The New Jersey commuter train that smashed into the Hoboken station Thursday wasn’t equipped with a GPS-based safety technology that could have prevented the disaster.
The locomotive lacked positive train control, an automatic braking technology that can override train operators to stop or slow down trains that are traveling too fast.
It’s been called “the single most important rail- safety development in more than a century” by the Federal Railroad Administration.
All trains were initially supposed to be outfitted with PTC by Dec. 31, 2015 — but operators were given a three-year extension last year after telling the House Transportation Committee they couldn’t get the work done in time.
The Department of Transportation can also extend that deadline to individual railroads by two more years if they request the extra time.
New Jersey Transit, which serves an average of 308,000 passengers during the week, hasn’t equipped any of its 440 locomotives with the technology, a recent report shows.
National Transportation Safety Board officials have said PTC could have prevented scores of accidents — including a 2013 Metro-North train crash in The Bronx that killed four people. More recently, the board said the technology could have saved lives in the 2015 Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia, which killed eight people.
“It could have prevented those accidents,” said Rich Barone, vice president for transportation at the watchdog Regional Plan Association.
“It is something that should be installed everywhere, but there isn’t the money and the resources to do it.”
As of June 2016, 73 percent of freight railroads across the country had installed PTC on their trains, but only 46 percent of passenger trains are equipped with the technology, according to an FRA report.
The MTA is in the process of installing the technology on its trains, and it has promised that it will be up and running by 2018.