LIRR adds Positive Train Control on four branches

NEW YORK - The MTA has announced that select trains running on the Far Rockaway, Long Beach, Oyster Bay and West Hempstead branches will become the latest Long Island Rail Road branches to use Positive Train Control, a signal system enhancement that works to reduce the potential for human error leading to train collisions and derailments. 

“The successful and on-time launch of Positive Train Control on these branches continues our forward progress on this critical initiative,” said LIRR President Phillip Eng. “Meeting this milestone reinforces my confidence that we will complete system-wide rollout of Positive Train control on-time by the end of 2020.”

Positive Train Control was commissioned on the Port Washington Branch in 2018, while the segment of the Montauk Branch between Babylon and Patchogue received the technology in April and the Hempstead Branch received it in August. 

The LIRR and the Metro-North Railroad are aiming to complete the rollout of PTC across their entire networks before the Federal deadline of December 31, 2020.