Major rail safety technology installed before deadline

— The railroad industry has installed an automatic braking system on nearly 58,000 miles of track where it is required ahead of a yearend deadline, federal regulators said Tuesday. Federal Railroad Administration chief Ronald Batory said railroads worked together over the past 12 years to develop and install the long-awaited technology known as positive train control, or PTC. The National Transportation Safety Board has said more than 150 train crashes since 1969 could have been prevented by positive train control, which was required in 2008 after a commuter train collided head-on with a freight train near Los Angeles, killing 25 and injuring more than 100. Bob Chipkevich, who oversaw railroad crash investigations for several years at the NTSB, said positive train control is a significant safety improvement for the industry, particularly in areas where commuter trains operate and where hazardous gases are transported, but added that it could have been done years earlier and it is still not required on all tracks nationwide. “It is a disappointment that it has taken so long.” Railroad analyst Tony Hatch said the industry had to make sure each railroad’s system would work with those installed by other railroads because trains hauling people and goods often travel across several different railroads’ tracks.