Amtrak's Northeast Regional Train 188 was traveling at 106 mph, more than double the speed limit, when it derailed on a sharp curve in Philadelphia, killing eight and injuring more than 200. The cause of the crash is unclear and the subject of investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the federal agency responsible for investigating crashes of planes and trains.
Whatever the reason, many have pointed to the deadly accident as another example of why trains should be equipped with Positive Train Control (PTC), a system that allows a train to receive information about its location, including current speed zones and signaling, as well as information about other trains and switches in the area. Equipment on the train forces adherence to speed limits and signals, preventing unsafe operation. Congressman Robert A. Brady (D-PA) said in a hearing earlier this week that if PTC had been installed and operational in Philadelphia, "there wouldn't have been this accident."
This technology has been in the works for more than half a decade. The Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which followed the deadly crash of a passenger train with a freight train in Southern California, mandates the installation of PTC in railroads across the country by the end of 2015.
Though it seems like it would be straightforward to have a train that's aware of what's going on---after all, the thing is on tracks and its routes are known well in advance---PTC is actually an incredibly complicated and expensive system. It's based on extensive electronic communication with dispatchers, rail switches, and lights. It coordinates with other trains on the system and other rail carriers on the nation's interconnected rail networks. It requires numerous antennas and trackside units to be installed, along with special equipment in locomotives.
The Association of American Railroads estimates the full rollout will cost some $9 billion, with $5.2 billion spent as of this past January. And it's long been obvious that the full rollout won't occur by the end-of-year deadline. As of January, half of the required trackside control units had been installed, along with a third of the wireless antennas and radios. Just 60 percent of locomotives are fully or partially equipped for PTC, and it doesn't look like many railroads will meet the end-of-year deadline.
Once complete, PTC has the potential to be a fantastic system. It will know the status of other trains on the track, whether switches are thrown appropriately, and speed limits (whether fixed or temporary, as in a work zone). But until then, its benefits are limited at best.
So why not provide a stopgap solution, a simpler set of technologies that can help prevent danger on the tracks, until PTC is fully ready?
For that, the railroads can look to the auto industry, which is working toward the self-driving car. The plan from companies like Audi, Nissan, and Mercedes-Benz is not to jump right to a car that handles itself 100 percent of the time (though that is what Google wants to do). It's a stepping stone approach, gradually rolling in features that do more and more of the driving, with each addition making the roads safer by eliminating human error.
The Chrysler 200, which can be had for under $30,000, can steer your car back into its lane if the driver stops paying attention for a moment. Many cars now have radar-based cruise control to slow or even stop the car with limited driver intervention. Volvo's new XC90, packed with some of the most advanced safety tech we've seen, can hit the brakes if you try to make a left turn in front of an oncoming car. Tesla's Model S can read speed limit signs with an on-board camera and remind drivers when they're speeding. These vehicles aren't fully autonomous, impervious to human infallibility, but they can save lives because they can be rolled out today.
One potential answer for the railroads is a new system from GE, called Trip Optimizer. Designed to cut freight train fuel use by up to 14 percent, it accounts for load, grade, speed zones, weather, and more, and manages the throttle and brakes to operate the train as efficiently as possible. "Trip Optimizer is not designed and does not function as a primary safety system for the locomotive," says a GE spokesperson, "but it has the capacity to regulate speed within known speed restrictions."
Trip Optimizer isn't meant to be a safety system any more than adaptive cruise control on an automobile is meant to allow the driver to take a nap while going down the highway. But it shows that automatically controlling a train's speed, at least some of the time, doesn't require billions of dollars of infrastructure upgrades.
Already short on federal dollars and struggling to fund PTC installation, railroads like Amtrak don't exactly have money laying around to invest in new technologies. But for those who want to keep passengers as safe as possible, it may be worth considering this type of technological baby step to improve safety, until the bigger, more capable system, can be delivered.
