The New Jersey commuter train that smashed into the Hoboken station T♛hursday wasn’t equipped with a GPS-based safety technology that could have prevented the disaster.
The locomotive lacked positive train control, an automatic braking technology that can override train operators to stop or slow down trains that 🌼are travel🧜ing too fast.
It’s been called “the single most important rail- safety dev💞eꩵlopment in more than a century” by the Federal Railroad Administration.
All trains were initial🥀ly supposed to be outfitted with PTC by Dec. 31, 2015 — but operators were given a three-year extension last year after telling the House Transportation Committee they couldn’t get the work done in time.
The Department of Transportation can also extend tha🤡t deadline to individual railroads by two more years if they request the extra time.
New Jersey Transit, which serves an average of 30♏8,000 passengers during the week, hasn’t equipped any of its 440 loc♓omotives with the technology, a recent report shows.
National Transportation Safety Board officials have said PTC could have prevented scores of accidents — including a 2013 Metro-North train crash in The Bronx that killed four people. More recently, the board said the technology could have saved lives in the 2015 Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia, wh𓃲ich killed eight people.
“It could have prevented those accidents,” said Rich Barone, vice presiden🍎t for transportation at the watchdog Regional Plan Association.
“It is something that should be installed everywhere, but there isn’t the money 𓆏and the resources to do it.”
As of June 2016, 73 percent of freight railroads across the co𓄧untry had installed PTC on their trains, but only 46 percent of passenger trains are equippe☂d with the technology, according to an FRA report.
The MTA is in the process of installing the technology on its trains, and it has promised that it will be up and running by 2ꦬ018.