The two big freight railroads in California pledged this week to voluntarily install a system to prevent the kind of head-on train collision that killed 25 people in Chatsworth last month. At an informational hearing Wednesday on the Metrolink crash, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she received assurances this week from officials at both Union Pacific Railroad and BNSF Railway Co. that the companies intend to install technology called “positive train control” by 2012 reports the Ventura County Star.

 

Positive train control uses satellite-tracking devices to monitor the speed and location of trains and can automatically stop trains that bypass signals, exceed speed limits or head toward an obstacle on the tracks.

 

The pledges come after Congress passed a new rail safety law that would mandate the technology by 2015. President Bush said he intends to sign the bill.

 

Carl Ice, BNSF’s executive vice president and chief operations officer, said the company has been working on a system since 2003.

 

“We will be able to accelerate that plan to meet the statutory deadline and, if financing is available, may be able to implement PTC sooner in specific parts of our system, such as those where rail commuter service operates,” Ice said in a statement Wednesday.

 

Since the Sept. 12 accident in which a Metrolink commuter train heading to Ventura County smashed head-on into a Union Pacific freight train after the Metrolink engineer failed to heed yellow and red signal lights, Feinstein has been strongly critical of the lack of modern safety devices on America’s rail lines.

 

Read it here: Railroad safety system pledged