NBC Miami: TriRail, Brightline Risk Missing Deadline for Train Safety System

By: Tony Pipitone, NBC Miami

The Federal Railroad Administration is warning two South Florida commuter railroads they are at risk of missing a mandated deadline to install a critical safety system onto their trains.

Both Brightline and TriRail were informed last month that they appear to be falling behind schedule to fully implement a technology called “positive train control” by the end of the year.

In 2008, Congress gave railroads until 2015 to install the technology, which overrides humans to correct their errors before trains can derail, collide with other trains or work crews, or steer onto the wrong tracks.

But railroads protested and the deadline was moved to Dec. 31, 2018.

Now some railroads are proposing substitute systems to appease the FRA, which they could later ask to extend the deadline to Dec. 31, 2020.

The National Transportation Safety Board estimates hundreds of lives lost in derailments, collisions and accidents would have been saved over decades had PTC been in use…