Political Quotes

“I wish to state my opposition to S. 650 in its current form. This legislation would extend the deadline for installation of Positive Train Control, PTC, by 5 years. I cannot agree with allowing such an extension without addressing so many other critical rail safety matters. As Joe Boardman, the head of Amtrak and former FRA Administrator has said, ``PTC is the most important rail safety advancement of our time.'' The need for this technology was first brought to our attention over 45 years ago, sparked by a head-on train collision in Darien, CT in 1969. There have been many other horrible crashes since, and within the past decade alone, the National Transportation Safety Board has completed more than two dozen train accident investigations that took 65 lives and injured over 1,100 people--all of this, according to the NTSB, could have been prevented by PTC. One of those horrific crashes occurred in 2008 in Southern California, and 25 lives were lost. PTC could have saved those lives. Accordingly, soon after that tragedy, Congress took real, thoughtful, substantive action and gave railroads more than 7 years to implement the life-saving technology of PTC. Since then, there have been other major accidents, such as the horrific crash of a Metro-North train in the Bronx in 2013 in which four lives were lost. Metro-North did not have PTC, and the NTSB has said the technology could have prevented those four deaths. Now, as we near the end of the 7 years, S.…”