[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 17 (Thursday, January 28, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E72]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 IN RECOGNITION OF THE NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD'S WORK TO 
                    IMPLEMENT POSITIVE TRAIN CONTROL

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. PETER A. DeFAZIO

                               of oregon

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, January 28, 2021

  Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I am proud to recognize the National 
Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for their work, which spans five 
decades, to implement positive train control, also known as PTC.
  December 31, 2020, was a significant day for railroad safety as all 
41 freight and passenger railroads required to meet the deadline set by 
Congress to implement PTC met the mandate. This life-saving technology 
will prevent train-to-train collisions, overspeed derailments, 
incursions into established work zones, and the movement of a train 
through a switch left in the wrong position.
  The path to full implementation of PTC was long and challenging, and 
had it not been for the NTSB's persistence and partnership with 
Congress, in particular the Committee on Transportation and 
Infrastructure, PTC may never have happened.
  The NTSB's work on PTC began on August 20, 1969, when two Penn 
Central commuter trains collided head-on near Darien, Connecticut, 
killing three crewmembers and a passenger and injuring roughly 43 
others. After conducting an extensive investigation, the NTSB issued 
its first PTC-related recommendation.
  Over the next five decades, the NTSB investigated 154 more PTC-
preventable accidents that tragically took the lives of 305 people and 
injured 6,885 others. Several of those tragedies gained the public's 
attention and changed the conversation around PTC, including collisions 
in Chase, Maryland, in 1987, Boston, Massachusetts, in 1990, Silver 
Spring, Maryland, in 1996, Placentia, California, in 2002, Macdona, 
Texas, in 2005, Graniteville, South Carolina, in 2005, and Chatsworth, 
California, in 2008.
  In 2007 and 2008, the House and Senate were negotiating legislation 
that would require PTC implementation, the Rail Safety Improvement Act 
of 2008 (RSIA). The tragedy in Chatsworth pushed Congress to act and 
brought about final passage of RSIA. But as railroads worked to 
implement PTC after the mandate, the NTSB continued to investigate 
accidents that could have been prevented had the technology been in 
place. These include the derailment of Amtrak 188 in Philadelphia, 
Pennsylvania, in 2015, which killed 8 passengers and injured 185 
others, and the overspeed derailment in DuPont, Washington, in 2017, 
which killed 3 passengers and injured 57 passengers and crewmembers.
  Throughout these tragedies, the NTSB pressed on for PTC. The agency 
believed PTC was so important that it included the issue on its very 
first Most Wanted List of transportation safety improvements in 1990, 
and it has remained a key focus in their advocacy efforts.
  On December 18, 2020--12 years after PTC was mandated--the last 
railroad required to implement PTC, New Jersey Transit, announced that 
it had fully implemented the safety technology, which meant that all 41 
railroads had fully implemented PTC two weeks short of the deadline: a 
tremendous accomplishment.
  Without the tireless advocacy of the NTSB over the last 50 years, we 
may not have seen the day PTC was fully implemented. I commend all 
those from the NTSB who fought tirelessly to finally achieve fully 
implemented positive train control. Their work will save lives.

                          ____________________