Railway Track & Structures - November 2008 - (Page 5)

INDUSTRY TODAY Railroads to establish PTC interoperability standards Union Pacific, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern have reached an agreement on establishing interoperability standards for Positive Train Control, a critical component to safely implementing PTC technology across all rail systems. PTC is a predictive collision avoidance technology that can stop a train before an accident occurs. The system is designed to keep a train within authorized limits on a track and under its maximum speed limit. To accomplish this, sophisticated technology and braking algorithms will automatically bring PTC-equipped passenger and heavy freight trains to a safe stop. This will help prevent train-to-train collisions, overspeed derailments and casualties or injuries to the public and railway workers. “Our joint development of interoperable standards for a PTC system is a significant hurdle that we have overcome and brings us much closer to a safe technology solution. Interoperability is one of our key challenges since freight and passenger trains share tracks and must be able to exchange and use information in order for PTC to function appropriately,” said Dennis Duffy, UP executive vice presidentoperations. “We look forward to working with elected officials and regulators on another key challenge—the need for additional radio spectrum—so that we have sufficient communication, especially in metro areas such as Los Angeles and Chicago.” “The development and testing of positive train control systems has made great progress in the past decade,” said Carl Ice, BNSF’s executive vice president and chief operations officer. “The railroad industry is committed to continuously improving safety by developing and implementing proven, effective technologies that can operate across multiple railroads and rail lines, and this agreement is essential to that process.” “PTC has been a focus for NS and the industry for many years. While we have worked diligently to address the technical challenges of developing a deployable system, interoperability among railroads has remained a challenge. This agreement has put us on a fast track to realizing the benefits of PTC,” said Stephen Tobias, NS vice chairman and chief operating officer. “We are very pleased to achieve this milestone in our joint work on this innovative and important safety enhancement,” said Tony Ingram, CSXT’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. “This agreement helps assure the U.S. freight rail industry’s continued global leadership in safe and secure transportation.” Passed October 1, 2008, The Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 requires all Class 1 railroads and passenger railroads to implement a PTC system by December 31, 2015, on all main line track where intercity passenger railroads and commuter railroads operate, as well as on lines carrying toxic-by-inhalation hazardous materials. Train signal systems such as Automatic Train Control and Automatic Train Stop are used across many rail networks today, but these are not PTC systems. ATC and ATS are reactive systems, which means they wait for train engineers to acknowledge alarms. PTC involves robust, predictive technology that detects upcoming conditions and takes control of the train when needed. PTC’s sophisticated computer systems, with safety-critical software, use GPS for determining train location. The requirements for data accuracy, availability and communications have been developing for more than a www.rtands.com Railway Track & Structures November 2008 5 http://www.rtands.com

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Railway Track and Structures Contents On Track Industry Today Supplier News AREMA News NRC News TTCI R&D TrainingVvital in Shaping Future of Railroad Industry Switch Stands, Switch Machines Automation Offers Improvements in M/W Planning AREMA 2008 Conference Report Products and Literature People Calendar Advertisers Index Sales Representatives Website Directory Professional Directory Classified Advertising Chicago Perspective

Railway Track & Structures - November 2008

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