Technical and Safety Evaluation of the Southern California Regional Rail Authority Positive Train Control Deployment Project:Challenges and Lessons Learned

Positive Train Control (PTC), often referred to as Communication Based Train Control (CBTC), has been on the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) “Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements” for several decades as a safety-enabling system. The Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 mandated its implementation after the September 12, 2008, Chatsworth, California, collision between trains from the Southern California Regional Rail Authority (SCRRA or Metrolink) and Union Pacific. SCRRA has undergone substantial challenges to integrate PTC into its operations. This report investigates the multilevel challenges—technological, human, organizational, and systematic—that SCRRA faced implementing the new technology as well as many of the lessons the railroad industry can learn from these challenges. Technology alone cannot ensure safety, but a properly-implemented PTC system can develop and promote high reliability practices that enable safe operations throughout an organization. The report examines interactions among the numerous Systems of Systems for their impact on successful PTC implementation.