Metro Magazine, September/October 2015
Quality Safety Innovation For over 50 years Weve Got You Covered will enforce the Dec 31 2015 federally mandated PTC deadline During a Congressional Subcommittee hearing FRA Acting Administrator Sarah Feinberg outlined the following penalty guidelines Starting Jan 1 2016 FRA will impose penalties on railroads that have not fully implemented PTC Penalties may be assessed per violation per day and may be raised or lowered depending on mitigating or aggravating factors The total amount of penalty each railroad faces will depend upon the amount of implementation progress the railroad has made These fines and civil penalties built into the regulation can set a commuter railroad back as much as 25000 a day Potential violations outlined in the regulations include a fine of 15000 to 25000 for failure to equip locomotives Some of those fines can even be applied to individuals says APTAs Tynan An individual safety officer who would have to certify that the train is full safety equipped may not want to do that if he she could be subject to a 25000 fine Additionally he says there is concern about whether or not railroads can operate after the deadline An example of a worst case scenario come Jan 1 would be if a freight railroad makes a determination that commuter rail service operating on the freight railroads tracks cannot continue he explains Another scenario would be that the commuter railroad itself determines that it cannot operate without having PTC fully implemented Our commuter railroads are very concerned about the approaching deadline Tynan says They have been looking at the regulations and their liability insurance to see what their obligations are 41 SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2015 mETRO mAGAZINE In mid June Southern Calif s Metrolink launched PTC in a Revenue Service Demonstration across the entire 341 mile network the agency owns
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