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Amtrak Says Shortfalls and Rules Delayed Its Safety System

Amtrak is ahead of most railroads in installing automatic speed control systems.Credit...Mark Makela for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Amtrak train that derailed in Philadelphia on Tuesday night was equipped with an automatic speed control system that officials say could have prevented the wreck, which killed eight passengers and injured hundreds. But the system, which was tantalizingly close to being operational, was delayed by budgetary shortfalls, technical hurdles and bureaucratic rules, officials said Thursday.

In 2008, Congress ordered the installation of what are known as positive train control systems, which can detect an out-of-control, speeding train and automatically slow it down. But because lawmakers failed to provide the railroads access to the wireless frequencies required to make the system work, Amtrak was forced to negotiate for airwaves owned by private companies that are often used in mobile broadband.

Officials said Amtrak had made installation of the congressionally mandated safety system a priority and was ahead of most other railroads around the country.

But the railroad struggled for four years to buy the rights to airwaves in the Northeast Corridor that would have allowed them to turn the system on.

“The transponders were on the tracks,” said one person who attended a Thursday morning briefing for congressional staff members. “But they also said they weren’t operational, because of this ongoing spectrum issue.”

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Joseph Boardman, near left, Amtrak’s chief executive, appeared with Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia and spoke with reporters on Thursday.Credit...Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Despite the delays, the system may have been just months from being operational when Northeast Regional Train No. 188 careered into a sharp curve at over 100 miles per hour, twice the posted speed, and hurtled off the tracks Tuesday night. The Federal Communications Commission had approved Amtrak’s application for the purchase of wireless spectrum from an entity called Skybridge Spectrum Foundation on March 5, clearing the way for final tests on the system, a spokeswoman for the commission said.

If the system had been operational, “there wouldn’t have been this accident,” said Representative Robert A. Brady, Democrat of Pennsylvania.

Since the crash, Amtrak has come under sharp questioning about why positive train control was not already in operation. Addressing those concerns in a news conference Thursday, Joseph H. Boardman, Amtrak’s chief executive, confirmed that the system was close to the testing phase, adding that he expected that the technology would be operational throughout the Northeast Corridor by the end of the year.

“We’re very close to being able to cut it in,” Mr. Boardman said. “We’ve got to do testing on MHz radios. We will complete this by the end of the year.”

Questions about the technology surfaced just hours after the crash when Robert L. Sumwalt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, said positive train control would have prevented the accident. The safety board said the train had been traveling at 106 miles per hour. On Thursday, the board said the train had accelerated rapidly just before it hit the turn.

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Philadelphia Mayor Confirms Crash Toll

Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia said Thursday that the remains of an eighth victim of the Amtrak derailment had been found and that all passengers had been accounted for.

SOUNDBITE (English) Mayor Michael Nutter, (D) Philadelphia: “With the recovery and the identification this morning, as this news conference was taking place I just received that final confirmation. We believe that we have now accounted for all 243 individuals we believe were on Amtrak train #188 on Tuesday night. All the individuals we believe we were looking for or were trying to identify all now have been accounted for. Unfortunately again, we must now report that we have confirmed 8 deceased from this horrible tragedy. 8 deceased from this horrible tragedy. But, all individuals that we had any reason to believe were on that train have now been accounted for and we know their whereabouts completely.”

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Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia said Thursday that the remains of an eighth victim of the Amtrak derailment had been found and that all passengers had been accounted for.CreditCredit...Mel Evans/Associated Press

Positive train control refers to a system of software and hardware technology, including radio transponders, antennas, locomotive and track equipment, that communicate real-time information about train speed and location to engineers and train dispatchers.

The technology is supposed to prevent accidents like head-on collisions or derailments caused by excessive speed by alerting operators about a potential danger, such as an object on the tracks or dangerous curve, and stopping the train automatically if needed.

The crash spotlighted other possible shortcomings in Amtrak’s safety system, officials said. The stretch of track where Train 188 crashed heading north was equipped with an older automatic braking system, but only on the southbound side, an official briefed on the investigation said. Some senior Amtrak officials did not become aware that the braking system had not been installed on the northbound side until after the train derailed.

A spokeswoman for the railroad said Thursday that the decision not to install the system on the northbound stretch of track had been made in the 1990s and reflected the maximum allowable speeds in each direction. Trains approaching Philadelphia from New York can travel as fast as 110 miles per hour, Amtrak said, and face a steeper decrease in allowable speed heading into the curve than trains traveling from Philadelphia toward New York.

In addition, Train 188 was equipped with a second safety system designed to ring buzzers and bells in the engine’s cabin if the engineer does not touch the steering panel for a short period, people briefed on the investigation said. The system, which is intended to prevent crashes when engineers doze off or become distracted, is supposed to stop the train automatically if the engineer does not touch the steering panel after the alarms have sounded.

But officials did not explain in the congressional briefing whether the buzzers were operational on Train No. 188 or why they would not have stopped the train before the accident, according to two people who attended.

Still, several federal officials and safety experts defended Amtrak’s record. Many pointed out that the railroads was one of the few in the United States that were on schedule to meet a federal deadline to have positive train control technology operational before the end of the year.

“Amtrak has been in a leadership role on this,” said Mark Rosenker, a former chairman of the safety board. “They were talking about positive train control when I was at the board.”

Railroads other than Amtrak, particularly freight railroads, have been much slower to implement these systems, citing the technological challenges, shortages in equipment and the availability of radio spectrum, among other issues.

“The sad irony in this accident is that Amtrak is further along than almost anybody in reaching their deployment of positive train control,” said Joseph C. Szabo, a former administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration. “They have been very steady and very committed. So much has been done.”

Edward R. Hamberger, chief executive of the Association of American Railroads, said railroads would not complete the installation of all systems for positive train control until the end of 2018. After that, he estimated, it will take about two years to test that all components of the system work together correctly.

To date, he said, railroads have installed the technology on about 8,200 miles of tracks, out of 60,000 miles where the technology is federally required. At the end of last year, about 15 percent of locomotives were fully equipped, and railroads had installed about 56 percent of the track systems.

Railroad officials said Thursday that installation of the safety system on tracks across the country was also hampered for more than a year by longstanding F.C.C. rules that required environmental and preservation reviews before the safety system’s antennas could be installed in historic areas or near tribal lands.

But officials at the F.C.C. said those reviews, which were relaxed at the behest of members of Congress in 2014, were not specifically responsible for Amtrak delays along the largely urban Northeast Corridor because new antennas were not required in that region.

Kim Hart, a spokeswoman for the commission, said the delays in approving installation of the antennas for the safety system are now largely gone. She said new procedures allow the commission to accept applications for up to 1,400 antennas from railroad companies every two weeks,

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House Committee Meets on Rail Safety

Representatives Jeff Denham and Bill Shuster urged rail safety reform on Wednesday in a Transportation Committee meeting the day after a deadly Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia.

Wide of hearing being called into order, SOUNDBITE (English) Rep. Jeff Denham (R) California: “It’s with a heavy heart we are given the notice of this tragic accident in Philadelphia last night we saw something horrific that was unimaginable that we would never expect to see on our passenger rail. We’ve held several hearings now on rail safety and that will be the question this committee continues to follow up on and ask as well.” SOUNDBITE (English) Rep. Bill Shuster (R) Pennsylvania, Committee Chairman: “I’ve heard some politicians already come out and say if we would’ve spent more money maybe that’s the case but I think we really need to take a seriously look at that and first of all figure out what happened up there because the Northeast corridor is extremely important to the nation. So it’s critical we find out exactly what happened up there and make sure that we take the appropriate response to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

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Representatives Jeff Denham and Bill Shuster urged rail safety reform on Wednesday in a Transportation Committee meeting the day after a deadly Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia.CreditCredit...Associated Press

The commission also defended its handling of Amtrak’s petition to acquire wireless frequencies, asserting that it had taken Amtrak three years to negotiate the purchase and that the commission had approved the deal within days.

Money has also been an issue in implementing positive train control.

The Federal Railroad Administration has calculated the cost of the system at $52,000 per mile of track. The railroads have put a total price tag of more than $9 billion on the system and said they have spent $5.2 billion so far. One of the biggest problems is that the system needs to be interoperable, meaning that communication is necessary between equipment used by different railroads, even if the railroads use different types of equipment.

The Federal Railroad Administration twice sought extra funding from Congress to finance the technology for Amtrak and other commuter rails. A first request for $825 million was ignored. A second request for extra funding was made this year for the 2016 budget as part of the Department of Transportation’s Grow America budget.

“Clearly, one of the hurdles that Amtrak has and the commuter rail industry has is that this is very expensive technology,” Mr. Szabo said. “It was never funded. The failure to invest in Amtrak’s capital program clearly has been a hindrance in more timely deployment. The way to make public rail a priority would be with public funding.”

On Capitol Hill, House Speaker John A. Boehner angrily rejected a suggestion that Republican funding decisions contributed to the accident.

“That’s a stupid question,” he snapped at a reporter. “Adequate funds were there, no money’s been cut from rail safety, and the House passed a bill earlier this spring to reauthorize Amtrak and authorize a lot of these programs.”

Michael D. Shear reported from Washington and Jad Mouawad from New York; Matt Flegenheimer contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Hurdles Stalled Safety System, Railroad Says. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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