Rail Operators Steadily Moving Toward PTC Implementation

In the wake of two rail accidents in Graniteville, S.C. and Los Angeles — one freight and one commuter — that resulted in a combined 34 deaths and more than 400 injuries, Congress passed the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, requiring passenger and major freight railroads to implement positive train control (PTC) by the end of 2015. The mandate was made in part to prevent accidents caused by human factors, which was found to be the major contributor to both accidents occurring.

The U.S. Department of Transportation notes PTC has the potential to prevent the most catastrophic types of railroad accidents that result in significant loss of life and property.

PTC is a system designed to prevent accidents caused by human factors, including train-to-train collisions and derailments that result from trains exceeding safe speeds. It is also designed to prevent incursions into work zones and movement of trains through switches left in the wrong position. The technology accomplishes this by establishing a communications-based network linking trains to equipment along the track and centralized office locations to provide information to a locomotive about its authority to proceed along the track at a particular speed. If the train is going too fast or is approaching a section of track that it should not enter, the locomotive computer applies the brakes to slow or stop the train to prevent a derailment due to speeding or a possible collision.

The statute also calls for railroads to develop risk-based safety strategies that include a plan for implementing other rail safety technologies and requires railroads to implement certain technologies in areas that both lack train signaling systems and are not required to have PTC installed. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is responsible for implementing requirements of the Act.

The mandate to implement PTC has had a varied reaction. While many in the industry agree that safety is the top priority, meeting the criteria of the Act by the target date has been embraced by some and viewed as an extreme challenge by others.

Metrolink
The events of Sept. 12, 2008, forever changed the way Southern California’s Metrolink viewed safety and is one of the accidents mentioned that led to the mandate. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the 2008 rail accident in Chatsworth, Calif., involving a Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific (UP) freight train, was caused by the Metrolink engineer’s prohibited use of a wireless device while he was operating the train. The engineer, the NTSB found, failed to respond appropriately to a red signal at Control Point Topanga because he was engaged in text messaging at the time.

The head-on collision resulted in 25 fatalities and more than 100 injuries.
As a result, Metrolink has made several changes, including updating its fleet with railcars that feature collision-absorption technology, banning the use of handheld devices by its operators and planning to implement PTC ahead of the federal mandate.

“We put together a team in fall 2008 to immediately ramp up and start putting together the program — budget, funding and schedule — as well as how to solve this thing technically,” says Darrell J. Maxey, director, PTC and communication and signal systems. “We ramped up fairly rapidly in late 2008 through 2009, and basically, caught our full stride in 2010.”

The move to implement PTC by late summer or early fall of 2013, recently received a boost when the agency received $46.3 million dollars in funds to support the installation of the new rail safety technology. The California Transportation Commission allocated $22.8 million in Proposition 1A High Speed Rail Passenger Train bonds and $10 million in Proposition 1B State and Local Partnership Program funds to advance the agency’s PTC implementation program. Additionally, the FRA awarded a $13.5 grant to Metrolink to fund a segment of the program that supports the Pacific Surfliner, located between San Onofre in Orange County and Moorpark in Ventura County.

“We had a good team here, and with management’s support and the board’s direction, we went after funding,” says Maxey. “It’s a difficult process to manage all these grants, but I don’t want to complain, we lined up the money.”

Maxey adds that Metrolink lined up approximately 34 different federal, state and local grants to help meet the $210 million budgeted cost.
In October 2010, Metrolink awarded a $120 million contract to Parsons Transportation Group to manage and integrate PTC on its 512-mile system. Two major suppliers to the Parsons contract include Wabtec, who will provide the onboard system and back office server and ARINC, the company providing a new computer-aided dispatch system and other elements.

Maxey credits Metrolink’s partnership with both freights its shares track with — Burlington Northern and UP.

“We really couldn’t have been where we are without their help and cooperation,” he says. “We’re constantly on the phone or in meetings with both [freight partners] many times a month. It really takes a lot of teamwork between all the different participants to pull this off.”

Maxey explains Metrolink’s biggest hurdle is that all the various hardware and software necessary has to be tested both in the lab and out in the field.

“The integration of all of these different systems that are required to make a PTC system work is probably the number one task,” he says. “PTC often times is called a system of systems. Developing all these different systems and linking or integrating is just a big challenge.”

He adds that another hurdle the commuter rail operator sees down the road is getting the system certified by the FRA, as part of the guidelines set in the Rail Safety Act.

“It’s going to be done incrementally, but at the end of the day, they have to certify that the system meets all the requirement of the regulation and that you are certified to go into revenue service with PTC,” says Maxey.[PAGEBREAK]

Amtrak
In March, Amtrak announced that it expects to more than triple the number of track-miles on its own railroad where PTC safety technology is installed as part of an aggressive program begun more than two years ago.

“We have an aggressive goal for getting it done sooner [than 2015] and are well down that road,” explains Amtrak Spokesman Steve Kulm. “We are going to continue to push forward, because we believe in this technology. We believe this is where the industry needs to go and are supportive of making it happen on our own territory.”

Amtrak has a PTC system in operation on approximately 530 track-miles, including on some sections of the Amtrak-owned Northeast Corridor (NEC) and the entirety of its Michigan Line. By the end of 2012, Amtrak will have installed PTC on an additional 1,200 track-miles, which will build-out all remaining Amtrak-owned sections of the NEC and cover the full length of its Keystone Corridor in Pennsylvania. This new territory will be fully functional when the locomotive fleet is PTC-equipped in 2013.

Later this year, Amtrak anticipates it will begin installing PTC components in 50 locomotives that will operate on tracks owned by other railroads for use when those railroads install and make operational their own PTC systems.

“We have made great progress toward the actual design of the system and installation of the equipment,” Kulm says. “There is a lot of installation going on this year, so we think we’ll be in a generally good position, and still have an additional three years to complete the work, based on the current legislation.”

Kulm adds Amtrak has been ahead of the curve in the development of PTC, successfully operating  two PTC systems for years. It was also the first railroad to receive approval from the FRA for its PTC Implementation Plan under a federal law requiring PTC on most main line tracks by the end of 2015.

Since 2000, Amtrak has operated PTC technology known as the Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement System (ACSES) on many sections of the Amtrak-owned NEC between Washington and Boston allowing safe operations at speeds up to 150 mph. Since 2001, PTC technology, known as the Incremental Train Control System (ITCS), has been in operation along sections of the Amtrak-owned Michigan Line between Kalamazoo, Mich., and Porter, Ind. In the past two years, Amtrak expanded ITCS to cover all remaining sections of its Michigan Line, and with federal approval, began operating 110-mph service in February 2012.

Amtrak is also working closely with freight and commuter railroads that operate on Amtrak-owned tracks as well as with the host railroads on whose tracks Amtrak trains operate to ensure the different types of PTC systems being deployed across the country are interoperable.

“We are definitely working with freight and commuter agencies around the country where we have shared service on the tracks,” says Kulm. “[Interoperability] is one of those things where you can design the system, install the equipment along the tracks, install the equipment on the trains and locomotives, but you still need it to actually make it all operate.”[PAGEBREAK]

SEPTA
To meet the federal mandate, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) recently awarded a $98.7 million contract to Ansaldo STS USA Inc., a Pittsburgh-based subsidiary of the Italian signal manufacturing company, as well as an additional $1.7 million contract for related right-of-way work to another company.

“We have already been doing some automatic train control (ATC) work with our own people and hired contracts to do the access overlay,” says Jeff Knueppel, chief engineer/assistant GM at SEPTA. “We think as both of those come together, barring something really rough, we’ll be able to complete the project by the 2015 date.”

Knueppel adds one major concern with the aggressive date, however, is envisioning how so many agencies around the nation will be able to “send somebody to the moon all at once” with the resources that are currently available. A specific concern for SEPTA is the impact that funding the project will have on the agency.

“All along SEPTA has said this is the law, this is what Congress wants us to do and there is a safety benefit to doing it, but we are just having trouble funding it,” explains Knueppel. “Doing this is knocking out other projects that also have safety implications by not doing them. That’s been our real message.”

The timetable set for railroads to meet the PTC requirement has forced SEPTA to defer many things out of its capital program to complete the project. Shifting around funds as well as a reduction in capital funding over the last few years has resulted in suspending any work on SEPTA’s bridges and substations.

“Between having to fund PTC and the loss in capital funding, we don’t have any discretionary projects in core infrastructure for five or six years in our budget,” Knueppel says, adding that the project, combined with the ATC work that was already on the way, will cost SEPTA approximately $300 million.

“I have a lot of infrastructure and there are a lot of safety implications to them as well,” says Knueppel. “Our concern is if the incremental difference for us between ATC and PTC really the greatest safety risk we have here at the time.”

Despite the funding issues, SEPTA is confidently moving forward equipping its 230 miles of track and vehicles, using the shared knowledge of Amtrak.

Knueppel adds that he doesn’t want to sound down on PTC, since he understands it’s important to Congress and SEPTA to insure passenger safety, but feels the mandate comes at a bad time and may not be suitable for all.

“We want people to be safe, that is our business, but it is coming at a time that has left of other things out there that are going to be difficult to address,” he explains. “It really is putting all our eggs in one basket, and the legislation really painted the railroads with one broad brush, but I’m not sure that we’re all the same.”[PAGEBREAK]

Possible extension

Last March, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) asked Congress for a three-year extension for the implementation of PTC, citing funding and technical challenges.

“Going into this back when Congress was discussing the legislation, we realized there was going to be a significant cost that was going to be associated with this as well as great amount of technology,” says Joni Zielinski, sr. legislative representative for APTA. “Over time, it just seems the costs and the technology issues have really risen to the forefront.

Although our commuter rails are 100% committed to implementing PTC, it has been pretty challenging in terms of finding the financing and getting the technology available for it.”

Zielinski adds the extension would provide certainty for long-term capital planning at a time where there is a severe shortage of funds for rail operators.

APTA is also concerned that rail operators would have to take measures including cutting service, delaying projects in their capital programs or postponing critical safety programs. As part of the Rail Safety Act, Congress authorized $250 million for PTC but as of press time has only appropriated $50 million. An APTA survey found that it would cost $2 billion to outfit only the publically funded commuter railroads around the nation with PTC. A total, Zielinski says is conservative.

“That doesn’t even include the cost to acquire spectrum or the operating software or training costs for the spectrum,” she explains.

Spectrum, or bandwidth, is necessary to insure a nationwide interoperable network, ensuring trains sharing tracks are able to “speak to each other.” The current spectrum standard set for PTC is 220 megahertz, which is an issue for some railroads in highly congested corridors where spectrum at that frequency is low.

“We have asked the Federal Trade Commission to set aside our allocation of spectrum, but so far it hasn’t materialized,” says Zielinski. “We don’t have a cost estimate for spectrum, but the costs are quite significant because it is a pretty competitive finite commodity.”

While the technology advancing from now until 2015 isn’t a concern for rail operators around the nation, Zielinski says that testing and working out the bugs for the software PTC requires could be costly, especially since the technology itself is in some ways still being developed. In a 2011 report, the Government Accountability Office said similar technologies that were deployed while in the product development phase, before they were actually mature or fully tested, wound up contributing to cost increases and delays.

“PTC is not an off-the-shelf technology. You need extensive time to test it to make sure it’s interoperable and actually works, and this has really never been successfully tested in the commuter environment,” says Zielinski. “We’re concerned we just need additional time to test the technology to allow it to mature.”

While APTA is seeking an extension of the 2015 deadline, Zielinski adds that it is in full support of operators like Metrolink moving forward ahead of schedule.

“We think they could almost be kind of a pilot program for figuring out the technology, what works best, ironing out some of the kinks,” she says. “The thought is that would, in turn, allow the technology to mature, which could reduce the costs for other commuter railroads going forward.”

Although there was pushback to APTA’s suggestion from both the National Transportation Safety Board, which has pushed for ATC since the 1970s, and Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), who authored the mandate to deploy PTC systems around the nation, both the Senate and House have included extensions in each of their proposed bills.

“The Senate surface transportation bill includes incremental extensions based on criteria related to spectrum funding,” Zielinski explains, adding that in the House bill that was passed includes an extension until 2020.