Salt Lake Transit News Thread

[Hatman]

The S-Line and TRAX will not require PTC. They are under the FTA (Federal Transit Administration) while FrontRunner is under the FRA (Federal Railroad Administration), and PTC is an FRA requirement. TRAX would definitely benefit from PTC, though. If you've ridden TRAX through Central Pointe station for a while, you'll remember that southbound Red and Blue lines used to depart the station very quickly. Now, ever since a Green Line trail derailed on that switch, UTA has lowered the speed limit for all trains, not just the Green Line. Having PTC on TRAX would remove little inefficiencies like by removing human error from the equation.
It would also mean that all the lineside signals could go away. Never again would a TRAX train need to sit and wait at a block point because the line ahead was occupied - trains would literally be able to drive up behind each other, like cars in a traffic jam, which would seriously improve how quickly TRAX could recover from a delayed train.
PTC only increased FrontRunner's schedule because it wasn't double-tracked. On fully double-tracked systems, PTC is much better. It is a step toward completely automated trains, as the function of PTC is to wirelessly connect all the trains in a system to better coordinate their positions.