LIRR says it nearly double sections covered by PTC safety tech in the past week

The portion of the Long Island Rail Road’s system protected by federally required safety technology, known as positive train control, has nearly doubled over the last week, LIRR officials said Saturday.

The LIRR’s latest activation of positive train control — from Patchogue to Montauk and from Ronkonkoma to Greenport — brings the total number of track miles using the technology from 112 to 220, or 72.5% of the LIRR’s 305 total miles of track, the railroad said.

The milestone brings the railroad considerably closer to meeting a congressional mandate to have positive train control, or PTC, fully in place by Dec. 31 or risk being hit with fines nearing $29,000 a day.

“This latest achievement shows that we are continuing to make steady and deliberate progress as we work toward implementing PTC systemwide by Dec. 31,” said LIRR president Phillip Eng. “We celebrate and applaud intermediate milestones like this, but everyone on the team knows we can’t let up for one moment until we have achieved full systemwide operation by the deadline.”  

Ordered by Congress in 2008 after a California train crash, PTC uses communication technology installed on trains and along tracks to prevent rail collisions by automatically slowing down or halting trains that violate signals.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s $1 billion effort to install PTC on the LIRR and Metro-North has been plagued with complications and delays. News surfaced last month of problems getting the PTC systems of the LIRR and Amtrak to work together. The software needed to fix the issue is not expected to be in place until July 2021, seven months past the federal deadline.

Despite the issue and other unresolved dilemmas, the Federal Railroad Administration did not include the LIRR in a list released last month of railroads at risk of missing the federal deadline. The federal government already has twice granted the LIRR, and other railroads, extensions from the original 2015 deadline.

The LIRR’s latest progress means that PTC is now up and running on most lines, including its Port Washington, Long Beach, Hempstead, Far Rockaway, West Hempstead, Oyster Bay and Central branches, and from Hicksville to Port Jefferson.  In comparison, in October, PTC was operational on only a portion of the Hempstead Branch.

Robert Gallamore, a Delaware-based railroad consultant and PTC expert, called the LIRR’s recent progress “really remarkable.”

“My first reaction is good for them,” Gallamore said. “After so much delay and so many different reasons for not accomplishing the goal, this is really quite encouraging.”

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.