ARINC Inc. won a contract to design and deliver a centralized electrification and traffic control (CETC) system for the National Railroad Passenger Corp.’s (Amtrak) Northeast Corridor.

The new CETC system will be based on ARINC’s Advanced Information Management software platform, with a fully redundant architecture supporting multiple control centers and their associated emergency backup centers. It will have the capability to operate the entire corridor from any of several centers located throughout the Northeast and support train dispatching from Washington D.C. to Boston.  

The project is part of a major Amtrak infrastructure improvement program for the corridor and is expected to provide Amtrak with the capability to improve the efficiency of its train operations and energy management. In addition to Amtrak trains, the system will be used to dispatch freight traffic from Norfolk Southern and CSX, and commuter trains from Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, Maryland Area Regional Commuter (Marc), New Jersey Transit and Virginia Railway Express.