NEW YORK – The Spuyten Duyvil derailment of a Metro-North commuter train four years ago that killed seven and injured dozens was blamed primarily on speed. Both New York Senators, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, have recently stepped up calls for Positive Train Control, which, advocates say, would have overridden the engineer’s control of the train and slowed it down as it approached a curve.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board is stepping up its examination of PTC.
During Monday’s Metro-North Committee meeting, Acting President Catherine Rinaldi said it will be a standard part of their monthly agenda going forward.
Rinaldi said Civil Speed Enforcement, initially implemented on the New Haven Line, will go system-wide.
“Civil Speed enforcement uses the existing signal system to enforce maximum speeds,” Rinaldi said. “It’s one of the four markers of PTC; the prevention of over-speed derailments. We’ve had that functionality in place since shortly after the Spuyten Duyvil derailment on critical curves and moveable bridges and now we are implementing it across the entire territory.”
In other business, ridership is up significantly. Preliminary Metro-North ridership numbers for 2017 show a projected total at 86.5 million, the largest in history. That’s up about 300,000 rides from 2016. Ridership is up on both the Hudson and Harlem lines.
Service reliability for the year 2017 was above goal, but, because of some messy weather early in the month, December was a bit below goal.
