Railroads are shooting red-hot rhetoric at Congress over the Dec. 31, 2015 Positive Train Control deadline.
That would be interesting. I think we would learn very quickly the importance of railroads.
In the water business it is to expensive until you dont have it.
I think its a big political move to get Congress to extend the deadline. Carl Ice of BNSF recently announced that BNSF wouldn’t make the deadline. It’s hard to believe what’s true because I hear from crews that the PTC keeps failing, and when it does it literally shuts down the whole entire railroad (or subdivision).
Craig Townsend said:
I think its a big political move to get Congress to extend the deadline. Carl Ice of BNSF recently announced that BNSF wouldn’t make the deadline. It’s hard to believe what’s true because I hear from crews that the PTC keeps failing, and when it does it literally shuts down the whole entire railroad (or subdivision).
That’s what Mr Ice said in his letter to Senator Thune, Chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. Paraphrased, its new tech, fails often, brings trains to a complete stop for no reason, costing us a bunch to restart them.
The RRs are very unhappy about the whole situation. They are having this complex system imposed on them without any provisions for what happens if the technology simply doesn’t work in the time allowed. I suspect that they will work out their differences before it hits the fan.
All these deadlines about a wide range of things are just the administration trying to blackmail the Congress to accept a totally unaccenptable budget. Scare tactics and Threats and blackmail - business as usual?
Keep politics out of the discussion. The PTC implementation deadline has nothing to do with the current congress or administration.
Bob,
With all due respect and with your word being law, I would like to interject.
I agree about religion and politics being hot bed topics that are not wanted. Attacking a congress or a administration isn’t cool in such a diverse forum base… but Railroads are what this site is about and as highly regulated entities some politics has to creep in. . . at least in how government in general (not a particular administration or person) runs it.
Or we just don’t even allow the subject of regulation to even enter. I am just saying you can’t have a conversation on regulation without enticing political opinion. That doesn’t mean we should attack persons or beliefs. But open discussion on regulation can be and should be civil or not allowed at all if we can’t play nice (which we have proven over and over we can’t do).
I agree, but I was responding to the the wide-paintbrush blame on “the administration blackmailing congress…” It was not related to the subject at hand.
Gotcha my mistake. I apologize
This hasn’t anything to do with the budget issue, its about a very complex system being forced into being in a time-frame that realistically was flawed from the start. When RRs have had previous major technological changes legislated upon them the time factors involved were often measured in several years even decades to make the change over, this is being mandated in the period of a handful of years for a technology that’s still developing. This isn’t a hardware system they can buy order from a factory and bolt on, in a fact its almost like attempting to mandate that the entire country be equipped with fiber-optics and wi-fi, including every remote hamlet and burrow regardless of whether the providers had the capability to install it or there is enough actual material available to install.
I think Congress over-estimated how quickly this technology could be imposed on an infrastructure that in some places hasn’t changed much since WW2. 2008 Congress authorized implementation but standards were not published until 2010 most railroads needed years to plan design modify upgrade install test and certify the system and it has to work everywhere, that’s a very big ticket. Lets not forget they are also having to deal with incurred costs from Tier 3 and Tier 4 emissions standards upgrades during all this.
I still say the Administration is forcing the time limit to have it implemented in time to be a “presidential legacy” item. They’re using the government shut-down as blackmail for that end.
Andrew Moore said:
I still say the Administration is forcing the time limit to have it implemented in time to be a “presidential legacy” item. They’re using the government shut-down as blackmail for that end.
If you have a link to information that says this, Id be interested in reading about it. All Ive been able to find are the various articles about the latest GAO report on PTC. Otherwise its just unfounded political speculation and has no place here.
Ok, it may be this, or it may be that. But, beyond that, the problem is; what happens when the drop dead date gets here and the system still doesn’t work? PTC could prevent accidents, but if it doesn’t work, its going to cause problems that cost more (in dollars) then the accidents it would have prevented would cost. Besides, the largest of the most recent accidents haven’t been in the USA IIRC. So, is this just a solution in search of a problem?
David,
If Congress doesn’t extend the deadline, and the RR’s don’t complete PTC they are limited to where and what they can run over certain routes. From what I’ve been hearing from the grapevine is that PTC sucks badly (this is from engineers) and is basically causing the new hire engineers to learn to let the computer run the train, rather than learn how to run. In the past 5-10 years, some accidents could have been preventable with PTC in place (recall the Acela crash in PA a while back), but as Vic points out the technology is not off the shelf, and has been very difficult for the railroads to install. Now, theoretically, PTC should increase capacity, by closing the gap between trains, and making CTC all the more efficient. So I think that PTC is in the RR’s best interest if they can get installed and working correctly. That’s the key!
Tier 3 & Tier 4 locomotives shouldn’t be that ‘big’ of an issue, as this has been in the pipelines for years. Heck the NS has started extensive rebuild projects to bring 2nd generation diesels into Tier 1 & 2 compliance. So in the big scheme of things, I think Tier 3 & 4 standards are minor compared to PTC.
The other question with PTC is who is going to pay for it? Can a RR (think shortline that has limited funds) raise rates to pay for PTC, or do they just stop hauling hazardous materials? The Class I’s have the funds to pay for PTC, but it’s got lots of bugs. The problem I see is that PTC tries to run every train exactly the same, but you can’t. Each train reacts differently, so how does PTC take this into account?
Does PTC actually operate the train, or just monitor for certain parameters, and if outside of those, take some sort of action? Either way, what could possibly go wrong? (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-surprised.gif)
It doesn’t ‘run’ the train, but between PTC and trip optimizer the locomotive tells the engineer what throttle position you ‘should’ be in… Here’s an example.
Say you have a signal that signifies a approach medium (going through a turnout/crossing over to a different mainline), that states reduce speed to 35mph by the next signal (2 miles). When I ran, I would either throttle down slowly, or use air to drop the speed just before the turnout/signal.
With trip optimizer, I’ve been told (I never ran under it) that the computer will say “throttle down now” and if you don’t it does it for you. If you don’t respond within a certain amount of time, the loco uplinks a message to HQ (and the road foreman) that says engine XXXX is ‘violating’ the ‘best’ operating practice…Then when you tie up, the Road Foreman has a nasty gram for you, and you get disciplined for not being ‘fuel efficient’ or some other BS that violates some rule in the rulebook. With enough ‘violations’ you can get pulled from service, and ‘retrained’.
Now you add PTC which physically slows the train down by a certain point (say 1 mile before, but you know that you can make a set 1/2 mile and just be fine), the skill of running a locomotive goes out the window. Basically between PTC and trip optimizer you have the locomotive/computer telling the engineer how to run the train, instead of the engineer making his/her own decision.
I wish I could give more information, but this is what I’m reading between the lines when I talk with my former co-workers. They can’t say much publicly (cause the RR monitors social media), but when I’ve had private conversations with a few of them, the details are lets just say very interesting. Now add to this lack of skill needed to properly run and add engineers that only have 6 months to a 1 of seniority on the railroad to begin with, I think the railroads are setting themselves up for a major accident if PTC ever fails (computers never crash, right?). It’s times like this that I’m glad I don’t work for the railroad anymore…
So to answer your question, between PTC and trip optimizer the computer is basically running the train, and the engineer is simply responding to the commands. We used to joke that we where just ‘throttle jockeys’ and a trained monkey could do our job. Sadly I think the time has come that is statement is about 90% true. It kind of reminds me of the early days of NASA, and the way NASA treated the astronauts (read “The Right Stuff”) as human monkeys.
The train is running you, instead of you running the train.
Bob McCown said:
Andrew Moore said:
I still say the Administration is forcing the time limit to have it implemented in time to be a “presidential legacy” item. They’re using the government shut-down as blackmail for that end.
If you have a link to information that says this, Id be interested in reading about it. All Ive been able to find are the various articles about the latest GAO report on PTC. Otherwise its just unfounded political speculation and has no place here.
I’m actually interested in this discussion. I knew this would be a “hard thread to discuss from the beginning” considering the recent Amtrak crash close to me. I would like to see it press on.
David Russell said:
Bob McCown said:
Andrew Moore said:
I still say the Administration is forcing the time limit to have it implemented in time to be a “presidential legacy” item. They’re using the government shut-down as blackmail for that end.
If you have a link to information that says this, Id be interested in reading about it. All Ive been able to find are the various articles about the latest GAO report on PTC. Otherwise its just unfounded political speculation and has no place here.
I’m actually interested in this discussion. I knew this would be a “hard thread to discuss from the beginning” considering the recent Amtrak crash close to me. I would like to see it press on.
I do to. If we continue to keep it civil and factual I believe it can continue. Very educational. Thanks Craig for your knowledge. I wonder how similar this is to the turn of the century saftey requirements on positive breaking and couplers and what not. Seems like a old battle fought with new weapons. I am sure many of the RR were resistant to those govt interferences then as they are now to PTC.
Craig hit on one the serious problems, the computer controlling the train and not the judgment of the engineer. I forsee alot of foul ups liked stalling on grades when the computer orders a throttle down because from what I understand the systems doesn’t really take terrain and loads into consideration. Gonna be interesting.