By Michael Hill
Correspondent
Federal investigators said positive train control — the emergency braking system — could have prevented the crash of a PATH train in 2011 at the Hoboken Terminal.
The same conclusion drawn after last year’s deadly Amtrak crash in Philadelphia.
And the same conclusion some former NTSB members and lawmakers have reached even as the investigation has just begun in to the speeding NJ Transit train that failed to stop in Hoboken.
“It’s amazing we were at one time at the head of the curve on positive train control at NJ Transit and then it collapsed over the last decade,” said Sen. Bob Menendez.
In 2008, Congress approved positive train control for passenger and freight lines. Last December, Amtrak activated PTC from DC to New York. It’s had the emergency braking system of computers, transmitters and signals from New Haven to Boston since 2000.
NJ Transit carries more than 900,000 commuters a day. But Menendez says NJ Transit is among the agencies slow to come on board even though it’s been receiving billions of federal dollars.
“You have to wonder why they’re not using some of that money for capital purposes like positive train control,” Menendez said.
The senator says even more disturbing, NJ Transit seems unprepared to meet the 2018 deadline to activate PTC.
“The last report that I saw filed with the Federal Railroad Administration by NJ Transit covers the first six months of this year says they are at 0 percent in terms of locomotives for positive train control, 0 percent on the tracks for positive train control and 0 percent of radio towers which is necessary to send the frequency. And as I also understand they have not applied for the radio frequency license so two years away from when this was mandated by Congress to ultimately be an implementation, we are at zeros across the board. I don’t understand that,” he said.
The lead investigator of Thursday’s Hoboken crash, NTSB Vice Chairman Bella Dinh-Zarr, said, “So, we hope that PTC will be installed everywhere. That’s part of our most wanted list of transportation priorities. But as far as this accident, we don’t know if it would have prevented this accident and that’s what we’re going to look into.”
“The real tragedy, after the big tragedy of loss of life, the next tragedy would be if we didn’t learn lessons from this to prevent it from happening,” said Sen. Cory Booker.
NJ Transit declined two NJTV News requests: why the transit agency has failed to install PTC and to make an upper management official available to answer that question.
But commuters had plenty to say.
“I think it’s a disgrace,” said Simon Shogry.
“Somewhat upsetting because every year it seems as if the price is increasing,” said Edel Quinn.
The clock is ticking toward 2018 as lawmakers and others say the preventable tragedies are piling up.