Amtrak: PTC Mandate, Progress System Wide

Well, he DID say he wanted to "Make America Great Again!". Let's go back to the good days where we didn't rely on modern technology. It's getting scary. Many people nowadays have NO CLUE what to do if something goes wrong, such as ACSES not working etc.

Whereas Trump did campaign against federal regulations, he didn't campaign against all of them - just those that cost jobs. PTC is not going to cost one railroader a job, not one! Just the opposite, PTC is going to create more jobs.

Therefore, I don't automatically think he is going to propose killing PTC regulations, which I wish to point out again was implemented under direct legislation from Congress with a huge majority vote.

This is just a joke, folks. No need for angry responses and whatnot. I wanted the election to go in a different direction than it did but was raised well enough to be gracious and good humored in the face of a technical defeat.

Poor Toupee Consideration?

And let's be honest, like everyone aspiring for political office, President-Elect Trump (also raised well enough to respect the office, if not the man) ran on a platform of whatever the heck he thought would get him elected. He has already, like every other politician I can remember, gone back on many campaign promises...so let's not pretend to have the first clue as to what this very unconventional administration has in mind whenn it comes to Positive Train Control.

Positive tweet control might be a more pressing need.

Reference my immediate December 13:

468 vice 498

Tadman wrote:Have we heard anything about Trump's position on PTC? It sounds like something he would be against but it's been strangely quiet. Since this is a big component of future Amtrak operations and LD route growth, I put it here.

Please, keep it civil. Thanks!

Trump has also said he wants to do some infrastructure spending. Roads, airports, railroads. Let's not speculate until the new Congress & President take office in January. From then may take some time for the bills to be passed & signed into law.

On the NEC, Amtrak OWNS the PTC along with the rest of the ROW. For most of the system Amtrak relies on the PTC provided by the host railroad.

electricron wrote:Whereas Trump did campaign against federal regulations, he didn't campaign against all of them - just those that cost jobs. PTC is not going to cost one railroader a job, not one! Just the opposite, PTC is going to create more jobs.

Therefore, I don't automatically think he is going to propose killing PTC regulations, which I wish to point out again was implemented under direct legislation from Congress with a huge majority vote.

In the short term PTC won't cost jobs, except that the additional signal personnel the carriers hired to install the field hardware necessary for PTC will be obseleted when all hardware is installed and they will be looking for jobs. Once PTC is installed, active and working properly, the carriers will be looking to decrease crew sizes on trains and in dispatching offices.

Any payback the carriers get from installing PTC will come from force reductions, an safety 'savings' will be inconsequential in the overall scheme of things.

Campaign promises are.....well, campaign promises!!

But when The Donald goes and appoints a fellow like this to be his Budget Director, must we wonder just how much public spending, especially on rails, will there be over the next 1461 to 2922 days?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/us/po ... trump.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Fair Use:

Mr. Mulvaney was elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010, when he defeated John Spratt, a veteran Democratic congressman who had been chairman of the House Budget Committee. He won by branding his opponent a big-spending liberal, unconcerned about fiscal prudence.

Once on Capitol Hill, Mr. Mulvaney joined a conservative bloc that pressed for slashing federal spending more deeply than House Republican leaders preferred, and became a prominent face of the anti-Washington movement on Capitol Hill. He was one of several dozen House Republicans who refused to back the deal to raise the statutory debt limit

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Amtrak may have problems in other areas too. According to a Frank Wilner (never an Amtrak supporter) editorial in the December Railway Age:

"Amtrak, however(but not private sector entrants to the passenger market) is the cooked holiday goose and may be sold to Yankee Candle Co for a new fragrance, Burned Money. Why? Consider two Trump transportation team advisers- Shirley Ybarra, formerly associated with the Libertarian Reason Foundation, which characterizes Amtrak as a failed national experiment"; and retired Heritage Foundation economist Ron Utt, among whose favorite pinatas was Amtrak public subsidies."

Hopefully the transportation transition advisers will not have a big influence on legislation.

Larry

Most of you know I'm no fan of PTC, given that it cannot save enough lives in 30 years to top one year of grade crossing accidents, and it is not positive, the "P" in PTC. Put simply, "PTC is utterly stupid".

A few years back, a train accelerating out of Niles got a false indication because a maintainer was in the bungalow and didn't follow proper procedure. The train highballed into a siding, barely missing a string of ballast hoppers.

Today, rumor has it that the ITCS installation in MIchigan is down as the locomotive-mounted technology is throwing errors codes or something.

For those that don't find their head spinning, look at it this way: "positive" as a technical term implies [basically, in my laypersons terms] that if anything fails or goes wrong, a high degree of restrictive signal or operation will result to prevent accidents in the absence of continuing PTC information to the engine. Try to find that in either of the above scenarios. It's not bloody positive!

In the first case, we just forgot. The whole idea of "positive" train control is that it avoids this kind of human error. In the second case, we just shut 'er down until it gets fixed. Kind of like congress on a recess (the brain trusts that mandated PTC).



Look, my explanations are highly untechnical. I'm just a lawyer, not an engineer. But my ilk - the same people that tried to blame MNCR Valhalla on the third rail and not the lady behind the wheel - will make it really ugly with our eloquent quasi-understanding of PTC when something goes really wrong.

Tadman wrote:In the first case, we just forgot. The whole idea of "positive" train control is that it avoids this kind of human error. In the second case, we just shut 'er down until it gets fixed. Kind of like congress on a recess (the brain trusts that mandated PTC).

Two points come to mind when reviewing Mr. Dunville's material - especially from the captioned quote.

First, for those not following industry affairs nine years ago, the PTC mandate was pursuant to Rail Safety Act 08 and prompted by Chatsworth. While the Act brought about needed "fortifying" of the Hours of Service law, especially, that "prescribed rest" of four, eight, or ten hours means "that's rest" and not "limbo time".

But for better or worse, and with Chatsworth representing a flagrant Rules violation that would have been avoided with PTC, the provisions regarding such were enacted by the lame duck Bush43 administration.

I realize that the Michigan Amtrak service is going to take a timekeeping hit (limited to 79) until the technical/maintenance issues are addressed, but since '08 it seems as if there have been more incidents with fatalities, in which active PTC could have avoided.

Immediately after enactment, I would have been solidly with Mr. Dunville's position, but now I am of thought "let's make it work".

Perhaps time to consider tying the legacy Michigan Line ITCS into E-ITMS (the GPS-based freight standard.) Time to prove that the latter technology can support speeds above 79 mph as well.

Tadman wrote:Most of you know I'm no fan of PTC, given that it cannot save enough lives in 30 years to top one year of grade crossing accidents, and it is not positive, the "P" in PTC. Put simply, "PTC is utterly stupid".

Positive, not Absolute. The railroad companies agree with you ... it was cheaper to pay the damages (equipment as well as compensation for lives lost) than pay to install PTC. "Preventable" accidents are the worst - I do not know if awards have increased yet for accidents where PTC has not yet been installed. But I expect they will when the courts see "failure to install PTC" as a negligent act. Putting a cost on a human life then going to court and claiming that it was "not worth the money" to save someone's life doesn't go over too well.

Tadman wrote:A few years back, a train accelerating out of Niles got a false indication because a maintainer was in the bungalow and didn't follow proper procedure. The train highballed into a siding, barely missing a string of ballast hoppers.

Most systems work better when not disabled or bypassed.

Think of seatbelts. If you don't wear them and disable any interlocks that would nag the driver until seatbelts are worn (or disable the vehicle if seatbelts were not used) can you really blame the seatbelts? In this case the maintainer bypassed the interlocks that would have prevented the incident. Perhaps it is a design flaw allowing interlocks to be disabled. Or not putting an OOS block on the line while the maintainer was working.

There will always be procedures to follow. It is not a fault of PTC when people fail to use it or disable PTC's function.

Tadman wrote:But my ilk - the same people that tried to blame MNCR Valhalla on the third rail and not the lady behind the wheel - will make it really ugly with our eloquent quasi-understanding of PTC when something goes really wrong.

The incident can (and was) blamed on the SUV driver. But the additional deaths were caused by a design flaw on the railroad. Life would be easier if people did not do unexpected things (like enter the tracks in front of a train). But with the number of grade crossing incidents across the country is striking a vehicle "unexpected" or just (relatively) rare?

"So sad too bad" only goes so far when deaths and injuries are preventable.

justalurker66 wrote:[
Most systems work better when not disabled or bypassed...

There will always be procedures to follow. It is not a fault of PTC when people fail to use it or disable PTC's function.


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Lurker, you make a really good point here. If we can't blame the system for the human error around it, why isn't ABS good enough? Theoretically, if signal indications and maintenance procedure are followed perfectly, ABS will never fail either.

That's not the point he's making. ABS has no ability to stop trains -- to mitigate that human error. PTC does. It takes into account that we aren't perfect, and provides a backstop for when we mess up.

And anyway, I have a feeling that it'll become much more useful down the road. With PTC, you can get rolling blocks, and automated trains...