could reap havoc on the nation’s economy and Americans could feel the effects of the disruption weeks before the December deadline. They urged Boehner and Pelosi to extend the deadline.
