> FEDERAL RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION GIVES TESTIMONY AT SENATE HEARING


And here's UP's Dennis Duffy's testimony:



Testimony of
Dennis J. Duffy
Executive Vice President - Operations
Union Pacific Corporation
1400 Douglas Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68179

September 23, 2008

Senate Member Briefing
Metrolink Accident – September 12, 2008

Senator Boxer and members of the panel, my name is Dennis J. Duffy. I am Executive Vice President, Operations, for Union Pacific Railroad Company, headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. I have held this position since September 1998, and I exercise overall responsibility for Union Pacific’s operations, which spans the western two-thirds of the United States. These responsibilities include movement of more than 3,000 trains daily and management and maintenance of locomotives, freight cars, tracks, train dispatching, and crew calling.

I appreciate the opportunity to provide testimony about one of the worst collisions in recent railroad history, which occurred on Friday afternoon about ten days ago near Chatsworth, California. The three Union Pacific employees who were aboard the Union Pacific train will thankfully recover, but our hearts go out to the many families who lost loved ones and the many passengers who were injured. We also are grateful to the hundreds of fire, police, rescue, and medical personnel who responded quickly, bravely, and effectively to this incident. Local and state elected officials and agencies also took quick and decisive action.

The National Transportation Safety Board has ordered Union Pacific not to discuss the accident and to refer all requests for information to the NTSB, and we are complying with that directive. I can say that all of the information provided to the public by the NTSB is fully consistent with the facts we have developed, and we have found nothing inconsistent with the NTSB’s reports.

We have been asked why we have not installed Positive Train Control, or “PTC,” on our system. The answer is that technology is only now evolving to the point where it may be able to manage the complex task of providing backup, fail-safe control for a wide range of railroad operations, including today’s heavy freight trains that can weigh up to 20,000 tons and extend to almost two miles. Existing train control systems in use today are much simpler and cannot ensure control of a complex mix of passenger and freight operations.

Union Pacific has been an industry leader in developing PTC. We have diligently been working on this project since 1994 and have invested millions of dollars. In 1994, Union Pacific and the then Burlington Northern Railroad, initiated a positive train separation project in the Pacific Northwest from the Canadian border south to Portland and then east to Hinkle in eastern Oregon. We completed testing on this project in 1998, and concluded we could not deploy the system. The major problems were that the system could not reliably locate trains (a key requirement of any PTC system) and the predictive braking features did not produce acceptable braking on long freight trains.

However, in 1999, this work was used to jump start the most ambitious PTC experiment in recent years. This project, called the North American Joint Positive Train Control Program (NAJPTC), was on one of our lines in Illinois and involved the entire freight rail industry, the FRA, the Illinois Department of Transportation, and Amtrak. This project was designed to develop a PTC system for high speed passenger trains operating with freight trains. While important strides were made, this project was also unsuccessful. The systems and computer programs proved to be too challenging, and it was terminated in 2006.

Today, building on the work already done and relying on new technological advancements, Union Pacific is optimistic that the new generation of PTC will be successful, although we cannot yet be certain. There are three main challenges. One is ensuring we have enough radio spectrum, as PTC takes up huge amounts of bandwidth. If passenger operations are going to have PTC, they too will have to acquire spectrum. The second challenge is completing the software programs that set the algorithms to accurately predict the stopping distances of disparate trains. The computer will have to know where the train is, know what kind of slope and curves it is on, what kind of weather conditions are present, how long the train is, and how much it weighs. All these factors have to be calculated so that the train stops in a safe, efficient manner. We don’t want the train to derail if the computer applies the brakes too quickly or harshly, and we don’t want the train to stop too soon and cause undue congestion on the system, which has its own safety ramifications. The third challenge is making sure the system is interoperable. By that I mean it must work across railroads – both freight and passenger. In fact, fully 40% of all traffic Union Pacific handles is exchanged with another railroad. That is why it is imperative that these systems work across railroads.

Our railroad is committed to PTC and is investing heavily in new communications capability, technology, and equipment to test PTC. In fact, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern just recently spent $27 million to purchase radio spectrum in anticipation of installing PTC. UP’s plan is to conduct tests on two rail segments in 2009. If the technology is successful, we will apply promptly for FRA approval and begin installation systemwide as soon as we get FRA’s approval. We are prepared to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in this technology, once it is proven.

To prevent accidents such as the one near Chatsworth, however, commuter agencies must make their own PTC investments, and those investments must be consistent with the systems on freight railroads. PTC requires extensive investment in the rail line, as well as installation of computerized equipment on each locomotive. The line through Chatsworth is controlled, maintained, and dispatched by Metrolink and today is not equipped for PTC operation.

The commuter agencies must install track-side technology on their lines and locomotive technology on their locomotives. There is some question in my mind whether the locomotives in use on some commuter lines are modern enough to handle PTC. PTC requires state-of-the-art technology, and the equipment in some of the older locomotives is not conducive to integrating this technology. As a result, some commuter agencies and most smaller railroads may need to acquire new locomotives.

Union Pacific is committed to safety as its highest priority. We look forward to aggressively working with you to reduce the risk of another Chatsworth disaster. This concludes my testimony, and I would be happy to answer any questions.