(The following story by John D. Boyd appeared on the Journal of Commerce website on June 23, 2009.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Two key senators, who chair committees important to transportation infrastructure, urged the Senate to set aside at least $50 million for rail safety technology grants.
Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D.-W.Va., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., sent their request in a joint letter to the appropriations subcommittee for transportation. It also happened to go out on the same day a late-afternoon transit rail accident in Washington, D.C., left nine dead and scores injured.
Rockefeller chairs the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which is drafting new rail competition legislation and will usher the next multi-year surface transportation spending program through the Senate. Boxer heads the Environment and Public Works Committee, which has its own transportation and infrastructure panel.
Since the actual spending levels are controlled by the Appropriations Committee and its panels, Rockefeller and Boxer asked the appropriators to make sure the next transportation spending bill, for the 2010 budget year that starts in October, includes the rail grants that were authorized in the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008.
That bill followed closely after a train disaster in which a California commuter train plowed into a Union Pacific Railroad freight train, killing 25 and injuring 138. The legislation set a date by which all passenger systems and mainline freight railroads would have to install computerized anti-collision systems known as positive train control, and allowed for $50 million in grants to help jumpstart those systems.
“In these tough economic times, with many commuter rail agencies facing budget cuts, funding for the railroad safety technology grants is vital to ensure that important safety measures continue to be implemented,” Boxer and Rockefeller wrote. They urged the spending panel to fund those grants “at a minimum, at the authorized amount.”
They directed their letter to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who chairs the transportation appropriations subcommittee, and to the panel’s ranking Republican, Christopher Bond, Mo.
The committee chairs also said “we cannot afford to delay the implementation of positive train control and other life saving safety measures on our nation’s busiest commuter-freight rail corridors.”
Given the timing — that their letter would go out the same day as a new commuter train crash, their warning soon stood out. The accident on the Washington Metro subway system occurred as one stopped train was hit at a high speed by a train coming up from behind on the same track.
The Washington Post reported that Metro was built with computerized train-management that should keep trains from crashing by shutting them down, but that experts suspect some of the electronic signals failed. It said a similar incident in June 2005 saw signal failures, and that a crash was just narrowly averted when train operators hit emergency brakes even though their signals incorrectly indicated clear tracks ahead.
Putting dependable safety systems in place could also be important to a key part of the Obama administration’s plans to restructure the nation’s freight and passenger transport. The president has proposed building a series of high-speed passenger rail corridors, to draw more people off congested highways. That plan would pour billions into rail upgrades that could also affect freight rail and leave truckers competing with fewer passenger vehicles for highway space.