(The following appeared on the Journal of Commerce website on March 7, 2011.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Railroad Administration, in a legal settlement with the Association of American Railroads, agreed to issue new regulations that could scale back the amount of Class I rail track that must deploy expensive train-control systems to prevent collisions.
The change in stance by the FRA came on the eve of what would have been a March 7 hearing at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., on an AAR petition to review the agency’s earlier rule that set the scope of “positive train control” requirements.
From the outset the trade group for the largest U.S. railroads and some regional lines had argued that because the FRA used a past baseline year of 2008 for which track areas must deploy collision-avoidance PTC systems, it was locking in too much track area. The 2008 law mandating PTC deployment by the end of 2015, across most of the national rail network, mainly targeted tracks that support passenger train service and carry toxic inhalation hazard chemicals, the most deadly category that can generate poison clouds in a railcar rupture.
The four largest U.S. railroads alone expect to spend nearly $1 billion this year on PTC investments.
The full story appears on the Journal of Commerce website.