Railroad safety agency proposes rule changes for Positive Train Control outages

Washington — The Federal Railroad Administration wants to amend certain regulations to establish parameters and restrictions for three specific scenarios when Positive Train Control technology is temporarily not governing rail operations.

PTC is designed to prevent train-to-train collisions, over-speed derailments, incursions into established work zones and movements of trains caused by switches left in the wrong position.

According to a notice of proposed rulemaking published Oct. 28, the revisions would “establish clear, uniform processes” for when:

• Non-revenue passenger equipment needs to operate to a maintenance facility or yard for the purpose of repairing or exchanging PTC technology.
• A PTC system needs to be temporarily disabled to facilitate repair, maintenance, an infrastructure upgrade or a capital project.
• A system-level or widescale problem occurs, resulting in multiple trains’ PTC systems failing to initialize.

As of December 2020, PTC technology governed rail operations on approximately 59,000 route miles in the United States.

“We expect that these changes will ensure that railroads consistently provide FRA with the information necessary to assess the scope and circumstances of temporary outages in a timely manner, establish additional operating requirements to protect public and worker safety when outages occur, and enhance the efficiency of rail operations,” FRA Administrator Amit Bose said in a press release.

The deadline to comment on the NPRM is Dec. 27.