Amtrak Disaster: Weeks Before Derailment, Lawmakers Moved to Delay Rail Safety Rule

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/30169-amtrak-disaster-weeks-before-derailment-lawmakers-moved-to-delay-rail-safety-rule

Seven years ago, in the face of growing evidence that the American rail system was dangerously vulnerable to derailments and collisions, Congress passed a law requiring that railroad companies add to their tracks new technology designed to limit such accidents. Absent such technology, federal transportation authorities said last year, "everybody on a train is one human error away from an accident."

In the years that followed, some sections of the rails threading the crowded Northeast Corridor gained the so-called Positive Train Control (PTC) technology. But in late March, a Senate committee approved a bipartisan bill to delay by an additional five years the requirement for the new technology. Among the sections of the system that were then still without the safety gear: the tracks stretching between New York City and Washington.

As investigators on Wednesday continued to sift through the wreckage of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia, seeking to understand how the cars derailed in an accident that took the lives of at least seven people, the cause of the tragedy remained undetermined. But a look at recent legislative history reveals that Congress, only weeks ago, moved to loosen a safety rule that was designed to prevent the sort of disaster that just unfolded. On Wednesday afternoon, a National Transportation Safety Board official said that had the PTC technology been installed on the track, the accident in Philadelphia "would not have occurred."

[R B Garr]

1. So how did Boehner get away with guffawing about the funding question

on the train derailment. If the PTC had been fully implemented, it would have remotely slowed the train. So the speed was only an issue because the technology hasn't been fully completed. It's amazing he got away with that hoodwink without being challenged.

[eridani]

2. Amtrak To Operate System That Might Have Prevented Crash

Sadly, people have to get killed before remedies are taken

http://www.manufacturing.net/news/2015/05/amtrak-to-operate-system-that-might-have-prevented-crash

The deadly Amtrak derailment near Philadelphia appears to be yet another accident that didn't have to happen.

It could have been avoided if a long-sought safety technology had been operating on its tracks and trains, according to information gathered by accident investigators.

On Thursday, Amtrak President Joseph Boardman said the nation's passenger railroad will begin operating the technology, called positive train control, throughout its busy Northeast Corridor by the end of the year. The technology was installed on the tracks where the accident occurred, but it had not been turned on because further testing was needed, he said in an interview.