REGIONAL RAIL POSITIVE TRAIN CONTROL [PTC] IMPLEMENTATION

http://planphilly.com/articles/2015/02/ ... ies-ignore" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Why will it "obviously" not meet the deadline? Please do share your info and/or sources

Why is SEPTA one of the few "railroads" racing to complete this while the others are yawning? Something is off here.

Because SEPTA was already working on this system before the mandate. IIRC Amtrak was requiring SEPTA to do this.

bikentransit wrote:Why is SEPTA one of the few "railroads" racing to complete this while the others are yawning? Something is off here.

Very true, something could be off; especially considering that SEPTA is still years away from being fully ADA compliant.

More than likely its because SEPTA was already installing ATC full bore and as *relatively little additional work there is involved to install PTC, SEPTA can make a run at it and gloat about how safe and progressive it is.

*Note how ancient many other railroads signal systems were in 2008 and still are. Many don't have cab signals and still make extensive use of control towers.

SEPTA is compliant with the ADA. Tell me when they rebuild a station with low platforms or without ramps/elevators and then they will be non-compliant.

If SEPTA's PTC is not operational as mandated by 12/31/15 I would expect it to take an additional year on the outside, most of which would likely be working out bugs. Keep in mind, this is not something they had to invent; its the same system as is already in place on the NEC and Keystone Corridor and is an overlay of the system they have already installed on most lines and were planning to install on the rest. It's not being held in limbo by the FCC like many freight carriers' antenna-based systems.

The PTC deadline will ultimately be pushed back when the numbskull politicians in Congress are told that a large portion of nation's rail system is about to be halted imminently. The whole roll-out is a real showcase of the bloated, ineffectual monolith that is the Federal government. It's absolutely hilarious that a huge mandate can be issued (unfunded) then plans approved by one agency (FRA) with progress hitting its stride amongst installing railroads, then another agency (FCC) completely halts it because it failed to realize earlier that necessary infrastructure can't be installed because of legislature passed decades earlier (National Historic Preservation Act of 1966).

It's a bit of a double standard; Congress is great at kicking its own deadlines down the road.

SCB2525 wrote:SEPTA is compliant with the ADA. Tell me when they rebuild a station with low platforms or without ramps/elevators and then they will be non-compliant.

I believe the Malvern station recieved over $9 million in improvements to include low level platforms and ADA ramps every which way except for actually getting on a train. Is it still this way? If so, there's one.

I'm trying to find the news article, but if I remember correctly, Malvern Borough balked at the station improvements, and put the station building and old brick platform on the historic register, keeping it from being transmogrified into a cookie-cutter station like Amber, North Wales, Melrose Park, etc.

ANYHOW. Back on the subject of PTC:

If SEPTA installs PTC by the 2016 deadline and the freight RR's don't, how will this affect oil trains that have to use Amtrak and SEPTA trackage to access the refineries at south philadelphia, Marcus Hook, and Wilmington?

Why are the freight railroads and passenger railroads using different PTC systems? Wouldn't it be easier to have a universal system where the signal systems and locomotives are interchangeable? Does the FRA have a different set of rules on freight PTC and passenger PTC systems?

The West Trenton separation should be finished by the deadline so that wouldn't be an issue. CSX and NS have both said that their trains that have to use other railroads' ROW to get to customers will use locomotives specially fit with Amtrak's/SEPTA flavor of PTC so that won't be an issue either.

Someone should have been fired over Malvern. Those ramps are great....except you can't get on the train! How do we manage that?

SEPTA is regressive. They've shed more lines than any other transit agency around here in areas that are now booming and put zero resources into getting the system to interact with other parts of the state. The new station shacks they put up are equally disgraceful.

bikentransit wrote:The new station shacks they put up are equally disgraceful.

The "shacks" are exactly what they should be putting up (with high platforms) unless there's an existing building worth saving. In my opinion, Colmar is the perfect cookie cutter design for a station replacement. Why spend tens of millions of dollars on a station, which doesn't really effect your ability to actually use the train one way or another? I'd rather the money be put into fixing the physical plant to reduce delays and chew down the SGR backlog so we can finally expand to more markets.

Freight railroads won't need to have the same PTC to operate on certain tracks, a train can still run without PTC or with it cut out (for example on the road failure requiring it to be cut out), just like with cab signals, if they aren't operational the train can still run, it may just mean a lot more paperwork for dispatcher and train crew