On the recordOctober 27, 2015
I thank Chairman Shuster, Ranking Member DeFazio, and Ranking Member Capuano for working with us to develop this important piece of legislation. Mr. Speaker, this legislation would ensure that railroads actually implement positive train control. We need to do it as quickly as possible and as safely as possible for the safety of our country. As chairman of the Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee, we have been monitoring the railroads' progress in implementing PTC, positive train control, including holding a hearing in June that brought stakeholders in from across the country so as to understand exactly what the impacts are. We have known for some time that most railroads simply won't be done with positive train control implementation by the end of this year. Now, several different things went into the delays of this, one of which is the FCC, where you have two government agencies not working together to get the tens of thousands of poles permitted so that they could actually have the communication interface. PTC is a huge undertaking, requiring 38,000 wayside interfaces be installed along 60,000 miles of track. In addition, 18,000 locomotives need to be upgraded and 12,000 signals need to be replaced. All of these elements need to be seamlessly communicated across different railroads.…
