The US 42 railway operators reported a steady PTC progress during the Second Quarter of 2019 PTC, the Federal Railroad Administration announced.
As of June 30, PTC systems were in operation on approximately 50,300, or 87% of the nearly 58,000 route miles required to be equipped. This reflects a 4% increase since Quarter 1 of 2019. By December 2020, the railway companies must complete their PTC systems’ implementation.
The host commuter operators report that as of June 2019, they were operating their PTC systems in revenue service demonstration (RSD), a type of required advanced field testing, on approximately 698 route miles and in revenue service on 443 route miles, which, in total, is 37% of the host commuter operators’ 3,111 required route miles and a 12% increase since Quarter 1 of 2019.
Class I rail freight operators report that PTC systems are in operation on approximately 91% of their required main lines as of June 2019, representing a 4% increase since Quarter 1. As a host company, Amtrak reports that approximately 899 its 901 (99.8%) required route miles are governed by a PTC system. In addition, Amtrak informed FRA that its operations are currently governed by a PTC system on at least 16,032 of the 19,119 route miles (84%) where Amtrak operates as a tenant railway on other operators’ PTC-equipped main lines.
All railway operators have committed to fully implementing PTC systems on the required main lines by December 31, 2020, if not earlier.
Since 2008, through FRA, the U.S. Department has awarded nearly USD 2.6 billion in grant funding and loan financing to support operators’ implementation of PTC systems, which amounts to nearly 18% of the industry’s estimates for initial PTC system implementation costs.
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