Most U.S. railroads will miss Dec. 31 Positive Train Control deadline, Federal Railroad Administration says

Most railroads in the United States will miss the Dec. 31 positive train control (PTC) implementation deadline, according to a report released on Friday by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).

Mandated by the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, the PTC deadline was established by Congress in 2008. “After seven years and significant assistance from FRA, most railroads will miss the Dec. 31, 2015 positive train control implementation deadline,” the railroad administration said in the report.

The Association of American Railroads projects that only 39% of locomotives will be fully equipped with PTC by the end of the year.

“Positive Train Control is the most significant advancement in rail safety technology in more than a century. Simply put: it prevents accidents and saves lives,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement. “We will continue to do everything in our power to help railroads install this technology.”

There has been some successful, but limited, deployment of PTC systems in the United States, the report noted. For example, Amtrak has deployed the Incremental Train Control System on approximately 60 route miles between Chicago and Detroit.

The company reported in May that it would install inward-facing video cameras in ACS-64 locomotives in service on the Northeast Corridor by year-end following a passenger train derailment in Philadelphia that killed eight people. As of June 9, Amtrak said that 85% of locomotives have been equipped with PTC, including about 97% of locomotives for the Northeast Corridor. “The most successful and widely deployed PTC system is the Amtrak Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement System (ACSES) currently along certain portions of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor,” the report said.

Related: Positive train control might have prevented fatal Philadelphia passenger rail crash: Safety board

In addition, BNSF Railway Company has deployed the Electronic Train Management System on a “limited number of pilot territories for revenue test and demonstration purposes,” according to the report.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) began calling for train control systems like PTC in 1969, and FRA was involved in establishing PTC standards with stakeholders for more than a decade before the 2008 mandate. Three years before Congress passed the PTC mandate, the administration issued its final rule that established uniform PTC standards for railroads willing to voluntarily install the technology.

PTC prevents train-to-train collisions, over-speed derailments, incursions into established work zone limits and a train going to the wrong track because a switch was left in the wrong position, the statement explained.

In 2008, Congress passed the Rail Safety Improvement Act (RSIA), requiring all Class I railroads transporting poisonous-by-inhalation or toxic-by-inhalation hazardous materials and all railroads providing passenger service to implement PTC by Dec. 31.