[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 147 (Tuesday, September 16, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8858-S8859]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mrs. FEINSTEIN (for herself and Mrs. Boxer):
  S. 3493. A bill to require rail carriers to develop positive rail 
control system plans for improving railroad safety and to increase the 
civil penalties for railroad safety violations; to the Committee on 
Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I make these remarks on behalf of my 
friend and colleague, Senator Boxer. She and I are cosponsoring 
legislation, which I will send to the desk at the end of my remarks.
  On Friday, at 4:30 p.m., a Union Pacific freight train and a 
Metrolink commuter train, loaded with 225 commuters, leaving Los 
Angeles and traveling north through the San Fernando Valley, in the 
Chatsworth area, collided on a single track. The collision took place 
at about 40 miles an hour for each train. The engine of the Metrolink 
train was rammed two-thirds through the first car of the Metrolink 
train. Here it is. Here is the Union Pacific engine and this mess is 
the Metrolink engine and it rammed two-thirds through the first car. 
Thus far, 26 people are dead. Some were dismembered by the crash, some 
bodies had to be removed in a dismembered state from the train. There 
are 138 people in the hospital, 40 of them in critical condition, and 
more deaths could well take place.
  This accident happened because of a resistance in the railroad 
community in America to utilizing existing technology to produce a 
fail-safe control of trains to avoid colliding with each other and to 
avoid one train from crashing into the rear of another. Both of these 
have happened in the past. Yet today there is no requirement for a safe 
control of track and train.
  The House has passed a bill reauthorizing the Federal Railroad 
Administration. The Senate has passed a bill reauthorizing the Federal 
Railroad Administration. They both have provisions, although they are 
different, for safe train control in these bills. But nothing has 
happened. The bills have not been conferenced. This must stop.
  Let me point out for a minute how positive train control works. Every 
train's position is tracked through global positioning, which is new 
technology that can monitor its location and speed. These systems 
constantly watch for excessive speed, improperly aligned switches, 
whether trains are on the wrong track, unauthorized train movements, 
and whether trains have missed signals to slow or stop. Each train also 
has equipment on board that can take over from the engineer if the 
train doesn't comply with the safety signals. The system will override 
the engineer and automatically put on the brakes. These systems exist 
and are in use today. They are in place in the Chicago-Detroit corridor 
and in the Northeast corridor. But the railroad industry resists them.
  I believe rail in America has a very real future. California believes 
it has a very real future. As a matter of fact, in 5 weeks, California 
has on the ballot a $10 billion bond issue to create a high-speed rail 
spine down the center of California that runs from Sacramento all the 
way down to Los Angeles. Now, people aren't going to ride these trains 
unless they know they are safe, and we have an obligation, I believe, 
to provide that safety.
  I am sorry to have to say this, but southern California has the most 
high-risk track in America. The majority of Metrolink's 388 miles of 
track, which crosses six counties, believe it or not, is shared with 
freight trains. This is untenable.
  Let me ask a question: How can you put commuter trains, passenger 
trains, on the same track as freight trains going in opposite 
directions with nothing more than a couple of signals that can be 
missed, and have been missed, to avert disaster?
  Again, over the years, the railroad resisted, saying these systems 
are too expensive. Well, how expensive is the loss of human life? The 
cost of any system doesn't come close to the cost of the lives that 
were lost this past Friday and that will likely be lost in the future.
  To date, positive train control has been put to use only in limited 
areas, including, as I said, parts of the Northeast and Chicago and 
Detroit. Nine railroads in at least 16 States have these positive 
control projects, but California is not one of them. Why, I ask. It is 
critical, particularly when--given the element of human error, which we 
may well see in this instance--it may well have been a cell phone that 
was in use at the time of the accident by the engineer.
  Let me tell you what sort of hours this engineer works. He works 5 
days a week, and it is an 11-hour day. It is a split shift of 15 hours. 
Let me explain. He is due at work at 6 in the morning. He works until 
late morning, and then he has 4 hours off but returns to work from 3 
p.m. to 9 p.m. That is an 11-hour day in an engine on high alert in 
major populated areas. He performs a critical function, and he does it 
on an 11-hour workday on a split shift. I think that is untenable.
  The NTSB, the National Transportation Safety Board, has pushed again 
and again for positive train control systems, particularly after a 
deadly crash in my own State in Orange County in 2002. Three people 
died and two hundred sixty were injured. In the Orange County crash, 
the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that a Burlington 
Northern engineer and a conductor were talking to each other. They 
failed to see a yellow warning light telling them to slow down. I think 
that same thing has happened again. Their freight train slammed into a 
Metrolink commuter train that had stopped on the same track.
  Now, we know that positive, or safe, train control would prevent 40 
to 60 accidents a year, 7 fatalities, and 55 injuries a year. So why 
hasn't it been put in place? I actually believe it is negligence, and I 
will even go as far to say I believe it is criminal negligence not to 
do so.

[[Page S8859]]

  The report also concluded that positive train control could have 
prevented a fatal collision in Graniteville, SC, in 2005. In this 
accident, a rail employee failed to properly align a track switch. As a 
result, several cars derailed, deadly chlorine gases escaped, and nine 
people died.
  Cost is used as the reason not to do this, but I ask: How can we 
afford not to do it, whatever the cost? How many accidents does it 
take? How many deaths does it take? How many injuries does it take? 
Experts estimate that the cost is about $2.3 billion to install safe, 
technological train controls on 100,000 miles of track around the 
United States--high priority track.
  Today, my colleague, Senator Boxer, and I are introducing legislation 
which takes the strongest parts of the House and Senate bills and beefs 
them up. This legislation would require positive safe train controls 
for major freight and passenger lines. By 2012, areas declared as high 
risk by the Department of Transportation must run with positive train 
control systems. Railroads would be required to develop plans to 
implement these controls within 1 year of enactment of the legislation. 
These plans must be submitted to the Secretary of Transportation also 
within 1 year of enactment. It sets a deadline of December 31, 2014, 
for safe rail control to be in place on all major freight and passenger 
lines in America. It would be mandatory, and it would require penalties 
for noncompliance, with fines of up to $100,000 per violation.
  Passenger rail will not succeed in this country unless public safety 
is guaranteed. Again, on Friday, these trains hit at 40 miles per hour. 
What happens when trains pile into each other at 120 miles per hour?
  I have asked the majority leader to include this in the continuing 
resolution. I don't know whether he will--I think it is a remote 
possibility--but I do believe we need to get this moving right now.
  Once again, look at this. When we know there is global positioning 
that can be in place to shut down the freight train and the passenger 
train before they run into each other and we do nothing about it, then 
I believe this body is also culpable and negligent.
  Mr. President, if I might, I send this legislation to the desk with a 
plea that it be enacted right away, with a plea that we get the 
planning moving, with a plea that we get 100,000 miles of high-priority 
track equipped with global positioning so this never again can happen 
in a high-priority passenger-freight train area where the trains are 
traveling on the same track. If we don't do it, it is going to happen 
again.
                                 ______