The publication is reproduced in full below:
IN RECOGNITION OF THE NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD'S WORK TO
IMPLEMENT POSITIVE TRAIN CONTROL
______
HON. PETER A. DeFAZIO
of oregon
in the house of representatives
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I am proud to recognize the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for their work, which spans five decades, to implement positive train control, also known as PTC.
December 31, 2020, was a significant day for railroad safety as all 41 freight and passenger railroads required to meet the deadline set by Congress to implement PTC met the mandate. This life-saving technology will prevent train-to-train collisions, overspeed derailments, incursions into established work zones, and the movement of a train through a switch left in the wrong position.
The path to full implementation of PTC was long and challenging, and had it not been for the NTSB's persistence and partnership with Congress, in particular the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, PTC may never have happened.
The NTSB's work on PTC began on August 20, 1969, when two Penn Central commuter trains collided head-on near Darien, Connecticut, killing three crewmembers and a passenger and injuring roughly 43 others. After conducting an extensive investigation, the NTSB issued its first PTC-related recommendation.
Over the next five decades, the NTSB investigated 154 more PTC-
preventable accidents that tragically took the lives of 305 people and injured 6,885 others. Several of those tragedies gained the public's attention and changed the conversation around PTC, including collisions in Chase, Maryland, in 1987, Boston, Massachusetts, in 1990, Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1996, Placentia, California, in 2002, Macdona, Texas, in 2005, Graniteville, South Carolina, in 2005, and Chatsworth, California, in 2008.
In 2007 and 2008, the House and Senate were negotiating legislation that would require PTC implementation, the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (RSIA). The tragedy in Chatsworth pushed Congress to act and brought about final passage of RSIA. But as railroads worked to implement PTC after the mandate, the NTSB continued to investigate accidents that could have been prevented had the technology been in place. These include the derailment of Amtrak 188 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2015, which killed 8 passengers and injured 185 others, and the overspeed derailment in DuPont, Washington, in 2017, which killed 3 passengers and injured 57 passengers and crewmembers.
Throughout these tragedies, the NTSB pressed on for PTC. The agency believed PTC was so important that it included the issue on its very first Most Wanted List of transportation safety improvements in 1990, and it has remained a key focus in their advocacy efforts.
On December 18, 2020--12 years after PTC was mandated--the last railroad required to implement PTC, New Jersey Transit, announced that it had fully implemented the safety technology, which meant that all 41 railroads had fully implemented PTC two weeks short of the deadline: a tremendous accomplishment.
Without the tireless advocacy of the NTSB over the last 50 years, we may not have seen the day PTC was fully implemented. I commend all those from the NTSB who fought tirelessly to finally achieve fully implemented positive train control. Their work will save lives.
____________________
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 17
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
House Representatives' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
Alerts Sign-up