Train Safety System Is Installed Along Northeast Corridor
PHILADELPHIA (WJZ) -- It's new technology that could save lives on the rails. Facing a Congressional deadline, Amtrak has installed a system to automatically slow down a speeding train---but some say it's too little, too late.
Meghan McCorkell has more on the technology.
That new system is called Positive Train Control and experts say it could have prevented some of the biggest rail disasters.
Eight people killed and hundreds more injured when a speeding Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia in May. The train was going 106 miles an hour---double the speed limit---when it flew off the tracks.
Federal investigators say it didn't have to happen.
"We believe that Positive Train Control, if installed and operational, it would have prevented this accident," said Robert Sumwalt, NTSB.
Congress ordered Amtrak to have Positive Train Control up and running by the end of the year. The system uses GPS technology to automatically slow down a speeding train.
This weekend, it was activated between Philadelphia and New York. Washington DC to Philadelphia was online the week before and the system is already in place between New Haven and Boston.
Congress first set the deadline for Amtrak back in 2008.
"It's been ordered to be in effect for at least seven years so it's a little too late for a lot of families," said attorney Marc Rosen.
Rosen, who represents families of those killed in a deadly derailment in Baltimore County in 1987, says Amtrak has missed deadline after deadline to have the technology installed.
"A lot of it has been money. A lot of it has been politics. A lot of it has been lack of attention," Rosen said.
Amtrak has already spent $110 million putting in Positive Train Control in the northeast. Congress has required the system nationwide by 2018.
While the system is installed here in the northeast, it's still being put in across the country.
This fall, Amtrak threatened a system-wide shutdown if Congress didn't extend the deadline for nationwide installation.
