System to prevent train accidents not turned on yet in Seattle

Investigators are trying to determine if a system designed to prevent accidents would have helped stop a train in New Jersey from barreling into a station. Over in Western Washington, that potentially life-saving technology is installed, but it isn’t turned on yet for all tracks.

Amtrak and commuter trains do have that safety system that would override an engineer and automatically slow or stop a train going too fast.

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“It’s a system that’s built into the tracks,” Sound Transit’s Bruce Gray said. “We’ve got signals within the tracks that talk to the trains that basically set the speed limits for those trains.”

However, Gray says the equipment won’t be turned on until the middle of next year.

In its second quarter report for 2016, Sound Transit reported ridership increased by 27 percent compared to 2015. Sounder commuter rail ridership saw average weekday boardings were 16,186, an 8 percent increase over the second quarter of 2015.

BNSF says they have the safety system operating on about one-third of their tracks.

Meanwhile, over in New Jersey, the community is trying to cope with the death of one young mother who was killed by falling debris after the train crashed into the busy Hoboken station on Thursday morning. More than 100 others were injured and scores were hospitalized, some with serious injuries.

Some witnesses said they didn’t hear or feel the brakes being applied before the crash. Authorities would not estimate how fast the train was going. But the speed limit heading into the station is 10 mph.

The NTSB has been pressing for some version of the safety technology for at least 40 years, and the industry is under government orders to install it, but regulators have repeatedly extended the deadline at railroads’ request. Congress has given railroads until the end of 2018 to full-implement the technology.

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